Talk:Binomial (polynomial)

Latest comment: 8 years ago by Number 57 in topic Requested move 18 January 2016

Comments

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binomial distribution is great! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.87.251.41 (talkcontribs) 04:31, 20 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

a similar problem

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we know (a+b)^n=.... what about (a+b)^c=??? with c>0

Jackzhp 21:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

 


Not quite sure what you mean here.  . This works even if c is not a natural number. For example:

 

 

This can be used to compute square root provided x is small enough. However, for computing square root there are usually better methods.

salte 16:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Citations????

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Are something this article appears to lack completely, though it's a rather nicely written article. I suggest that this article be tagged for needing some citations. A math-wiki (talk) 05:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

Definition relying on definition of monomial

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Is it really advisable to make the definition of binomial dependent on an understanding of "monomial", rather than just using the more common "terms" in the first instance? Doing so throws the reader who wants to understand the meaning of binomial into the monomial article which, in my opinion, is a confusing mess. I've looked at a few mathematical encyclopedias, all of which state that a binomial is a "polynomial with two terms." The more precise mathematical definition in the Definition section makes it clear what a "term" looks like. I agree that this isn't the most precise use of the word "term" but it is the way "term" is commonly used when discussing polynomials.

Note that I'm not objecting to referencing the "terms" if binomial as monomial somewhere, but the definition of binomial that has recently been edited into article makes the definition fail to stand alone. The reader who doesn't know the meaning of binomial is unlikely to be helped much by being told to look up monomial. Federalist51 (talk) 14:52, 22 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 11 October 2015

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to Binomial equation, dab page moved to base location. Jenks24 (talk) 09:26, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply



BinomialBinomial (mathematics) – For disambiguation, especially relative to the binomial nomenclature of biology, which is a central element of biological science. Note, however, that there may be a WP:PDAB problem here since there are several other mathematics topics for "binomial" (see Binomial (disambiguation)). Let's first see if there is general agreement that some form of disambiguation is needed. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:10, 11 October 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 00:53, 19 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Using your search engine link, I see various topics on the first page of results that are not math: 1) three out of the five definitions displayed directly on the results page, 2) a Dictionary.com link summarized as "adj. Consisting of two terms or names, such as the genus and species names of organisms. n. A taxonomic name used in ...", and 3) a medical dictionary leading to a definition in the medical context. Also, the math results are not all for the same topic in math. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:03, 12 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Do you recognize that the fact that there is more than one math meaning is a disadvantage of the proposed title? H. Humbert (talk) 09:49, 12 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Yes. As I said above, if we can agree that some form of disambiguation is needed, we can work out what the title should be. The original proposed title is less ambiguous than the current title, but I agree that something even less ambiguous than that may be preferable. I notice that Polynomial and Polynomial equation lead to different articles. —BarrelProof (talk) 09:57, 12 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Follow-up discussion on move

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The result of the recent move it that the title of the new title does not appear in the text of the article. Moreover, this title is strongly confusing, as it suggest that a polynomial is an equation, which is blatantly wrong. As, in this article, "binomial" is not an adjective but a noun, this article must be called "Binomial" with or without a disambiguation such as "(mathematics)" or "(polynomial). Therefore, I have been bold and moved the page to binomial (polynomial). D.Lazard (talk) 10:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Binomial (polynomial) seems good to me. I think it's probably better than Binomial (mathematics), Binomial (equation), and Binomial equation (and Binomial, of course). —BarrelProof (talk) 10:39, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
I have edited Binomial (disambiguation) for clarifying that, as noun, "binomial" is unambiguous. As an article title should normally be a noun (see WP:TITLE#Article title format), "binomial" (with a hatnote {{other uses}}) remains the best title. I have asked to the administrator that has closed the move request to revert the two moves, and, possibly, to relist the move request, as, apparently, none of the few participants to the discussion is an expert in mathematics. D.Lazard (talk) 11:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
It is true that Wikipedia article titling convention prefers the use of noun titles, but that doesn't mean we should ignore non-noun terms completely or that disambiguation is only needed for noun meanings. As stated at WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT, "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary." It is also clearly untrue that the mathematics meaning is the only one that is used as a noun (although I don't think that necessarily matters so much). A specific example is shown in the discussion above, where a meaning identified as a noun meaning is given as "n. A taxonomic name used in ..." That noun meaning also corresponds to the medical definition in the above-discussed search results. The notion that expertise in mathematics is needed for this discussion is definitely incorrect, since the question is not just what "binomial" means in mathematics, but whether "binomial" has sufficiently notable meanings outside of mathematics. A quick look at the incoming links to Binomial (which was a mathematics article when those links were created) makes it obvious that a very large number of the links are erroneous links from biology, not correct former links from mathematics (and are also using the term as a noun, if that matters). Please note that I am fixing some of those, so they may be gone by the time the reader sees these remarks. —BarrelProof (talk) 11:12, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
It should be clear that moving a mathematical article requires the agreement of mathematicians. Otherwise, this may lead to non-sense titles, as it has been the case here. It is also clear that, for this reason and also because of the small number (3) of contributors of the discussion, the move of the mathematical article previously called "Monomial" should not have been done.
Secondly, I agree that the discussion on what is the primary topic, if any, must involve not only mathematicians, but also people of other areas, where the term is used. However, it is not needed to be a specialist in any area, to remark that in the dab page the only occurrence of "monomial" alone is the use in mathematics, with the meaning of polynomial of two terms. Maybe "monomial" alone (as noun) is used elsewhere, but this usage is rare enough to not be the subject of an article. This makes clear that the math meaning is a primary topic. In any case, the move implies the the mathematical meaning is not a primary topic, and this has not been discussed ("primary topic" has not even been mentioned in the discussion.
One other fact that has been in the discussion is the very high number of links that presently link to a dab page. D.Lazard (talk) 14:19, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 27 October 2015

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move. It's clear that we won't find a consensus to change the title of this article at present. Cúchullain t/c 16:11, 6 November 2015 (UTC)Reply



Binomial (polynomial)Binomial – Also move Binomial to Binomial (disambiguation). These moves amounts to revert two recent moves. Some of the reasons appear in the preceding section. In summary, the subject of the article is clearly the WP:PRIMARY TOPIC, as it appears that, except for the subject of this article, "binomial" never occurs alone (as noun) in binomial (disambiguation). This is also supported by the very high number of mathematical articles that link to binomial. D.Lazard (talk) 14:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose. The scientific name of organism is referred to as the binomial. Yes, the naming system is called "binomial nomenclature" and people sometimes talk about a "binomial name" (which is redundant and not generally preferred usage). But regardless of how the dab page is currently structured, it is very weird to say "the binomial nomenclature of coast redwood is Sequoia sempervirens"; normal usage would be "the binomial of coast redwood...". There are currently 50 incoming links to binomial; 9 of those are biological taxa, and one is a list of plants. -onym also links to binomial while discussing the concept in biology. Nomenclature refers to the concept in folk taxonomy. Spencer (surname) refers to the concept in personal names. At least 13 of 50 incoming links are not about a mathematical concept (and those that are about a mathematical concept may intend a different concept than a two element polynomial). Keep the dab page at the base title so links get disambiguated. Plantdrew (talk) 15:55, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Moving Binomial (polynomial) -> Binomial expression has my support. Plantdrew (talk) 14:48, 30 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose obviously, per my remarks above. Regarding the incoming links described by Plantdrew above, that doesn't count the 35 links that I already fixed today that were from biology articles that were previously accidentally linking to the mathematics topic. Mathematics is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term "binomial" – as evidenced by all those incorrect links. It is also not the only use alone as a noun – most of those bad links that I fixed today were using it as a noun. Links to the former name should simply be fixed (as I have already gotten a good start on doing). As a procedural matter, the previous RM was just closed a few hours ago, and it had been open for 16 days here on the Talk page of a mathematics article (and had been relisted). There was ample opportunity to participate in that discussion, and we shouldn't have to immediately repeat the process. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: Please also note that this is a malformed multimove request. Because it was not submitted as a multiple page move, no notification has been placed on the Talk page of the other article that would be affected by this move. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • @BarrelProof: Just on your comment about the procedural matter of it being opened so quickly after the last RM, I should note that on my talk page I did say D.Lazard could open a new RM as soon as they wanted because the last one was sparsely attended and they were bringing new arguments to the table. I can understand if you disagree with that though, it's not usually done. I should have left a note here about it initially, so apologies for that. Jenks24 (talk) 16:36, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • No problem. Yes, it's true that the prior RM didn't have much participation. Incidentally, I have fixed about 15 more of those incoming links. Some of the remaining ones are hard to fix, because it's not clear to me what they were intending to link to. Some of them shouldn't link either to mathematics or the binomial nomenclature of biology, and some of them that are within mathematics seem like they might be referring to different topics in mathematics. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:42, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. What a mess! So if there is no consensus, we're stuck this title that no one likes? The current title is treats "polynomial" as a class. I assume the members of said class are monomials, binomials, trinomials, etc. This is an nonobvious way to look at the issue, especially if you compare it to mercury (element), the example given at WP:DAB. I now support binomial expression based on this ngram. As for primary topic, it should be based on what a reader who types in "binomial" is likely to be searching for, which we can gauge from search engine results. This topic, binomial distribution, binomial theorem, and binomial coefficient are all far more likely desired search destinations than the biology meaning. (See binomial -wikipedia). H. Humbert (talk) 05:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • For the sake of avoiding the look of impropriety, I won't be closing this RM. So can I just say I think your comment here would be difficult to interpret for a closer, as your comment in the previous RM was? You say support, indicating you think this article is the primary topic, then say you support binomial expression, indicating you don't think this is the primary topic, and then in your final argument you seem to be again saying that you think this article is the primary topic, but your evidence – that there are actually four very prominent maths terms readers could be looking for when searching for "binomial" – is actually a good argument for there not being a primary topic. Jenks24 (talk) 05:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
      • "Binomial," "binomial expression," or "binomial (expression)" are all fine with me. The consensus is shaping up against making this subject primary, which was also true in the last RM. So some form of disambiguation is necessary. I should note that this subject is simply "binomial" as far as the math references are concerned -- and it is the only one these subjects that is true of. Logically, any binomial should be a type of polynomial. In statistics, they say "multinomial distribution" instead of "polynomial distribution." But how many readers are likely to be hip that skip? H. Humbert (talk) 11:14, 28 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. I do agree with Professor Lazard's contention that the primary topic should be the polynomial, for the reasons he has stated. However, I also think it is very likely that editors of biology articles will link binomial rather than binomial name, regardless of the primary meaning. The project is clearly better served if these editors were notified by the bot that this is an ambiguous name, rather than for the error to pass silently. Sławomir
    Biały
    10:13, 28 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't agree for several reasons: Firstly, in the article, "binomial" is a noun. Therefore it is confusing to use it as an adjective in the article title. Secondly, the phrase "binomial expression" does not appear in the article. Thirdly, "binomial expression" is rarely used in algebra, and more generally in pure mathematics. "Binomial expression" appears only in one article of English Wikipedia". I have done a quick search for "binomial expression" in Google Scholar. In the three first pages only appear articles in probability, statistic, physics and biology. Thus, an article "binomial expression" could exist, but this should be another article. Finally, if the article is called "binomial expression", it should begin, or at least contain "a binomial expression is a sum of two terms". I do not know any reference for that. Moreover, an article containing such a definition should contain an explanation of the reasons for which nobody uses the term "binomial expression" for Cardano's formula for the depressed cubic equation (which is a sum of two cubic roots). Similarly nobody says that that associativity of addition is an identity involving two binomial expressions. Thus naming this article "polynomial expression" would be both WP:OR and confusing.D.Lazard (talk) 14:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Perhaps, if you're willing to ignore biological science. Personally, I think biology is rather important. When binomial was a longstanding article about the mathematics topic, we had at least 50 accidental incoming links to it from biology articles. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:23, 31 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • The title was perfectly fine. Those links were errors. The biology links will be error whether binomial is the mathematics article or the current disambiguation page. So that's not really an argument. The only difference is that a bot will notify editors of erroneous links if binomial is a disambiguation page. And it seems like a reasonable idea to have the bot do this. In contrast, someone typing "binomial" (as opposed to binomial name) into the search bar should expect the mathematics topic. Sławomir
    Biały
    14:06, 31 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • How common is "binomial name" anyway? Not very, according to this ngram. H. Humbert (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. In fact, I'm not convinced the article Binomial (polynomial) should exist. There is already a single sentence within the article polynomial, which defines the word "binomial" in the sense of this article. Monomials, clearly, are worthy of their own article; but I don't see why polynomials with exactly two terms are noteworthy, or interesting. It seems unhelpful to split this content off from the main polynomial article. When people type binomial into the search bar, I would think they would want the binomial distribution or binomial coefficients much more often than information about "polynomials with two terms". So I'd be in favour of keeping Binomial as the disambiguation page; and I'd also be in favour of redirecting Binomial (polynomial) to Polynomial. Mark MacD (talk) 09:21, 2 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Maybe all those people are looking for something else, and simply typed "binomial" into the search bar, because they didn't know what the word meant. Wikipedia is not a dictionary; we don't need a separate article for every word or phrase. I think it would be more helpful to redirect readers of this article somewhere else, such as polynomial, or possibly binomial theorem. Mark MacD (talk) 15:49, 2 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus

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If there is "no consensus," shouldn't the article revert to the last stable title, which was binomial? H. Humbert (talk) 00:19, 7 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

No, since there was a consensus established against that title in the previous RM. I also think it is well agreed that Binomial (polynomial) is better than Binomial equation. Personally, I thought we were going to end up with Binomial expression, but that doesn't seem to have happened. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:23, 7 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 18 January 2016

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. The discussion was leaning towards a merge, but I'm not sure there was sufficient agreement on that, so I would suggest anyone in favour of that proposal start an RfC. Number 57 20:43, 24 February 2016 (UTC)Reply



Binomial (polynomial)Binomial expression – for WP:NATURAL disambiguation and to avoid the awkwardness and redundancy of the current title. Sorry for opening this question back up again, but I think this would be an improvement, and this is not the same title suggestion that was proposed last time. It is clear that there was no consensus in favor of the previous suggestion of moving the page back to "Binomial" as a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but my impression (as noted above) is that the title "Binomial expression" had general support in the previous move discussion. One bit of evidence that makes it clear to me that the mathematics meaning was misplaced as a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is that in September when this article was called simply "Binomial", it was getting about 300 views per day, and with the disambiguated title it is now getting only about 7 views per day (1 view per day directly and about 6 views per day through the "Binomial equation" redirect). I now suggest merely improving the form of disambiguation. —BarrelProof (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose The first sentence says "a binomial is a polynomial which is ...", and expressions that are not polynomials (or expressions whose terms are not monomials) are not considered in the article. Thus the proposed title does not correspond to the content of the article. D.Lazard (talk) 04:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. It's repetitious to have -nomial twice. All binomials can be considered polynomials, at least in the sense that "bi-" (2) is logically a special case of "poly-." So the current title is not effectively disambiguating. As for the opening, that of course can be revised after the move. H. Humbert (talk) 09:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
Of course not, unless if you have enough reliable sources asserting that a binomial is the same thing that a binomial expression. D.Lazard (talk) 10:48, 19 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
The sole reference to the topic is a definition. Quoting [2] in its entirety: "Binomial A polynomial with 2 terms."
Everything below the introduction's definition is editorial talking around the subject to create content, WP:OR, and teaching grandmother to suck eggs.
The same opinion applies to trinomial. Monomial is a more extensive essay, but more appropriate in an "Introduction to Mathematics" than as an encyclopedia article.
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
You're right that trinomial doesn't look like it needs an article. There seems to be almost nothing there about it. I'm less sure about binomial. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
Unsure? Count the instances of sourced content. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:50, 2 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
Well, there's some nontrivial amount of content. Most of it isn't meticulously sourced, but it's there – and there's a general reference to a textbook – but I won't argue too forcefully to insist that it stays a separate article. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
The content sourceable to a textbook is WP:NOTTEXTBOOK violating. There is a clear lack on commentary on the subject of binomials. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.