Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics

This project aims to enable Wikipedians to cooperate, make suggestions and share ideas on the organization and improvement of the mathematics coverage of Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to join in this endeavor.

Many such suggestions and guidelines have been developed since the project began. A particularly useful collection can be found in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics, which contains a detailed discussion of issues related to writing mathematics articles on Wikipedia.

However, it is important for all of us to remember that these are only suggestions: they should help to give us focus, and inspire our contributions, but no one should feel obliged to follow (or even read) them. This WikiProject is not prescriptive. The suggestions are intended to be helpful for those who are not sure what to write, or how they can contribute, but they should not distract anyone wanting to contribute from our main purpose: to write and improve mathematics articles!

Project background and scope[edit]

This WikiProject began in 2002 to assist the creation, improvement and organization of articles in the area of mathematics. The initial goals of the project were to provide:

a standard "bare bones" format for mathematical articles
useful links for article writers
a location to discuss issues relating to this section of Wikipedia
standards for mathematical notation using wikified HTML and TeX.

In its broadest terms, mathematics includes its overlaps with physics, computer science, operations research, and other areas. However, there are now separate WikiProjects in many of these areas, and so the focus of WikiProject Mathematics has shifted towards articles which are primarily mathematical (although it still includes many aspects of theoretical physics, for example).

Much progress has been made. The overall organisation of the project is now pretty much in place, and a "house style" for mathematical articles is reasonably well established. The indices of mathematics articles now has over 30000 entries, and this list is automatically updated by a bot using the list of mathematics categories to identify relevant articles. There are also lists of articles by topic which organize articles by subdiscipline and other criteria.

When contributing new articles which are (even only remotely) related to mathematics (including biographies of mathematicians, and so on), please add at least an approximate mathematical category. This enables us to identify, and hence review and add to (or mercilessly savage!), each other's contributions.

The main issues for the project are now probably the following ones:

Bringing stubs up to a reasonable standard. There are always plenty of pages that are definition-only. We need to add motivation and examples.
Developing important articles into good expositions. As anyone who teaches the subject knows, the gap between stating some true facts, and really putting over a topic, is quite large. Here we can consider also the need to add history and proper attributions.
Expanding coverage to bring the subject up-to-date. This is a huge task, so the main requirements are patience and determination. In particular, a lot of work is still needed to bring the more advanced material up-to-date, so expert contributions are to be encouraged.
Keeping track of all relevant articles, by listing, categorising, and assessing them. As mentioned above, it is important to add even an approximate category to each mathematical article. There is also a subproject whose aim is to assess the broad field, and the importance and quality of our articles. Anyone can contribute to this task by adding or updating {{maths rating}} templates on article talk pages.
Identifying pseudo-mathematics, hoaxing, and other unattributable material. Most Wikipedians, naturally enough, don't feel qualified to pronounce on articles purporting to be mathematical, so it is up to us to identify crankery, hoaxes, and material with dubious or unverifiable sources. Anything suspect should be reported on the talk page of this page.

Things to do[edit]

Looking for something to do? The following table lists some of the places on Wikipedia where mathematics-related requests, suggestions, and tasks have been collected together.

What	Where
Suggest or edit a mathematics article needing attention	Pages needing attention: Mathematics
Apply your expert knowledge to improve an article	Mathematics articles needing expert attention
Request or write a mathematics article	Requested articles: Mathematics
Request or provide an image	Requested images: Mathematics
Expand a mathematics "stub"	Mathematics stubs
Suggest or edit a redirect which could have its own article	Redirects with possibilities: Mathematics
Help move PlanetMath content onto Wikipedia	PlanetMath Exchange
Improve an article that has been tagged as needing attention	Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists
Add or improve references in a mathematics article	Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists
Turn a "red link" blue	Mathematical redlinks
Maintain the mathematics portal	Portal:Mathematics
Review or contribute to current mathematics activity	Current activity
Help to resolve a dispute	Requests for comment: Mathematics
Ask or answer a question about mathematics	Reference desk: Mathematics
Assess an article's importance and quality	Assessment section
Add biographical details to the missing mathematicians page or create an article for someone on the list.	Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/missing mathematicians
Articles up for deletion	Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Mathematics

Start missing articles from List of Italian mathematicians.

Some issues to think about[edit]

Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The suggestions below are intended to help us achieve this.

When describing a concept in terms of some other concept (for example, explaining rational numbers in terms of integers), be sure to:

add a (prominent) link to the relevant article (in this case, integer) — as with other Wikipedia articles, avoid duplicate links;
if it makes sense, add a very quick (and naive) explanation/description (in this case, "positive or negative whole numbers" might work).

If the relevant article has not been written yet, then create a good stub, and add a mathematical category. This will list the article in several places (for instance on the list of mathematics articles) and there is a reasonable chance that someone will expand on it.

Some terminology varies from author to author in the literature. It is therefore a good idea to check any pre-existing articles related to a topic to see if there is already an established usage. Proposals for changes in usage are always welcome: the talk page of this page is one forum where issues such as this can be raised.

New contributors may find it helpful to spend a bit of time perusing some of the existing content; this should provide some idea of what type of information is already available, and how much detail is appropriate in a Wikipedia mathematics article.

The project Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience, whose goal is to help make articles more accessible, is also worth consulting.

Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines provides guidance for writing readable and well-referenced scientific and mathematical articles.

Conventions[edit]

The following pages attempt to describe certain conventions for articles with mathematical content. Please read, comment on, improve, criticize, and if appropriate, follow these standards.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Conventions (a working list of terminology conventions)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (theorems)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)
Wikipedia:Algorithms on Wikipedia (proposed)
Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines

Also see:

Classification[edit]

There is no one single, prescribed method for classifying mathematics articles. Both the lists and the categories have grown organically, rather than being imported. See also areas of mathematics.

List of publications in mathematics[edit]

There is an effort to organize a list of important publications in many areas of science. Such a list captures the major achievements in each field and might be a valuable asset for one trying to learn a new field.The List of important publications in computer science is the oldest and most mature list and might show the goal of the lists. The rest of the list needs many more contributions. Please help improve the mathematics related lists:

There is also a list of mathematics journals.

Assessment of mathematics articles[edit]

Mathematics article ratings
Priority	Quality
Priority	FA	FL	A	A-BB+	GA	B	C	Start	Stub	List	Unassessed	Total
Top	9			21	14	180	8			5		237
High	2			28	5	229	537	16	4	11		832
Mid	12	1	1	20	20	468	621	2,212	69	67		3,491
Low	2			3	20	353	753	4,658	4,938	186	1	10,914
NA											33	33
Total	25	1	1	72	59	1,230	1,919	6,886	5,011	269	34	15,507

The subproject Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 provides a system to assess mathematics articles for their quality and importance, and to classify them broadly by field. This system was originally developed as part of Wikipedia 1.0, and these assessments will be used to help us to determine which articles will appear in the Wikipedia 1.0 CD.

However, article assessments are useful more generally to track the project's progress, identify weak spots in its coverage, and highlight articles which could become Good Articles or Featured Articles. Articles are assessed by placing (or updating) a {{maths rating}} template on the talk page of the article. Furthermore, the template provides an opportunity to add a brief comment on the article suggesting improvements that could be made.

The table above summarizes the current state-of-play. The links in this table point to assessment pages on which articles are listed by field and quality, complete with any comments that editors have made.

Any article can be assessed for its mathematical content, and anyone can rate an article. The only exceptions are the Good Article and Featured Article quality grades. These should only be added to articles which have been through the standard Wikipedia Good Article Nomination and Featured Article Candidacy procedures. Editors are also encouraged to use the A-class assessment process to assign A-class quality to an article.

Recognized content[edit]

Good articles[edit]

As of 9 October 2014 the mathematics Good Articles are:

A-class articles[edit]

The A-class assessment process used to select A-class articles. One article was promoted by this process:

Peano axioms (10 April 2007)

Featured content[edit]

As of 9 October 2014, 25 mathematics articles are featured articles:

Featured articles
Article	Featured^[1]	Main Page
Marian Rejewski	Discussion 19 January 2006	10 March 2006
Actuary	Discussion 30 July 2006	10 September 2006
Leonhard Euler	Discussion 8 October 2006	11 November 2006
0.999...	Discussion 10 October 2006	25 October 2006
Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector	Discussion 17 January 2007	30 December 2010
Polar coordinate system	Discussion 31 January 2007	17 February 2007
1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · ·	Discussion 17 March 2007	15 April 2007
Johannes Kepler	Discussion 20 March 2007	15 July 2007
Introduction to general relativity	Discussion 24 July 2007	18 April 2010
Georg Cantor	Discussion 31 July 2007	15 September 2007
Archimedes	Discussion 23 October 2007	29 January 2008
Emery Molyneux	Discussion 18 April 2008	DYN 9 February 2008
Émile Lemoine	Discussion 24 April 2008	5 June 2008
Edward Wright (mathematician)	Discussion 19 June 2008	24 August 2009
Emmy Noether	Discussion 22 June 2008	4 September 2008
General relativity	Discussion 27 June 2008	19 April 2012
Group (mathematics)	Discussion 17 September 2008	5 November 2008
Problem of Apollonius	Discussion 13 October 2008	22 November 2008
Euclidean algorithm	Discussion 19 May 2009	18 June 2009
Robert Hues	Discussion 6 June 2009	16 June 2010
Numerical weather prediction	Discussion 26 March 2011	10 August 2011
Logarithm	Discussion 1 June 2011	5 June 2011
Pi	Discussion 4 June 2012	22 July 2012
Parity of zero	Discussion 21 August 2013	29 August 2013
Josiah Willard Gibbs	Discussion 17 February 2014	n/a

Featured images[edit]

There are also seventeen featured mathematical images:

There is one former featured image:

File:Buddhabrot-deep.jpg

Featured lists[edit]

There is a featured list:

List of International Mathematical Olympiads

Former featured articles[edit]

As of 9 October 2014 there are at least 25 mathematics articles which are former featured articles:

Former featured articles
Article	Featured^[1]	De-featured^[1]	Main Page
Ordinal	26 January 2002	19 January 2004
Statistics	26 January 2002	19 January 2004
Pythagorean theorem	26 January 2002	Discussion 21 March 2004
Illegal prime	28 August 2003	Discussion 13 July 2004
Computational complexity theory	26 January 2002	Discussion 23 August 2004
Vacuous truth	Discussion 6 January 2004	Discussion 20 September 2004
Triangle	Discussion 10 May 2004	Discussion 3 March 2005
Fractal	Discussion 12 July 2004	Discussion 15 September 2005
Algorithm	24 July 2002	Discussion 28 May 2006	20 July 2004
Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace	16 October 2005	Discussion 19 September 2006	1 November 2005
Ackermann function	18 December 2003	Discussion 21 October 2006	24 September 2004
Regular polytope	Discussion 9 October 2004	Discussion 23 January 2007	18 November 2004
Margin of error	Discussion 12 October 2004	Discussion 3 March 2007	19 October 2004
Galileo Galilei	4 November 2003	Discussion 12 September 2007	24 July 2004
Lists of mathematics topics	Discussion 27 October 2005	Discussion 31 December 2007
Carl Friedrich Gauss	Discussion 10 July 2005	Discussion 4 January 2008	August 4, 2005
Game theory	Discussion 4 December 2005	Discussion 18 March 2008	13 January 2006
Prisoner's dilemma	19 January 2004	Discussion 16 April 2008	16 March 2004
Trigonometric functions	Discussion 20 December 2003	Discussion 19 July 2008	6 March 2004
Isaac Newton	Discussion 19 October 2005	Discussion 14 March 2009	13 December 2005
Cryptography	Discussion 2 July 2006	Discussion 26 May 2011	22 July 2006
Monty Hall problem	Discussion 25 June 2005	Discussion 13 June 2011	23 July 2005
Blaise Pascal	Discussion 4 August 2005	Discussion 12 September 2011	19 August 2005
Infinite monkey theorem	Discussion 29 September 2004	Discussion 4 October 2012	31 October 2004
Stephen Hawking	Discussion 3 September 2012	Discussion 23 February 2014	5 June 2011

^ ^a ^b ^c The discussion links (where they exist) point to the featured article candidate discussion or the featured article removal candidate discussion — prior to June, 2003, there was no formal FA nomination process, and there was no formal FA removal process, prior to March, 2004. Dates for pages listed before Phase II conversion are given as 26 January 2002.
The symbol: , indicates an article that has an audio recording of the article text (see the article for a link to its recording).

Featured article candidates[edit]

There are no other mathematics Featured Article candidates at present.

Visit the WikiProject Mathematics on Wikidata

[legend-1] The discussion links (where they exist) point to the featured article candidate discussion or the featured article removal candidate discussion — prior to June, 2003, there was no formal FA nomination process, and there was no formal FA removal process, prior to March, 2004. Dates for pages listed before Phase II conversion are given as 26 January 2002.
The symbol: , indicates an article that has an audio recording of the article text (see the article for a link to its recording).

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Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics

Contents

Project background and scope[edit]

Things to do[edit]

Some issues to think about[edit]

Conventions[edit]

Classification[edit]

List of publications in mathematics[edit]

Assessment of mathematics articles[edit]

Recognized content[edit]

Good articles[edit]

Mathematicians[edit]

Mathematics and mathematical problems[edit]

Mathematical physics[edit]

A-class articles[edit]

Featured content[edit]

Featured images[edit]

Featured lists[edit]

Former featured articles[edit]

Featured article candidates[edit]

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