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Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Mathematics/1

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Mathematics

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result: Not listed. While the delisting review was inadequate, the article has received more substantial comments below. It doesn't currently meet the GA criteria and time is needed to address these issues. The article can of course be renominated when editors believe it meets the criteria. Geometry guy 20:48, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematics was "reassessed", in a single post of two sentences, by a single reviewer.

  • That is manifestly inadequate. In addition, the reviewer shows
  • Ignorance of the relevant guideline, which endorses summary style, especially in this article, the top of the subject pyramid.
  • Ignorance of what is common knowledge in the subject.
  • Willful disregard of the relevant policy; that assertions that are challenged, or likely to be challenged need citations.
  • Indeed, I see no evidence that he read the article, as distinct from counting footnotes, before delisting.

This has been extensively discussed, both at Talk:Mathematics/GA1 and on the Project Math page. While there is no consensus on what to do about this, there is no support for changing style. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I would like to add that general referencing is one of the acceptable methods of citation in wikipedia as per Wikipedia:Cite#General reference summary. While over-reliance may lead to requests for footnotes, that does not mean that the style is ipso facto incorrect. Personally, when I can, I prefer parenthetical "Author-Date" citation as per Wikipedia:Cite#Parenthetical referencing, but that is a stylistic choice. Mathematical articles often draw heavily from one or two papers, and repeated in-line referencing to those would end up with either tens of identically numbered footnotes or Author-Date entries. For these articles, moreso than biographical or historical articles, general referencing is a useful method, and should not be the reason for a delisting. -- Avi (talk) 03:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I agree that the review is inadequate, but hope that this reassessment will stay focussed on the article and whether it meets the criteria. (The talk page of this reassessment page is available for metacomments if necessary.)
The inline citation requirement for GAs is intended neither to be onerous nor trivial, but reads: reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). The scientific citation guidelines are also part of the criteria (footnote 2), both for when citations are needed/helpful and when they are not. When I get time I will provide specific examples from the article. Meanwhile, I think Mathematics#Common misconceptions is in obvious need of attention. Geometry guy 10:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, the "misconceptions" section has been a wart for a long time, though the current text doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember it. My longstanding position has been to get rid of it entirely (I think salt and burn its bones was the phrase I used somewhere back in the archives, probably a couple years ago, obviously after Supernatural hit the airwaves). --Trovatore (talk) 20:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I can understand why some editors might want to use the Mathematics article as an opportunity to clear up misconceptions. Such editors should be challenged to "source it or lose it": this is exactly the sort of situation that WP:V is intended to handle. Geometry guy 20:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments I only took a quick peak, but there are a lot of uncited paragraphs of non-basic-science claims that oculd do with citing, outside of the commmon misconceptions section, which looks entirely like OR. I don't think they can all be shrugged off because this is a science article. Over-citing should be avoided, but at the moment, the cites are not doing their job of pointing the reader to sources of information (which of the genderal sources should i read to find the common misconceptions, or the history of prehistoric maths?). There are numerous single line paragraphs, and chappy writing and organisation. Is the reverting over the lead the cause of the semi-protection? Without the protection, is this article stable? User:Gary King did the delisting, and has now provided his opinion on mutliple points that need improving; most of these seem somewhat correct, imo. I don't ever delist articles withut warning (as i find giving them a some time usually results in more improvement, evne if not up to GA level), but i don't see any point in complaining about a delist of an article that was promoted even more unilaterally (with no review at all). YobMod 12:17, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On a second look, i think this also fails the broadness criterion. Many important areas of maths are reduced to a single sentence mention that they even exist. As it is not near to the limit of acceptable page size, there is no need to give such truncated summaries of eg. chaos theory, that the reader does not have the slightest idea of what it is, or why they would want to click on the link.YobMod 13:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: As I understand, this process should also help improve the article. Would it thus be out of line to ask the editors who believe there are sentences that should have citations to go around and add a "citation needed" tag to every such sentence? Though in the very short run this may lead to a cumbersome article, it seems to me the most practical first step. The second step would be to add these citations. The third step could then be to discuss how to deal the with the possibility that the article will appear, say, "heavy" on the citations, if it even does. In other words, let's begin by being sure everything in the article is actually supported by the references, then worry about whether or not inline citations are excessive. Whaddya say? (I realize there could be other problems with this article, however the reason for the delisting was lack of citations so perhaps this should be dealt with first). RobHar (talk) 15:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question. Much of the article is structured around the idea that mathematical ideas can be broadly classified according to whether they deal with "quantity, structure, space, or change", which is quite insightful. Does it come from a particular source or multiple sources? Geometry guy 21:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Half a dozen very recent sources use that exact division and order; the first (by Coleman) appears to be the source for the origin in astronomy, etc. It reminds me of Bernal, but I can't find it off-hand. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      Educationalists evidently read Wikipedia! Coleman is plagiarizing our article. I was initially concerned that it might be the other way round, but the evidence that he plagiarized our article from the 2006/2007 version is pretty convincing (see the talk page of this reassessment). Other educationalists have picked up the idea. This demonstrates the importance of grounding our articles in reliable sources. The idea that analysis is the study of change, for example, is just one way of looking at it, and should be attributed. It could have real effects on educational policy if it is taken as fact! Geometry guy 20:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the {{cn}} tag on Mathematical language can also be hard for beginners is silly; is this statement of possibility (which is a topic sentence for a paragraph of reasons it can be difficult) really likely to be challenged? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse delist. My comments based on a quick reading of the article; an examination of the Scientific citation guidlines; and some comments above:
  • The guideline on summary style relates to sections that have a series of sub-articles. However, there appear to be parts of mathematics not clearly tied to sub-articles, yet lack references. This is particularly a problem under "fields of mathematics".
  • The uncontroversial knowledge guideline favours an in-line cite to a general source, not a complete lack of in-line cites. Again, there are significant sections where this does not occur.
  • There are specific facts which I would have thought do require cites under any guidelines, but which do not, eg: "A new list of seven important problems, titled the "Millennium Prize Problems", was published in 2000. Solution of each of these problems carries a $1 million reward, and only one (the Riemann hypothesis) is duplicated in Hilbert's problems."
  • Notwithstanding this being a top-level summary article, the history appears to me to be too concise, with a yawning gulf between prehistory, Incas and ancient greeks, and the number of published papers since 1940 (itself hardly a fact worthy of note in this top level article's history section).
  • At this stage at least, the "common misconceptions" section should be deleted altogether. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Lack of broadness" - that's an interesting comment. Can you be more precise ? Are there specific aspects of mathematics that are not already mentioned somewhere in the article ? Or are there topics that you feel it should describe in more detail - if so, which ones ? Or do you feel it is not accessible to a broad audience ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is alredy explained above (but nobody answered my concerns). "On a second look, i think this also fails the broadness criterion. Many important areas of maths are reduced to a single sentence mention that they even exist. As it is not near to the limit of acceptable page size, there is no need to give such truncated summaries of eg. chaos theory, that the reader does not have the slightest idea of what it is, or why they would want to click on the link." Do you disagree? Imo, links to major section of mathematics should at least have enough context that a reader knows what they are clicking on. Almost all areas of maths have no description. Even a broad top level article has space to cover more detail, as seen by the small size of this article. A "List of mathematical topic" could get away with no description at all, but an article cannot do so and be called good, imoYobMod 11:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so your concern is a lack of detail and context. The only example you have mentioned explicitly is chaos theory. Concerning chaos theory, the article says "Many phenomena in nature can be described by dynamical systems; chaos theory makes precise the ways in which many of these systems exhibit unpredictable yet still deterministic behavior". How exactly would you improve that one-sentence summary of chaos theory ? And can you give, say, three specific examples of topics that you feel are mentioned but have "no description" ? Gandalf61 (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This: "Trigonometry combines space and numbers, and encompasses the well-known Pythagorean theorem" is far too vague to be useful. This: "In order to clarify the foundations of mathematics, the fields of mathematical logic and set theory were developed." does not consitute a descritption of set theory. Group theory, game theory and optimization are just bare links with no text, and category theory just says "is still being developed". Why do you assume that these are limited to single sentences? - the article can more than double in size and still be easilly within size limits. I am not a mathematician, and have no interest in re-writing the article, but it is plain that this is not a good overview of mathematics. But even if rewritten, nothing has been done to answer others concerns about sourcing, so it would still fail on that.YobMod 12:05, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have expanded the text around some of your examples. I don't agree that all topics mentioned need more than a single sentence summary - once you go beyond one sentence, you end up writing a paragraph on every topic, and then you introduce more terms that need context and description, so more paragraphs and so on. A one sentence summary seems to me like a sensible place to draw the line. I have to say I am surprised by the negative tone of your concluding remarks - "even if rewritten ... it would still fail" - that provides little incentive for editors to address your concerns. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am afraid i can give no incentive. There are simply the GA criteria, and the article must pass all of them. Focusing on one of the problems will imrove the article to be sure, so is to be applauded (the trigonometry example is now far superior). But it does't change the myriad other issues that need addressing, and i didn't want to immply that expanding on these areas would change my recomendation to keep delisted.YobMod 15:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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