Talk:Singly and doubly even

Some proposals

• The name of the page should be a noun or noun phrase. I don't understand precisely what Melchoir meant by saying "number" is often omitted. That would be when the terms are used as adjectives, but not as nouns, surely?
• The traditional terms "oddly even" and "evenly even" should be prominent, instead of ignored; I'll add them. For instance, in the article on Graeco-Latin squares, the classic name is most appropriate; it's what Euler would have said. I would personally prefer to use the traditional names throughout. They are more logical and prettier. I've seen "singly" and "doubly even" only to refer to objects, like codes and words, not to numbers at all. However, that's just one opinion.

I await comments before further editing. Zaslav (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, when I first moved the article, the idea was that "singly even" and "doubly even" tend to appear as adjectives more often than nouns. That is, one sees constructions like "magic square of doubly even order" more often than "magic square whose order is a doubly even number". That said, the title "Singly and doubly even numbers" is still correct, and it does have the advantage of being a noun phrase, so if you want to move the article there, be my guest!

"Oddly even" and "evenly even" aren't included in the present article simply because I didn't know about them! The information on historical usage is obviously extremely slim. As for using those phrases throughout, though, I'm a little skeptical. Can you show me any evidence that "oddly even" is preferred to "singly even" for numbers? Melchoir (talk) 22:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I do like what you've done with the lead. Melchoir (talk) 22:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you!

I don't propose changing all "singly/doubly" to "oddly/evenly". Judging from what you've seen, both are valid. I suggest increasing the proportion of the latter just to reinforce their acceptability. The sad fact is that in my mathematical reading, I rarely see either one of these styles; most people in combinatorics (my area) don't seem to know there is this terminology. Zaslav (talk) 07:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Is it mostly "multiple of 4" and "2 mod 4", then? Melchoir (talk) 21:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, or "0, 2 mod 4". This shows up particularly in combinatorial matrices like Hadamard and conference matrices. In other parts of combinatorics the special moduli and residue classes may be other. Zaslav (talk) 01:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)