Talk:Radius (disambiguation)

Deleted details

I've deleted these details since they are not really correct

Its variable is r, often in lowercase. The length of a radius is also equivalent to the magnitude of a vector. See also diameter, circumference, sphere.

Jorge Stolfi 15:25, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd contest this deletion - I know at least the parts about variable being "r" and the See Also references to be correct.

Anurag Batra Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 3:24 PM PT

Should the geometric sense be the default?

Perhaps we should swap things around so that radius is the disambiguation page, and radius (geometry) is the article on the geometry concept.

The geometry concept may seem the most basic to us math/sci/eng types; but to medical folks the bone may seem more important. Putting the geometry sense as default seems rather "nerdocentric". What do you think?

Jorge Stolfi 03:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Missing an important meaning of this term!

This page should link to a page on the human skeleton! The radius is the shorter and thicker of the two forearm bones in many vertebrates.

==i like this

Can someone knowledgeable about this include this stuff in the article? Needs good diagrams. 203.218.86.162 15:25, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The last paragraph of Radius does cover this meaning. If that is not detailed enough, you might make a request [[Talk:Radius|there]. It might deserve a line here on the disambiguation page. I may pop back and do that. John (Jwy) 16:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I also found a more advanced discussion in intrinsic coordinates and created a pointer to it here. Let them know at Talk:intrinsic coordinates if you want more information about it there. John (Jwy) 16:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

Hi, Jorge; long time since (re your SA mention) we've communicated! Your ed-summ asked

What specifically needs cleanup?

I think it's appropriate to refer you to Dab and MoSDab, bcz my observations that made me tag it with {{disambig-cleanup}} were far less focused on specific remedies than on my sense that a lot of editing had been done without a grasp of the current style and intent of disambiguation.
But i will mention that a shortcoming shared by many of the entries is being way too prose oriented. There are also entries (e.g., i think, the whole group of three coordinate entries) lk'd to articles for which the encyclopedia-article title "Radius" would not (even in the absence of ambiguity) be accurate; these need careful thot on whether they should be moved down to a "See also" section, discussed in an article or section (like, in that case, "Radius as a coordinate-system dimension"), or deferred to Wiktionary as lexicographic distinctions rather than disambiguations among encyclopedic articles.
I'm putting the tag back, and i suggest it will be efficient to let Dab-cleanup specialists respond to its presence at Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup, and discuss any resulting changes that you question, rather than implicitly insist on proof that it's not already perfect.
--Jerzy•t 06:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jerzy, Thanks for the help. I agree that there was to much prose and finding relevant entries was not easy. However I disagree on some points:

• The generic definition of radius ("a straight line from the center to the boundary of an object or shape, or the length of such a line") is fundamental and widely used, but it is noy given in any of the specific articles. Moreover the two senses — the line itself, and the length of the line — are distinct and both important. (So, for example, a given circle will have infinitely many radii in the first sense, but only one radius in the second).
• Most, if not all, of the "radius of..." concepts may be called just "radius" in their respective contexts. For example, when describing a piece of tubing one may say "bend radius" but also "radius of the bend" or "radius of curvature" or just "radius". So many readers who want to look up that concept are likely to look up "radius" instead of "bend radius". Since the purpose of a disamb page is to help readers find the right article, it seems better to list "bend radius" as one of the "radius" articels than to literally follow an abstract guideline.
• Ditto for the spherical, cylindrical and polar coordinates: the "radial coordinate" is often called "radius", so it should be listed here for the same reason as above.
• In fact, the minor and major semidiameters (or "semiminor" and "semimajor diameters") of an ellipse are often called "minor" and "major radius", especially by non-mathematicians. I think they should be listed too.

As I see it, the "See also" section is for concepts that are not called by the name but are semantically related to is; in this case, "diameter", for example;

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I find your changes make the page more difficult to use as a navigation aid. First, sentence at the primary topic (Radius) should help one decide if they want to click on that item or not. The previous sentence did that nicely. Second, a single entry section would seem to point to a poor categorization (at least, we should TOCRIGHT). We might want to find a better way to split up the sections (if we have sections at all). (John User:Jwy talk) 00:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice that there *was* an article about "radius" in general — even though I worked on it a lot! Senility stepping in?...

As for the 1-line section, I thought of a section "Other" but the anatomical sense is too important to come after all the math senses.

As fot the TOC, it is seems superfluous; but I can't remember the wikimagic to supress it (or put it at right). All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)