User talk:JayBeeEll

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Evidence vs. sarcasm

You may have noticed that MastCell and I, who have diametrically opposed viewpoints on the question that led to the discussion, were having a perfectly straightforward discussion, in which each of us pointed to certain evidence, and the other responded, actually processing what the other said, addressing said evidence in a straightforward way. That can be a difficult thing to achieve when talking with someone who does not agree, yet the two of us had done it. If you choose to join the discussion, I would appreciate it if you would do so in the same spirit. CometEncke (talk) 17:10, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You are certainly free to ignore my comments if you do not find them constructive. --JBL (talk) 21:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

why revert ?

Euler's identity on E (mathematical constant) Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 04:03, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Because articles are written in complete sentences, which themselves are written in paragraphs, not by dropping random statements wherever one wants at random. --JBL (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Everything to do with AGF

Can you please explain your rationale for your hatting here? [1] I don't think I've seen you around the ref desks before. I think the question is perfectly valid; do you agree?

I've reinstated the question. If you think it needs to be removed, please follow WP:BRD, and seek consensus on the talk page before taking further action. My position is 1) the question itself is fine, and violates none of our guidelines. It is in fact somewhat common, as you may have experienced, though good answers are not always readily apparent, especially to people who haven't yet learned how to find good references 2) several users found it interesting enough to provide good answers. 3) I follow WP:AGF. 4) The question is not causing any disruption. If you have hatted it because the IP is from Ohio, then I ask you to please explain how that justifies hatting. We cannot disallow any posts from any IPs from Ohio, that is absurd. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:47, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with SemanticMantis. The question looks fine to me. Is there any reason to think that the IP user is not asking the question in good faith ? Gandalf61 (talk) 16:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

@SemanticMantis: @Gandalf61: please see the discussion here. --JBL (talk) 17:21, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks JBL, I was not aware of that thread. My position remains unchanged. Just because one user thinks a post needs to be removed doesn't make it so. We are supposed to operate by consensus here at WP. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

That's fine but I suggest you have this discussion with Fut.P. --JBL (talk) 17:36, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikihounding

You have been reported for Wikihounding.Aspencork (talk) 20:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Just to make sure you're aware of my answer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.185.60.38#Fermat.27s_little_theorem — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.185.60.38 (talk) 14:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

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Edit to Tulsi Gabbard

The edit to Tulsi Gabbard's Early life and education I made is supported by the citation which is http://www.mikegabbard.com/content/about-mike-gabbard Not sure why you said it is not supported.

Here's excerpts from the citation that support my edit: "Mike, one of eight children, was born in 1948 in Fagatogo, American Samoa. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen at one year old."

"Carol was born in Decatur, Indiana to American parents but grew up in Michigan. " Rajo89 (talk) 00:50, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Rajo89:, Sorry about that -- I because confused while reading the diff, and you are right that my edit summary is wrong. I would like to suggest that nevertheless this information should be removed -- it's basically trivia with no significance to T. Gabbard directly. If the point is that she is an American citizen by birth, then you should find a source that says so directly. --JBL (talk) 13:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Clarification

If a sphere is 20/1000 of a mm in diameter and its container is 5cm , what is the maximum number of spheres possible?

Now work this problem another way, what is the total radius of 500,000 of said spheres?

Now, another math equation to compare this to is 20/1000 of a mm in diameters in a row, ³√500,000 on width, hight, length. Do you find my quandary(questioning)?

Use the equation (4/3)πr³ in question number 2, which may omit the negative spaces but will illuminate what I have found in relation to question number 3. Find the volume of 500,000 spheres and then the radius of such a containment space (in which the volume has remained the same while shape may have become ambiguous, i.e. altering the shape of a water ballon does not change its containing volume without compression.).

This all started due to potentially centuries old data on ovary cell count for oocytes(egg cells) which I am trying to refute. The opposing party gave question number three as his explanation of containing such a number (in acuality speaking on the proposed one million oocytes at birth, I broke it down to half of that given I could find the size of a singular ADULT ovarian fossa(space) as 5cm and an adult ovary at approximately 4cm x 2cm x 3cm. Using 5cm to give "the benefit of the doubt", a phrase we have where I am originally from in America.), I however give questions 1, 2, or "4" to refute this data. In doing such I find a delima in the difference between 20/1000 mm diameter in a cube like section of 100x100x100 (relating to the total number given of one million oocytes) and the actual radius using volume and then the reversal of the volume equation leading to radius. (Crlinformative (talk) 00:23, 30 March 2016 (UTC))

@Crlinformative: "The opposing party gave question 3 as his explanation...." This seems unlikely to me. What seems more likely is that someone made a calculation in order to answer a question, and for some reason you do not find it satisfactory. What I want to know is, (1) what was the question? (2) what was the calculation? and (3) what about it do you find unsatisfactory? --JBL (talk) 01:20, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

The question posed by me is how is it possible for one million oocytes to fit in an infantile ovary? His response to explain it, after I did my mathmatical calculations, was that 20μm x 100 is 2,000μm and 100x100x100 is 1,000,000. A variation of what I have typed as I devided the number of cells by 2 to give the per ovary count; I have the measurements of one adult ovary and my mathematical calculations leans that even an adult ovary cannot contain that amount. What I find to be a mathematical debacle is how 20μm x 100 is 2,000μm and with 100³ equaling 1e6 it lends an area with sides measuring at 2mm while of you calculate volume based off the diameter of the cell and then work backwards to obtain a minimum required radius to contain these cells you obtain vastly different values. Do the math real quick and you will see what I mean. In the first question consider the container a sphere as it's actually an ambiguous shape. I will post to you my mathematical calculations for you to compare your math to mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crlinformative (talk • contribs) 02:15, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Crlinformative: thanks, this is helpful and I am closer to grasping what's going on. In order to make sure I understand correctly, may I rephrase the argument you're objecting to? I think it is something like this:

An oocyte is a cell, which we may think of roughly as a sphere of diameter 20μm. Therefore, a container that is roughly a sphere of diameter 2mm = 2000μm = 100 × 20μm should be able to contain on the order of 100 × 100 × 100 = 1,000,000 oocytes.

Have I correctly characterized the argument? (Obviously I am ignoring some of the details you mention in which you make your calculations conservative (what you call giving the benefit of the doubt) -- this is good practice on your part, but maybe we can set it aside on the first pass through and worry about it later.)

Assuming I've got the idea right: I'm afraid I am still not sure what the alternate calculation is that you've done that you believe is in conflict with this one. Would you be willing to share it, as well? --JBL (talk) 14:51, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you have. The problem was solved on talk StuRat (talk · contribs) . I will have to find another way of disproving that the infantile ovaries contain 1,000,000 primordial follicles or that the embryo contains 4 to 7,000,000 of them. 20μm isn't the size of primordial follicles anyways, it is the size of the oocyte stage located within each primordial follicle. They are actually 30-50μm in size according to reports. The only data I can find supporting this cell count is "books say so" and hand drawn images of size relation. Growing up in America you learn to question mainstream accepted information before you accept what you are told as true information. Anyone can right a book with a degree and who determines what is right or wrong in it, but the book writers themselves. I have yet to be led to the actual RS that yields these cell counts or data. If you still want to look at practical application math you can look at this version of the information: " [image shows] a secondary follicle with an approximate diameter of 0.2mm. That is 1/100 of the 2cm length in 4cm x 3cm x 2cm given as ovary size here on the page on ovary. This is less than ten times larger than size of a primordial follicle at 0.03mm. For the simplification of math lets say that the primordial follicle was even smaller being .02mm. That would make it 1/1,000 of the lesser length in the size of an adult ovary. That gives you the dimensions of 2/1,000 x 1.5/1,000 x 1/1,000 of an ovary as the size of a primordial follicle. This yields the possibility of less than 3,000 total primordial follicles(being that they are actually .03 - .05mm in diameter) in an adult ovary if it contained solely primordial follicles." If you look at the reference given on folliculogenesis after reporting the commonly accepted values it later in the article describes the peak age follicle count at 300,000 instead of 4,000,000 which it is used as a reference for in our wiki mainstream information flow. This is all very important to both mathematics applied to life situations or if you know anyone with a female child that is expected to grow up with accurate information. It isn't original research, just looking into the given references themselves and checking the facts with mathematics. Both of which a mathematician may find delightful to the mind.(Crlinformative (talk) 06:33, 31 March 2016 (UTC))

Hi Crlinformative,

I'm glad your question has been satisfactorily resolved. I am afraid that, to the extent that you are still unhappy with the situation, I am not going to be of much help: I have neither any relevant expertise nor a lot of personal interest in the underlying question. Sorry.

All the best,

JBL (talk) 17:40, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Iverson Bracket

Hi. You reverted my changes to the floor and ceiling functions by re-introducting the explicit ranges for the sums (-infinity to infinity), instead of a simple n. However, if you look at Concrete Mathematics and especially Knuth's 1992 paper Two Notes on Notation, he extolls the advantages of NOT specifying explicit ranges. As well, the second example in the "Uses" section follows the convention of NOT specifying the index range. I propose to revert your revert, and using just the simple n as the index.
    Roger Hui (talk) 22:24, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Roger Hui,

Knuth is a person with many opinions, and that fact that he asserts X does not necessarily mean that X is or should be so. The Iverson bracket article, not being part of a text written by Knuth, does not generally adhere to Knuthian conventions or guidelines (can you imagine what he would say about the mixing of fonts that goes on in most math articles in Wikipedia?). Readers in general cannot be expected to know that an article is going to follow an un-mentioned and non-standard convention. Meanwhile, including the range of summation gives an unambiguous interpretation for any reader who is familiar with sigma summation notation, regardless of whether they have been exposed to Knuthian conventions. For these reasons, I do not agree that removing the summation range is an improvement. On the other hand, I would not object to including that information in some other form, e.g., in text following the sums rather than in formulas. You are of course welcome to solicit other opinions on the article talk page.

Best, JBL (talk) 23:13, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I will think about how best to re-introduce the simpler form.

Of course, Knuth is just one person, but his opinion on this matter does carry more weight, I feel: (a) Knuth originated the term "Iverson bracket", and popularized the use of the technique; (b) Concrete Mathematics is co-authored by Ronald Graham, another eminent mathematician; (c) Two Notes on Notation didn't just say by fiat that simpler bounds are better, but presented examples and arguments in favor. Simpler index bounds are one of the things by Iverson Brackets lead to "substantial improvements in exposition and technique". Iverson Brackets themselves are "Knuthian" and "non-standard"; NOT using the simpler index bounds negates much of Iverson Brackets.

  $\lfloor x\rfloor =\sum _{n=-\infty }^{\infty }n\cdot [n\leq x<n+1]$   versus   $\lfloor x\rfloor =\sum _{n}n\cdot [n\leq x<n+1]$

    Roger Hui (talk) 23:44, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Regarding your question

Hello Joel B.,

Regarding your question about why I reverted those edits; though Farsi and Western Persian are "the same" it should be mentioned that Western Persian is alternatively used as designation apart from Farsi. The IP removed this alternate designation. Furthermore, it should be stipulated that Dari and Tajiki are viewed as dialects, varieties and/or offshoots, and are not merely "almost the same thing" of one continuum. The same goes for Western Persian. I believe the revision prior to the IP's edits presented these points more appropriately.

Btw, one more thing; there's clearly some socking going on here, given that Sharaqw1 reinstated virtually the exact same edit that was made by the IP some hours later,[2] as well as on the Dari language page.[3]-[4]. Anyway that's all. :-) Bests - LouisAragon (talk) 23:35, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Tendentious editing for sure. Ogress 23:44, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi LouisAragon & Ogress, thanks for your comments. I have no substantive position on the questions raised here, and I agree about the dubious behavior of the other editor. However, I can't help but find the construction "The Dari language or Dari" extremely odd -- no one would ever write "the French language or French". And if the odd wording is supposed to be drawing a meaningful distinction then I'm afraid it is not actually clear in the text. The same holds (maybe to a lesser degree) for "the Tajik language or Tajiki." Is there some way to rewrite or clarify that avoids these constructions? (I have no problem with the restored "Western Persian or Farsi."). Thanks, JBL (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

We should take this to talk; I commented here. The T.E. messed it up again. I set it as "WP or Farsi ... Dari ... Tajiki", and hopefully that's acceptable. I wanted to comment that Tajik language and Tajiki are actually different names; you can say "Tajiki" but saying "Tajik" alone is like saying "speak Arab", you have to either add the ezafe or a term like "language" after it. Likely Dari was doubled as a parallelism to match the other two dialect names, but I think we should dispense with them except for "WP or 'Farsi'". Ogress 03:45, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Persian language

I reverted your edits only because I wanted to revert the entire mess back to an earlier version, not because I disagreed with you. Edit: Also, I just saw a previous post that sums up my reversion just now: it's tendentious editing for sure. Ogress 23:42, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Regarding John Coleman (news weathercaster)

Hi Joel~

Thanks for the revert -- it was my opinion. How else would you suggest modifying the comment, because as it stands, it appears to unfairly target Coleman. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 18:13, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi DRosenbach, thanks for the message. To be honest, I am pretty comfortable with the sentence as it stands: Coleman's views on this subject are fringe, at odds with the scientific community, and the sentence captures this accurately. If anything, it's a bit soft: we don't, for example, include a (true) statement that Coleman's claims (in the previous sentence) are false, and the criticism is attributed to "critics" rather than in WP's voice. If you want to try other options out, I'd be happy to look at them, of course. Or you could try raising this question on the article talk page to see what other people think. --JBL (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

They reported us as sockpuppets

LOL, the UBF self promotion team reported both of us as sockpuppets... lame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Bkarcher Bkarcher (talk) 13:20, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

:) -JBL (talk) 13:50, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Minneapolis

I removed that sentence from the climate section of the article because it constitutes a personal analysis of Minneapolis's climate. I personally disagree that Minneapolis's summers are warm (warm to me begins at 85 °F (29 °C)), and 54 inches (140 cm) of annual snowfall is hardly that snowy, at least in my opinion. Without a source stating that X or Y climatologist considers the climate objectively to be the subjective words currently in the article, it boils down to an opinion and, based on my understanding of Wikipedia's own policy on opinions, it should be removed.

Thank you,

YITYNR ^{My work • What's wrong?} 10:57, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

@YITYNR: Thanks for your message. I don't feel very strongly about this and I think it makes more sense to discuss it on the article talk page, so I put a short note there to see what other people think. --JBL (talk) 19:50, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Analyzing the multiple choice test

[5]

You kindly provided the formulas

$\sum _{x=0}^{y}2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}={\binom {n}{n-y}}{_{2}}F_{1}(1,-y;-n;2)$

$\sum _{x=0}^{y}x2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}=2{\binom {n-1}{n-y}}{_{2}}F_{1}(2,1-y;1-n;2)$

$\sum _{x=0}^{y}x^{2}2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}=2{\binom {n-1}{n-y}}{_{3}}F_{2}(2,2,1-y;1,1-n;2)$

They are valid for $0\leq y<n$ but not for $y=n$. Can you please help me understand what is going on? Thanks! Bo Jacoby (talk) 15:17, 19 June 2016 (UTC).

Bo Jacoby, I have read your message and will look into it, but it may take a couple of days due to real life busyness. --JBL (talk) 15:30, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Bo Jacoby, thanks for your patience. Yes, you are right, there is an issue: the hypergeometric expressions are infinite series, but putting the negative integer -y as one of the top indices adds a factor of $(-y)_{k}=(-y)(1-y)\cdots (k-1-y)$ and causes the sum to truncate after only finitely many terms. Usually. The problem is that when y = n, there is also a factor of $(-n)_{k}=(-y)_{k}$ in the denominator, these two cancel, and so we don't get the needed truncation. For the first two (the ₂F₁s), we can use a Pfaff transformation to rewrite ${_{2}}F_{1}(1,-y;-n;2)=(-1)^{y}{_{2}}F_{1}(-n-1,-y;-n;2)$ and something similar in the other case, and I believe these should behave correctly in the desired parameter range (let me know if this is wrong!). I will have to look around more to find a transformation that will fix the third one. --JBL (talk) 17:11, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Bo Jacoby (talk) 07:37, 28 June 2016 (UTC).

@Bo Jacoby: here's the last one. Probably we don't need to go to higher hypergeometric functions if we're willing to take sums. In this case, we can write $x^{2}=(x+2)(x+1)-3(x+1)+1$ to write your series as

${\begin{aligned}\sum _{x=0}^{y}x^{2}2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}&={\binom {n}{n-y}}\sum _{x}{\frac {(-y)_{x}\cdot ((x+2)!-3(x+1)!+x!)}{(-n)_{x}\cdot x!}}2^{x}\\&={\binom {n}{n-y}}\sum _{x}{\frac {(-y)_{x}\cdot (2\cdot (3)_{x}-3\cdot (2)_{x}+(1)_{x})}{(-n)_{x}\cdot x!}}2^{x}\\&={\binom {n}{n-y}}\cdot \left(2\cdot {_{2}}F_{1}(3,-y;-n;2)-3\cdot {_{2}}F_{1}(2,-y;-n;2)+{_{2}}F_{1}(1,-y;-n;2)\right)\end{aligned}}$

and then we can use the Pfaff transformation to write each of the three things on the right side as terminating series. (I don't know of a way to do it as a single series, but I'm not particularly expert in hypergeometric manipulations.) --JBL (talk) 15:54, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again! Bo Jacoby (talk) 13:20, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Following your computation.

${\begin{aligned}\sum _{x=0}^{y}x^{2}2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}&=\sum _{x}{\frac {(x+2)!-3(x+1)!+x!}{x!}}2^{x}{\binom {n}{n-y}}{\frac {(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}\\&={\binom {n}{n-y}}\sum _{x}(2(3)_{x}-3(2)_{x}+(1)_{x}){\frac {(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}{\frac {2^{x}}{x!}}\\&={\binom {n}{y}}\left(2\sum _{x}{\frac {(3)_{x}(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}{\frac {2^{x}}{x!}}-3\sum _{x}{\frac {(2)_{x}(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}{\frac {2^{x}}{x!}}+\sum _{x}{\frac {(1)_{x}(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}{\frac {2^{x}}{x!}}\right)\\&={\binom {n}{y}}\left(2F(3,-y;-n;2)-3F(2,-y;-n;2)+F(1,-y;-n;2)\right)\end{aligned}}$

Bo Jacoby (talk) 13:20, 29 June 2016 (UTC).

${\begin{aligned}M_{Q}&=\sum _{x=0}^{y}{\binom {x+Q}{Q}}2^{x}{\binom {n-x}{n-y}}\\&=\sum _{x}{\frac {(x+Q)!}{x!Q!}}2^{x}{\binom {n}{n-y}}{\frac {(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}\\&={\binom {n}{y}}\sum _{x}{\frac {(Q+1)_{x}(-y)_{x}}{(-n)_{x}}}{\frac {2^{x}}{x!}}\\&={\binom {n}{y}}F(Q+1,-y;-n;2)\end{aligned}}$

for Q=0,1,2. Bo Jacoby (talk) 08:20, 1 July 2016 (UTC).

Yes, that looks right to me. --JBL (talk) 13:42, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Brute force calculation of M_Q for Q=0,1,2 and y= 1,2,...,10 and n=10:

  +/"2 Q+ .*(2^i)*|:(!/~)|.i[Q=.Q!(Q=.i.3)+/i=.i.1+n=.10
1 12  67 232  562 1024  1486  1816  1981  2036   2047
1 14  93 392 1186 2772  5282  8584 12381 16398  20481
1 16 123 608 2186 6144 14198 28064 49029 77808 114687

Hypergeometric, for Q=1,2,3 and y=9 and n=10.

  (9!10)*(1 _9 H. _10)2
2036
  (9!10)*(2 _9 H. _10)2
16398
  (9!10)*(3 _9 H. _10)2
77808

These results are correct. But the formula doesn't work for y=n. A work-around is n=10.000001, for Q=1,2,3 and y=10.

  (1 _10 H. _10.000001)2
2047
  (2 _10 H. _10.000001)2
20481
  (3 _10 H. _10.000001)2
114687

Bo Jacoby (talk) 06:10, 2 July 2016 (UTC).

it's the same issue as before: use Pfaff to change parameters and I think it should be ok. --JBL (talk) 12:26, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

The transformation

${}_{2}F_{1}(a,b;c;z)=(1-z)^{c-a-b}{}_{2}F_{1}(c-a,c-b;c;z).$

gives

${}_{2}F_{1}(1,-10;-10;2)=-{}_{2}F_{1}(-11,0;-10;2)=-1$

which is not 2047.

The number of knowns answers is estimated by

$x\approx {\frac {M_{1}}{M_{0}}}-1\pm {\sqrt {{\frac {M_{1}}{M_{0}}}(2{\frac {M_{2}}{M_{1}}}-{\frac {M_{1}}{M_{0}}}-1)}}$

  H2=.4 :'x H.y 2'
  ms=.[:(([:<:{.),:[:%:{.*([:+:{:)-[:>:{.)2%~/\(1 2 3,&>/[:-[)H2"1[:-1e_7+]
  3":(i.11) ([,ms) 10
 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
 0  0  0  1  1  2  3  4  5  7  9
 0  0  1  1  1  1  2  2  2  2  1
  

If you answered 8 out of 10 questions correctly then you knew 5±2 of the answers, the others being lucky guesses.

Bo Jacoby (talk) 10:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC).

Parity of a permutation

Please carefully read the section that you are changing again. The "size" of a n-cycle is clearly defined as n-1, not n. If you think this is awkward terminology, I agree, but I didn't write this part. Someone else did. The only reason I altered it is because the variables r, s, t were not defined in the original version. All I did was to rename them to $k_{i}$ and define them rigorously.

You can check this yourself by comparing my latest revision to the latest revision before I edited the article.

Secondly, the reason I removed the part about computing the parity of a permutation via the determinant of a permutation matrix is that matrix determinants are ***defined*** using the concept of permutation parity so there is a problem of circularity in using the determinant of a matrix to compute the parity of a permutation. Anyway, the most important point is that I don't think anyone would compute the parity of a permutation by working out the determinant of a permutation matrix, since there are far easier methods. ALongDream (talk) 07:32, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi ALongDream, thanks for your message. First, yes, you are absolutely right about "size", my apologies. (Though, frankly, I think it would be better not to include this non-standard name.) You are wrong, however, about the variables r, s, etc. -- they are (implicitly) defined in the first equation in which they appear. Also, you are wrong about the determinant: there are many very good ways to define the determinant that do not use the sign of a permutation, such as the expansion along the first row. For any such definition, the Leibniz formula is a theorem, and not necessarily an obvious one. That this is not a sensible computational strategy does not mean it is not an important or interesting fact! In any case, I think the current state of these sentences is basically fine. All the best, JBL (talk) 16:33, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

P.S. For future reference, discussions like this are best on the article talk pages (so other editors can see them, weigh in, etc.).

Predary journals and lack of peer review

Joel -- I don't feel strongly about your revert on Predatory open access publishing, but if people criticize non-peer-reviewed information they should not do this on a non-peer-reviewed blog. That's hypocritical and I think it should be pointed out. In fact, that kind of source should probably not be used on a Wikipedia page at all. Cheers, Peteruetz (talk) 19:51, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Peteruetz, thanks for your message. The problem is that you have put your own personal feeling (that something is hypocritical) into Wikipedia's voice (maybe implicitly). Frankly I think the complaint of hypocrisy is not very convincing (it is completely not hypocritical to believe that peer review is important for some things and not for other things), but that's neither here nor there. On the other hand, it is possible you could drum up support for removing criticisms sourced only to blogs by using the talk page. Best, JBL (talk) 16:44, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Not really. The cited blogs are non-peer-reviewed (like almost all blogs). That's a fact. Period. There is nothing emotional about this -- although it may seem so. (It's like criticizing the biblical Genesis for being wrong scientifically -- which an atheist may do out of emotion -- but that doesn't change the fact that the Genesis is wrong scientifically.). In any case, I won't insist on the hypocrisy. Just ignore that part. But I would still argue that blogs are no reliable source of information and are similar to "original research" in Wikipedia's definition, given that anybody can post anything on a blog. Howeve,r it's not important enough for me to rally for it. Peteruetz (talk) 03:07, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Katie Wheeler

I have created a perfunctory article on Shaheen's NHSen successor that was previously redlinked as per your recommendation. You are welcome to have a look over at Katie Wheeler.--Sunshineisles2 (talk) 04:16, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

That's great, thanks! --JBL (talk) 14:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

SEIU and AFSCME

You have some valid thoughts. I did not say this occurred in August. Merely indicated the date of the article. IMO, your deletion because of the format mistake (which was there) is not how I would have handled it. But make changes and make it better. I don't purport to owh any of this. Cheers. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:31, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I do not believe in positive loading or negative loading.

What makes all the things that the article says are important so important?

I believe that positive loading and negative loading and editorializers and other statements should only be mentioned if reliable sources mention those words.

I removed recent from recent readings because it is not specified in the article when the readings were conducted.

It may be considered recent a while back, but later on that will be outdated. The word however would question the previous statement.

We should not use the word conclude since that gives the assumption that such statement cannot be debunked. Use stated instead, it's more neutral and accurate.

We should only use words like that mentioned in WP:W2W if reliable sources describe the subjects as such and be in quotations so as to avoid being mistaken for ruining the accuracy/neutrality of the article.

We should be aware that the advice in the WP:W2W guidelines shouldn't be applied rigidly, but that is no excuse to say that someone is a radical leader without citing any sources that refer to them as such.

--Turkeybutt (talk) 23:10, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Turkeybutt JC, here is a sentence that you changed:

The Italian Giacomo Leopardi, one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century.

If you click on the link in the reference, here are the first two sentences:

Giacomo Leopardi is widely recognized as Italy’s finest modern lyric poet, for many the greatest after Dante. He was also one of the most radical and challenging of nineteenth-century thinkers, acknowledged as such by readers from Nietzsche to Benjamin and Beckett.

Should I say more about this? --JBL (talk) 23:18, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I stand corrected. But I think this positive loading could've just been quoted like this:

The Italian Giacomo Leopardi, is "acknowledged as [one of the most radical and challenging [19]th century thinkers] by readers from Nietsche to Benjamin and Beckett" according to the University of Birmingham.^[1]

I don't think that Wikipedia articles should read like whatever sources it cites, especially sources with a bunch of positive/negative loading and editorial opinions. Although Wikipedia encourages undue weight, Wikipedia articles should not directly highlight, honor, harass, emphasize, praise, demean or discriminate on anything. Wikipedia articles should have an impartial tone on all things and read from a neutral perspective on all things. Any and all non-neutral loadings and statements should only be reserved for quotation or stating that a particular source says that. --Turkeybutt (talk) 23:58, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Turkeybutt JC, I do not have grand theories of editing, and I have no interest in debating the details of yours. I primarily edit in the following way: something (an article, a typo, an edit on my watch list) causes me to notice something that can be easily improved, and then I make a small change. Right now, many of your edits have the property that pressing the "undo" button on them will improve things. The examples I've focused on here and on your talk page are incredibly clear-cut. I would like you to stop making edits that have the same problems. (Otherwise, I'm sure we will eventually find ourselves in the various drama boards.) And yet this morning I see already that you have been changing the meaning on sourced statements and deleting words in ways that destroys meaning. Your edit on judicial restraint was particularly notable ( ;) ) because your usual theories don't even make sense here (nothing was labeled "obvious" in the WP voice). This is why you need to stop mechanically mass editing, slow down, and think more about each edit you make. You obviously ( ;) ) have the capacity to be a good editor, but you have to cut the BS. --JBL (talk) 12:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I am more than happy to engage in constructive discussion with you about any one or two particular edits at a time. I'm just not down for philosophizing about universal rules.

P.P.S. "the radio home of [a sports event or team]" is a common US expression for "the radio station with the rights to broadcast that [event or team's games]." One usually hears it in station self-promotion.

But Wikipedia needs to read like regular speech or that of college textbooks, and writing that someone argued seems inaccurate. Why isn't Wikipedia allowed to be in an impartial tone?

Minimalists argue that judges should make only minor, incremental changes to constitutional law to maintain that stability. I don't agree with this statement because no sources are cited to support it.

--Turkeybutt (talk) 22:06, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Your first paragraph looks like general philosophizing, and I have nothing to say in response. Your second paragraph is about a particular edit, and I have two responses. The first is nonconstructive and pedantic and you may want to ignore it, the second is actually about editing Wikipedia.

1. I find it very difficult to believe your statement at face-value. It might be true that you don't believe that sentence (I don't know), but almost every sentence you have ever believed in your entire life has not been accompanied by a citation, so I rather doubt that it is true that the lack of citation is the reason you don't believe it.
2. The article judicial restraint has a few sources listed at the end, but not many inline citations. This is an indication that it could be improved by finding sources and adding citations (and also by adding new material).. If one is not able or willing to do that, tagging can be one step in the process of improving things. I think your individual taggings in that edit are defensible, that the collection of all of them is excessive, and that if all you had done was tag one or two sentences then I wouldn't have reverted. Separately, most of the wording changes you made seem harmless; none of them struck me as a clear improvement, but most of them are also not disimprovement. Finally, the very topmost changes you made, involving the word "obvious," clearly make the text worse, and absolutely needed to be reversed.

I understand that it's irritating to make many changes and get reverted because of just a few of them, and you have my partial apology for that. But, there are reasons that other editors keep asking you to break your edits into little bits! (In my case, I often edit on a tablet, with limited ability to use tabs, find-replace, copy-paste, etc., and therefore limited ability to do reliable partial reversion.) --JBL (talk) 23:39, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Hmm... I think I'll just put a tag telling readers that it needs citation so the "well-known" doesn't ruin the neutrality of the section.

Apparently you seem to be of the opinion that the little-rock river crossing is well-known, but we can't verify for sure. So I put a ^{[citation needed]} tag there. --Turkeybutt (talk) 00:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Journal h-index

Please note that SCImago Journal Rank uses an h-index (or H index ?) in their journal ranking: http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?order=sjr&ord=desc

I therefore reverted back the list of 5 best ranked journals on Hindawi Publishing Corporation.

Maybe the h-index article should be updated accordingly. (Simiprof (talk)) —Preceding undated comment added 16:36, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Simiprof, thanks for leaving a comment here. I have never heard of a journal version of the h-index, but it seems that you are right that it exists. To be frank, I think there are several issues with your addition -- as you can see, another user has tagged it for failing verification, and also the particular choices (why precisely five journals? why h-index and not more common journal metrics?) seem worthy of discussion. At the moment I am overwhelmed in real life and not ready to tackle improvements, so please treat these comments as constructive criticism/something to think about. --JBL (talk) 20:50, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Ordered pairs

Hi Joel, I wanted to thank you for your response on the ordered pair talk page. I'm not sure that the disclaimer was absolutely necessary as there are aspects of this that are helping me frame how I would like the lead section to look. With Ladislav's agreement to drop the mathematical term in the first sentence most of my response has become moot and would not now be appropriate for the talk page. However, I did want to say that I understand your position (feeling?) on the matter and appreciate your willingness to express it. My own position would be that if you take "set" as being a primitive notion (as I do) you forfeit the right to say anything about the elements of the set and must focus instead on the criteria for set membership (I probably have the jargon all wrong but I hope my meaning is clear). In any event, I am a bit amazed that the first sentence of a rather prosaic concept has led to these philosophical nuances. --Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Bill, thanks for your comments. Yes, your meaning is clear (and your position seems perfectly sensible). Actually I am quite pleased with how the discussion has gone so far (though real life is overwhelming me at the moment and I may not participate further); it has been my experience that sometimes these niggling little philosophical questions can end up in very long arguments here. All the best, JBL (talk) 21:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Xizhimen Station

The removal of this section seems reasonable as it contains subjective statements and original research. It was also backed up by a decent edit summary. Yet you reverted without leaving any edit summary. It is your right to revert a harmful edit, but you do need to provide an explanation for it. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:19, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Removal of citation in the article about Polynomial

Hi, you removed my edit on the page about Polynomial that added a citation for the claim that in a polynomial, 'x' is called an indeterminate. On page 14, the book read "Although x is regarded as obeying the same algebraic rules as the elements of the ring R, we do not think of it as assuming values from R. For this reason it is called an indeterminate".

Could you explain me why this citation is not appropriate ?

Pyrrhonist05 (talk) 14:01, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Pyrrhonist05, you added your citation at the end of the following sentence: "It is thus more correct to call it an "indeterminate"." The cited source makes no comment whatsoever on the relative correctness of the terms "variable" and "indeterminate." All the best, JBL (talk) 23:27, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see it that way but I totally agree. Considering that the 'x' in a polynomial is really called an indeterminate, should we try to find a more appropriate citation or rewrite the sentence without making comment on whether "indeterminate" is more correct than "variable". Regards, Pyrrhonist05 (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Template:Pyrrhonist05, Apologies for the delayed response, I have been overwhelmed in real life and forgot about your message. Yes, I agree that it would be good to rewrite this so that it does not contain editorialization without good supporting sources. All the best, JBL (talk) 00:02, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

No problem :). I'm myself lacking time but I will see if I can find the time to try to change this. Pyrrhonist05 (talk) 21:38, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Snark

JBL, if you wish to continue pointless snarky trolling, you can do it on my discussion page. Please use article talk pages for their intended purpose, which is discussing article improvements. Thanks, Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Sławomir Biały It is quite clearly inappropriate to remove from an article talk page a user comment that you dislike because you consider it pointless, snarky, or trolling, and if you had actually read the WP:... page you threw around you would know this. (In fact it was at most one of these things, and your insistence on being unpleasant to other editors for no reason is quite mystifying.) --JBL (talk) 19:19, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

User:Whydoeswikipedianotletmechooseagoodusername

[6] No, they aren’t a bad editor, they are an editor who does not know how to discuss. As far as I can tell, the main issue with this article is not factual errors, but that it gives WP:UNDUE weight to one side, the side that says that the series does converge. RedPanda25 17:14, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The article is extremely clear that the series does not converge, beginning with the first sentence. The only other things to say about the summability of the series will necessarily concern summation methods other than "evaluate a convergent series to its sum." You are welcome to begin a discussion on the talk page if you think there is something left to discuss, but there is no world in which "tag but don't post to talk page" was going to be appropriate. --18:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

As long as there is no undue weight, then the issue is settled, and the editor is simply confused about how Wikipedia presents different views. Thanks, RedPanda25 01:56, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the serial rvv

Thanks for manually "mass-reverting" all those individual article insertion vandalisms recently by that IP... Chill-- (talk) (c) 05:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Proof that absolute convergence implies convergence

Dr. Lewis,

Thanks for the revert on the absolute convergence article. My apologies for wasting your time! I read the proof in a sloppy manner and deleted it while it was quite valid (although the WLOG required some clarification). I added a few lines to the beginning of the proof. Hope you don't mind the addition of some obvious statements.

Anyway, what do I know? I'm just a chemist and I can only hope to dabble in math :-)

-Jimmy Alsosaid1987 (talk) 23:39, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alsosaid1987, no apologies needed. I am totally overwhelmed in real life at the moment and so not prepared to engage in a substantive way with you about this, so let me throw out a few quick thoughts: this is an encyclopedia article, so what would be even better than a proof would be a reference to a proof in a textbook or something equivalent. I am very skeptical that two proofs of this result are needed, let alone an additional proof in a slightly more general setting. That said, including extra proofs is certainly not the worst sin committed in math articles in WP. If I had time I might take a swing at editing it myself, but I think realistically that is not going to happen any time soon.

All the best, JBL (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Only

You can reasonably argue that I am being pedantic, but I like to place the word "only" near the word or words that are being restricted, despite that colloquial English is more forgiving. We have several possibilities here for the Multiset article:

1. "multisets exist which only contain elements a and b". In this case we have containment only. We are excluding the possibility that the multisets insert-verb-here the elements, when insert-verb-here is other than "contain", e.g., "surround".
2. "multisets exist which contain only elements a and b". In this case we have an elemental nature only. We are excluding the possibility that multisets contain insert-noun-here a and b, when insert-noun-here is other than "elements", e.g., "subsets".
3. "multisets exist which contain elements a and b only". In this case we have a and b only. We are excluding the possibility of "c", etc.

I am thinking that we want to emphasize #3. 𝕃eegrc (talk) 15:37, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Leegrc,

I do not think pedantry is relevant. Instead, it appears that you have invented a false theory about the relationship of word placement to meaning. Placing "only" at the end of a sentence is an artificial and stilted construction; it has the ring of sentences constructed by new learners of English, not native speakers. The other two are totally understandable and read naturally.

Best, JBL (talk) 21:49, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I disagree on several points, but I've already put my best case forward and you did not find it convincing. Let's just do it your way. 𝕃eegrc (talk) 20:36, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Source you asked for

In this[7] edit you asked for the source of the statement about what the mathematical community believed. It was from a plenary conference talk by Miklos Bona. I have no idea if the background history is in the literature anywhere as permutations are not my field of study so I don't read their literature. Jbeyerl (talk) 18:58, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jbeyerl, thanks for your response. On one hand, Bona is certainly an expert in the area and I trust his assessment on something like this. On the other hand, an audience report of what someone said in an unrecorded conference talk is of course not acceptable as a reliable source on WP. What was the conference? Perhaps we can track a proper source down. --JBL (talk) 20:27, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

The conference was CGTC48, [[8]]. Unfortunately as far as I know they don't publish the presentations or slides from them. Jbeyerl (talk) 13:00, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Euler Brick and the Perfect Euler Brick

Hello Joel,

I'm contacting you because I noticed that you reverted the edit to the Euler Brick article because of the recent change related to a paper by Dr Wyss that purports to demonstrate that no perfect Euler Brick can exist. I agreed with this edit, since Dr Wyss's paper has not been published in a mathematics journal. Now, on an email server, a man named Randall Rathbun has announced that he believes Dr Wyss's proof to be correct. This has led other editors to reinstate some of the changes that declare that the question has been answered mostly because they believe that Rathbun's assertion is a reliable source confirming the proof. I have a B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and an M.S degree in Mathematics from the University Of Arizona. I've long had an interest in this problem. So as you might imagine, I decided to read Dr Wyss's paper.

As far as I understand the essence of Dr Wyss's proof is that he starts with a parametric formula for Rational Leaning Cuboids (that since an Euler Brick is a special case of a Rational Leaning Cuboid) and proves that his parametric formula cannot produce a perfect rational cuboid. I did not see an error in his mathematics but I have a very serious question about his proof. In his proof he does not show that his parametric formula produces ALL rational Cuboids. If it does not, he cannot conclude that no perfect Euler Brick exists.

These possibilities exist: 1. I am incorrectly characterizing his logic, and have real egg on my face. 2. It has already been proven the the parametric formula does produce all rational cuboids, and he referenced it and I missed it, or didn't feel he needed to reference it. 3 It hasn't been proven so his proof is invalid until he proves it.

None of my analysis matters for a Wikipedia article (unless I am considered an authority and post my analysis to a mailing list), but I am just pointing out a serious concern. In conclusion, I am of the opinion that we should revert these edits until his proof has been published in a mathematical journal. It seems there are other editors who disagree. Since you seemed to be one of the editors who was hesitant to allow the edits until publication of the proof, I am writing to you. I think we need to bring this to the attention of the larger community of mathematics editors in order to see if we can reach consensus not about the validity of the proof but about its inclusion before traditional verification.

Thank you for reading this far, what are your thoughts?

TheRingess (talk) 17:18, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi TheRingess,

(I hope you don't mind, I have removed some blank spaces in your message so that I can more easily scan it while I respond. If this bothers you, please feel free to change it back.)

I only glanced over the Wyss paper, but my impression was the same as yours. In fact my initial feeling was that no proof like this could possibly be correct, for exactly the reasons you mention. But as I say, I have not read the thing carefully enough to confirm that what appears superficially to be missing, actually is missing. I also read the Rathbun posting, but I did not find its summary particularly convincing, as it also seemed to avoid the relevant issue. (I don't think anyone doubts that Wyss, who is obviously not a crank, can correctly manipulate algebraic equations, after all.) So, I agree with all your qualms, and would prefer that Wikipedia report only that there is a claimed proof and a claimed verification, not that the question is settled, until the proof is published. (Is there any reason to believe that the proof actually has been submitted to a journal, incidentally?) I would be happy to add my comments to this effect to any talk page where you think it would be helpful, although I think I've decided that I have only a limited amount of energy to devote to this particular question.

All the best,

JBL (talk) 20:25, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Joel thank you for the quick reply. I am glad to know someone shares my doubts about the proof. I don't know why he wouldn't submit it to a journal first, since it is a well known problem so credit for solving it will certainly enhance anyone's reputation. So my guess is that he hasn't. My guess is that he posted it on the archive, so that should anyone else use his results and discover a proof, he can claim co author credit (although that's risky, since if anyone else who comes up with a valid proof based on that particular parametric formula may not be ethically obligated to give him credit.) That's why I don't understand his publishing on the archive, he runs the definite risk of someone stealing his thunder (so to speak) by completing the proof. However, it's just my opinion that his parametric formula will not generate all Euler Bricks. The existence of a parametric formula that generates all Euler Bricks may actually be an unresolvable question. I too am thinking that I have a limited amount of energy to devote to this question, so if I do bring it to a larger audience I will certainly send you a link with no obligation to participate.

I was first introduced to this problem in the late 80s. I have been thinking about how to solve it off and on since then (obviously with no result). I've tried to computer searches as well as attempts at proof of non-existence. A proof of non-existence will probably have to be a proof by contradiction. I must admit that for a very mysterious reason why I have a vested interest in seeing someone find a perfect box. Around '96 or '97 a mystery person emailed me hinting at the existence of a Perfect Euler Brick. They never gave me a real name. Their hints contained enough mathematical jargon that I did not immediately dismiss their claims. Our email exchanges only lasted for a month or so. In one email, that I sent around my birthday on October 28th, the mystery person claimed to have that same birthday. They claimed that the sides of the Perfect Euler Brick measured in the Quintrillions (that's a detail that has remained with me since then, as it is oddly specific). If they are right, then probably no computer search will finish. Of course, the conversation left me a little deflated, as I had hoped to be the first. So if ultimately if someone proves non existence, then my chains were being yanked or if someone finds it I think that the answer will be the quintrillions. For better or worse, I am scanning old files trying to see if I saved the hints, but it looks like I didn't. Time has erased from my memories those hints. So I definitely prefer that someone finds one, so that I wasn't being duped.

Thanks for reading. Take care.TheRingess (talk) 22:36, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

TheRingess, looks like your hesitation was sensible! --JBL (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Pythagoras

Sorry Joel, mistaken edit submitted while I was still working on something. I appear no longer to have a Sandbox, any ideas at how to test and work on edits before submission? AirdishStraus (talk) 14:08, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi AirdishStraus, it is easy to create new sub-pages of your user page. For example, if you click on this red-link you will be at the page [[User:AirdishStraus/pythagoras]] (currently non-existent, so you will have to add some content). But in fact you do seem to have an extant sandbox, here. --JBL (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Joel, many thanks. AirdishStraus (talk) 11:51, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Omics

Hi Joel, I do not see what the problem is with including glycomics in the introduction. I am a chemical biologists working in the field of glycomics and it is a very important field which is gaining light recently. In fact, big universities all over USA and Europe have a carbohydrate or glycomic research center. For example, UCSD, Harvard, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Imperial College London etc. I will not undo the change but I leave it to you.Coolakul (talk) 17:23, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taylor_series&oldid=prev&diff=776283206

Hi Joel, do you mind to explain how "adds sub-headings for the TOC and for enabling deep-linking" is "Not an improvement".

We are in the Internet, after all, and one of its vital parts is the possibility to link to content from anywhere around the world. (That's also why we have the 'H' in HTML.) With your revert you destroy the possibility for all users:

1. to see in the page's TOC what's exactly on that page at first sight
2. to deep-link to a section they are especially interested in

I'm terribly sorry, but I consider this "Not an improvement" at all. Kind regards, --Gerold Broser (talk) 20:30, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Gerold Broser, I am not happy with the state of the article after your edit, but it is easy enough to preserve the aspects you like while also making myself happy, so I will do that now. Best, JBL (talk) 17:35, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Joel B. Lewis, thank you for your cooperation and your understanding. Regards, --Gerold Broser (talk) 20:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Re: Abby Johnson (activist)

Hi Joel, I read your notes on the Abby Johnson page. I disagree with your argument about the term "anti-abortion." While it is an accurate term to describe the pro-life movement, it has far narrower a meaning, and is much more negative than the preferred umbrella term of "pro-life." Being pro-life also includes supporting life from conception to natural death. This would also include the death penalty and assisted suicide. While Abby's main focus is on the abortion industry, it is not fair to disregard other parts of the movement by using the term "anti-abortion." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erink1993 (talk • contribs) 02:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 4

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Precious

gentle math

Thank you for quality contributions to articles on math based on scientific background, such as improving Q-Vandermonde identity, and with detailed gentle edit summaries, for points about applied stats, - Joel, you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:34, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear Gerda Arendt, thank you very much for the kind message! It is warmly appreciated. Kind regards, JBL (talk) 23:06, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

William Happer

A complaint about the negative nature of the Climate Change section of this BLP was made at the BLP noticeboard. I reviewed the section and removed one statement that appeared to be referenced to a blog. The rest of it looked strongly sourced to me. I wanted to let you know because you've done a lot of recent, (and good,) work on cleaning up that section. Thanks! Sperril (talk) 21:55, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Sperril, I appreciate the note. I agree that the sourcing of the statement you removed is weak. Thanks for the kind words! --JBL (talk) 22:00, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Simple Observation on Prime Gap

I see you've reverted my addition of a sentence to the Prime gap page: "An arbitrarily large prime gap of size n can always be found starting at (n+1)!-(n+1)." You said that this was redundant. However, it's a simple observation about finding a specifically-sized prime gap in a specific location. And this prime gap is easier to compute than the one at P#+2,P#+3,...,P#+(Q-1). It's also a different gap.

Maybe saying "Another prime gap of size n can be found starting at (n+1)!-(n+1)" would be acceptable? (It's different because P# is different that n! - and P# is also harder to calculate than n!). Do you think that's a different enough observation to include in the article?

--MDWeathers (talk) 22:17, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi MDWeathers, sorry for the delayed response. It is redundant in the sense that both give elementary constructions of prime gaps of arbitrarily large size, and are otherwise not important. The primorial construction has one advantage: it finds the gap much earlier. However, it is not optimal in any sense, so it's not clear why that matters much. I agree with you that the simpler n! construction has an obvious advantage that it's easier to understand. (I also think it's probably easier to find supporting citations for.) I am not likely to have time to do this in the next few days, but I think it would be better to replace the primorial argument with the factorial argument, at a similar level of detail (and with a citation if possible). I still think it's silly to have both appearing together. --JBL (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Exponential response formula

Hello Mr @Joel B. Lewis:. It feels you are good in math. Could you please have a look on article we are working on and give us few hints how can we improve it? Wandalen (talk) 07:02, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Wandalen,

I have a few comments for you about the article. First, as you've expanded it, it has come to resemble more and more a section of a textbook. This is not the goal of Wikipedia, and it's something you should keep in mind as you work on it. Second, your mastery of English is not perfect, and you at some point might want to see if you can find a native English speaker to help you edit the article for grammar and idiom. (You might also run the article through a spell-checker.) Third, I think you should consider the comments from other users about merging this article with another one -- sometimes it really does make more sense to explain extremely closely related concepts together, rather than in separate articles. This is particularly the case if it means you can attract more editors to work collaboratively with you, in the cooperative spirit of WP. Finally, I do not think the introductory paragraph currently does a good job of summarizing the contents of the article -- there are some claims made there that are not anywhere in the body (and maybe are not supportable by sources), and the next-to-last sentence doesn't really seem to have anything to do with ERF at all.

Hope this helps,

Joel

P.S. It is never necessary to ping a user on their own talk page.

Blocked or Not?

Did you block Widr or are you not an administrator or did you just add == IP you block == on purpose? --Carmen Melendez (talk|contribs) 22:14, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

I did not block Widr, I am not an administrator, and I added that section to alert Widr to the behavior of a non-logged-in user who Widr had recently blocked. What is the point of these queries? --JBL (talk) 22:30, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Decision stream

Dear Joel,

The efficiency/uniqueness of Decision stream technique was demonstrated in the several labs. Could you be so kind to revert you last changes related to this topic (or inform us and we'll restore text). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.119.167.36 (talk) 14:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Dear 62.119.167.36, you have recently been posting references to a single paper across a wide variety of Wikipedia pages. Unfortunately, this behavior is not in accordance with the rules and policies of Wikipedia. To quote myself:

Wikipedia is not an appropriate venue to publicize brand-new research. The concept of decision stream might be an excellent one; if so, it will be adopted and studied more widely in the relevant academic community, papers about it will be published by authors other than its inventors, and it will become possible to write a well sourced article on the topic and link it from other Wikipedia pages. But now is too early.

Best, JBL (talk) 16:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Joel,

The article 'Decision Stream: Cultivating Deep Decision Trees', which is published on arXiv - currently in the top rate of Google search. Looks like you the only man in the world, who actively moves against this idea supported by community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.39.231.142 (talk • contribs)

Hi @46.39.231.142:, I am glad that you are pleased with how the arXiv paper is doing on Google. Nevertheless, it is not appropriate to try to promote a new preprint by repeatedly linking to it in Wikipedia. Also, you surely know as well as I do that arXiv is not a publisher, it is a preprint repository, and the fact that work appears there is not a particular indication of correctness, importance, or acceptance by the community. (Of course, the same is true for my own arXiv postings as well as yours!) --JBL (talk) 20:16, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Dear Joel,

It's good to see that the topic is closed in 'WikiProject Mathematics'. But, our guys are worried about the image of the technology. Due to the fact that it was misunderstanding (not spamming), could you be so kind to change the title 'Aggressive spamming of a recent arXiv posting, "decision streams"' to 'Decision stream references discussion' on page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics.

Thanks, AlexNet22 (talk) 18:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

If an algorithm...

...takes zero time for every recombination step, and if further the elementary operation can be done in no time (ie. $T(n)=0$ for $n\leq k$, borrowing the notation of the article), the algorithm has zero running time, and is in ptic. not in $\Theta (n^{c_{crit}})$.--Mathmensch (talk) 15:02, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

That is, please re-revert! --Mathmensch (talk) 15:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

0 is big theta of everything (with constants 0). But even if it weren't, this is a stupid and uninteresting boundary case and the correct way to resolve it would be to somewhere make sure the technical hypotheses include that either f or T is positive. --JBL (talk) 15:07, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Mathematics is annoyingly precise. And acknowledging and correcting one's mistakes is of supreme importance. --Mathmensch (talk) 15:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I see you misunderstood the $\Theta$ notation. It means bounded below and above (cf. Knuth p. 110). --Mathmensch (talk) 15:12, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Don't be an ass. If you think functions being 0 is allowable in this context then the only reasonable definition of big theta allows 0 constants, with 0 big theta of everything. If you don't think 0 constants are allowed then you are tacitly admitting that you live in a world where the 0 function is not allowed. These technicalities are not interesting or important, and linking to a blog by a person who was my student when he was an undergraduate is a particularly nice demonstration of how misplaced your condescension is. (As if the title of a blog were evidence of something! I can't believe I'm actually writing this.) If you think it is really, really, really important to note that algorithms generally are assumed to take a positive number of steps, you can find a relevant reliable source and add a small comment about it somewhere unobtrusive in the body of the article. On the other hand, changing the well sourced and correct theorem statement to something weaker because you think you are clever is a terrible idea.

You are not welcome to reply further on this page. --JBL (talk) 15:28, 21 August 2017 (UTC)