Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2007/May

Dispersive PDE wiki

The dispersive partial differential equation wiki now has the gnu free documentation license listed as its copyright, which I think means that stuff from it can now be copied over into wikipedia (which seems to use the same license, though someone who knows about these things should confirm this). Maybe someone who knows about these thinks could make a template to say something like

This article incorporates material from ... from the dispersive PDE wiki, which is licensed under the GFDL

R.e.b. 21:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Curves (disambiguation)

Theres been a dispute over whether Curves (disambiguation) and Curve (disambiguation) should be merged, which has now gone to RFC. So I though I'd invite the heavy mob over to Talk:Curves (disambiguation). --Salix alba (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Georg Cantor

The tedious arguments at Georg Cantor over whether the great man was Jewish will simply not go away. Myself, I don't much care, except of course I want our information to be accurate, encyclopedic, and not confusing, even on fairly tangential points. If some editors here (especially, if such there be, ones with good knowledge about history) would help find a resolution, maybe we could get back to the serious business of crackpots who think they've refuted the diagonal argument.

My thoughts on the matter are summarized at talk:Georg Cantor#Edit wars over Jewishness or otherwise. --Trovatore 20:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem here is:

• Cantor's grandfather, possibly also his grandmother, seem to have be born, or been by descent Jewish. His father and himself were deeply religious Lutherans; his mother Roman Catholic.
• Under these circumstances, he himself is not Jewish; "neither in an orthodox rabbinical sense, since his mother was Roman Catholic, nor in the sense of a practiced faith", as one authority says.
• Should the article have the Category:Jewish mathematician? The cat does allow for Jewishness by descent, but this is intended to cover cases like Einstein: unorthodox, unbelieving, or converted Jews.
• There must be a limit to how tenuous descent must be to count; otherwise we get like the helpful soul who catted Robert E. Lee as Scottish-American. (The Lees are thoroughly English, but claim descent from Robert the Bruce.)

This is a matter of definition, not of history, and I have no opinion on it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:35, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Unless he went out of his way to practice Judaism or to associate himself with Jews (which he did not as far as I know), then he should not be labeled as Jewish. Otherwise, we are adopting the pernicious idea that the Jews are a race (shades of Julius Streicher). JRSpriggs 07:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Layout question

This is probably a stupid question, but how can I avoid the following layout problem (without taking the separated formula in the text body, of course):

• On a projective complex manifold X, cohomology groups of coherent sheaves F

H^*(X, F)

are finitely generated.

• next point

(I don't want the "are finitely generated" to start at the beginning of the line, but aligned with the text "On a proj..." and "next point"). Thanks Jakob.scholbach 18:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I usually just put a colon at the beginning of the successive lines. This doesn't work perfectly but it's more aesthetic. I too have wondered if there's a real solution. Ryan Reich 18:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps there is a better answer to this annoying behavior, but one dodge is to use HTML markup instead of wikiness, like so:

---

<ul><li>On a projective complex manifold ''X'', [[sheaf cohomology|cohomology]] groups of [[coherent sheaves]] ''F'',

<dl><dd>''H''^&lowast;(''X'', ''F''),</dd></dl>

are finitely generated.</li>

<li>next point</li>

</ul>

---

• On a projective complex manifold X, cohomology groups of coherent sheaves F,

  H^∗(X, F),

  are finitely generated.
• next point

---

And please, stop using quote-quote ('') as if it were TeX's math markup ($). If you want italic variables, italicize only the variables — not the parentheses nor the numerals nor anything else that gets in the way. (Fixed in my example.) Also, you may wish to consider using HTML &lowast; instead of an asterisk, as I have done. --KSmrq^T 19:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

"7 unsolved problems"?

This is sort of frivolous, but I didn't want to make any changes to such a contentious topic. Now that the Poincare conjecture is proven, and its proof is verified three ways from last August, shouldn't the "did you know..." factoid about the Millennium Prize problems read "there are 6 unsolved problems..."? Ryan Reich 23:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Though to answer my own question, there is a pretty good argument that we should wait for the Clay Mathematics Institute to make it official. Ryan Reich 23:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

dashes in page titles

Recently an editor changes Poincaré–Birkhoff–Witt theorem to a redirect to Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem (the former uses en dashes, the latter hyphens) although it was quickly reverted. I know some of the math folk here have impressed upon others in the past that the en dashes are correct and should be used in the page title. WP:MOSDASH agrees that using the en dashes is correct (since these are different people's names) but states that for page titles simple hyphens should be used. A provision that it is ok to redirect to the dash title from the hyphen title has been struck out. After some investigation, it's clear that a discussion on the WP:MOSDASH talk page is what led to the previously mentioned edit; the discussion seems to have pinpointed a problem with saving pages with dash titles on computers using an older version of Internet Explorer. --C S (Talk) 06:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

What a silly thing for people to be worried about, exactly which dash belongs where. As far as I'm concerned there should only be one dash (the one on my keyboard) to avoid all the confusion. StuRat 16:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the point is that the different dashes have different meanings. If one writes about the Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem, one doesn't know whether it's a result by three people named Chan, Ho, and StuRat, two people named Chan and Ho-Sturat, etc., whereas if one writes about the Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem the distinction is more clear to those paying attention. So within the text of an article, using the right kind of dash can be important. As for titles of articles, I find the argument on MOSDASH unconvincing, especially because both names should be present with a redirect from one and the character appearing in the url will depend on which path one uses to reach the article, but whatever. —David Eppstein 16:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem with the guidelines is that the current practice is in flux. It appears to me that two years ago almost all titles were in ASCII, but now there is a definite trend for arbitrary Unicode characters in titles. So long as all useful redirects are in place, the actual title doesn't matter too much. CMummert · talk 17:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that you can't save a page by saving a redirect! So, from the point of view of good typography and clarity, it is better to have Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem redirect to Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem, but from the point of view of everyone being able to save content, it is better to have Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem redirect to Chan-Ho-StuRat theorem. I agree the trend is towards unicode, so WP probably needs to introduce an error message like "You are using a badly designed operating system and/or browser. Please update your computer to use non-Microsoft products" for this situation. Incidently, Chan-Ho–StuRat theorem is still a redlink: is anyone going to make a stub? It could be a nice result ;) Geometry guy 17:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:BEANS.  ;) --C S (Talk) 07:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

The following articles are up for GA Review, feel free to comment.

• Exponentiation
• Homotopy groups of spheres
• Klee's measure problem
• Ordinal number
• Quadratic equation
• Sylvester's sequence
• Znám's problem

Hope to see you there. 74.116.113.241 01:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Mathematics article assessment

Thanks to the efforts of several editors, the assessment of mathematics articles using the {{maths rating}} template is now considerably more useful and worthwhile than it was before. I thought it would therefore be helpful to summarize the current system and its benefits, and to encourage editors to add ratings to existing and new articles.

The maths rating is a template which can be placed (by anyone) on the talk page of any mathematical article to summarize its quality, importance and field, and suggest improvements that could be made.

What can article assessment do for you? The maths rating system is useful for directing our efforts towards improving the mathematics coverage of wikipedia. It also helps us to monitor the progress of this WikiProject. Although assessment is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, it is a useful way to organize and monitor our efforts.

Recent improvements to the system mean that articles with maths ratings are now included automatically (with comments) in many useful tables. For instance, you can see the ratings for articles in your field (e.g. algebra), you can find stub class articles (listed by importance) to improve, or articles considered to be vital to the project rated by importance and quality. Rated articles about mathematicians are listed in a sortable table and there are also tables of theorems and conjectures and historical articles, sortable by field. All rated articles are listed in these tables (which are updated daily). They are also automatically included in a a hierarchy of categories. Every table or category has a navigation bar that links easily to any other.

What can you do for article assessment? There are many ways we can all improve this scheme to maximize its benefits.

• Add the {{maths rating}} template to the talk page of an article. For example, when creating a new stub, why not also start up the talk page with a maths rating?
• Add or update data in {{maths rating}} templates. There are may articles whose importance or quality is unassessed. Take a quick look at the assessment scheme and assess or reassess an article today!
• Add comments to an article with a maths rating. There is a whole category of mathematics articles which have no comments. A signed comment helps even just to date the maths rating, but even better, it can provide a summary of suggested improvements for the article that other editors can read.
• Add extra information about mathematicians. To make sortable tables, the dates, surnames, and primary fields of mathematicians are needed. It is too difficult to deduce these from page contents, so they are stored in a special format. Just click on the links in the mathematicians table to add or update these data.

Finally, you can contribute by making suggestions here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 on how the scheme can be improved further. Many thanks. Geometry guy 01:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The initial sentence in "probability distribution" is terrible!!

Here it is:

In probability theory, a probability distribution is a function of the probabilities of a mutually exclusive set of events.

That is idiotic nonsense. I had no idea this article was in such profoundly bad shape. I'm going to have to think about how to rephrase this. If someone beats me to it, I will be pleased. Michael Hardy 17:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

... OK, now I've changed it. I was shocked by what I read. Michael Hardy 17:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it standard that the term "distribution" is restricted to measures over subsets of the real numbers, rather than the general case of measures over subsets of any possible space of outcomes (e.g., random curves)?  --Lambiam^Talk 18:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The Encyclopaedia of Mathematics considers a probability distribution to be any probability measure of a probability space.[1]  --Lambiam^Talk 18:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's standard, but my old copy of Feller's book says that distribution functions are "non-decreasing functions which tend to zero as x → −∞ and to 1 as x → ∞." That seems to imply that a distribution function is defined in terms of a random variable that can only assume real values. On the other hand, I only have vol. 1 of An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications. DavidCBryant 18:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, of course obviously there are vector-valued random variables, and permutation-valued random variables, etc. etc. etc. I've now modified the first sentence accordingly. Michael Hardy 20:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

My impression was that "distribution" refers to something more complicated than a density function, but not as complicated as a measure. You use it with the Riemann-Stieltjes integral#Application to probability theory. JRSpriggs 06:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Numerical algorithms

The {{Numerical algorithms}} template appears to me as a rather indiscriminate collection of numerical algorithms, with a heavy bias towards root-finding algorithms. I don't know if it is necessary, and if it is, if grouping these together is any good. For example, it is of little use at Pseudorandom number generator and Fast Fourier transform. I would argue that it should be either thoroughly rewritten and posted on a different collection of articles, or otherwise deleted. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this navigation bar is useless (unbalanced, incomplete, and also inaccurate). That might, perhaps, be fixed, but in this case I don't understand what aim it could achieve that is not much better addressed by categories (for navigation) and a good overview at Numerical analysis.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The obvious thing to do (and probably the least work) would be to move the template to "root-finding algorithms" and remove all the other stuff. Geometry guy 21:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Having looked at it, my first instinct is to delete it as a useless eyesore. While deleting from each article, add a category as Lambiam suggests. --KSmrq^T 21:43, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. Jitse, our numerical guy, agrees too (on his talk page). I removed it from articles and deleted it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

As yet to be added mathematics articles

In my quest to assess every mathematics article I came across several articles that were in the purview of this Wikiproject that had not been placed under its supervision. This troubled me and I would like to know what can be done to add these articles to our project efficiently. The articles I have found thus far are Mandelbrot set and Lorenz attractor but I am sure there are more out there.--Cronholm144 18:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

You mean, articles without the Project Math banner on their talk pages? Just do what you did to Mandelbrot set, add one there. Also, add a mathematical category (e.g. Category:Fractals) to the article itself if it should have one and doesn't. —David Eppstein 19:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

According to the table of assessed mathematics articles there are about 1000 assessed articles. On the other hand the list of mathematics articles contains about 15000 articles. Previous discussions have not supported the automatic tagging of these articles (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_18#.7B.7BMaths_rating.7D.7D and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_24#Tagging_math_articles) and have suggested that assessing all these articles might not be a sensible goal. However, the current assessment coverage is rather haphazard, and I would encourage editors to add maths ratings to any articles which they consider to be important to the project. Geometry guy 21:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've started going through the A-Z of mathematics articles (there are 13216 of these, but there are also mathematicians and nonalphabetical articles). I thought it would be useful to add maths ratings with importance and field to some of these articles to make the coverage less patchy. This is mundane but straightforward to do using WP:AWB because the field and importance can usually be judged approximately from the title alone. Fortunately, I am being supported by other editors, especially Cronholm, who are keeping tabs on me and filling in quality gradings (I have also added quite a few quality gradings myself). My ratings are a very rough and ready assessment, but I think it is more useful to have someone's opinion rather than none at all. My motivation is that it will be easier to judge issues such as importance when articles can be compared in the many tables that have been created.

So far I have been through the letters A and B, which took about a day, so help would be much appreciated! I'm restricting myself to providing ratings for at most an additional 1/3 of the listed articles (there are certainly enough worthwhile articles to rate this many). Hence, if I don't run out of steam, the number of rated articles will increase from c. 1000 to c. 5000. I hope this is enough to provide a good cross-section of our coverage, but not too much to overwhelm the rating system (or other editors!).

I am making mistakes in this process: although I am trying to be careful, it is easy to add a rating to a redirect or a dab page, or rate an article which has already been rated. Please fix any mistakes you find. Furthermore, if in doubt I've tended to underrate an article's importance and/or quality, so please don't be offended if I have assessed your favourite topic as "low importance" or called your hard work "a stub". Uprate where appropriate! Even better, add to the article! Geometry guy 21:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

One third and one quarter

I nominated these for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One third, as not encyclopedic in my view. Comments on these articles are welcome there. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Mythical number

This survived AfD, although it could use a rewrite. Michael Hardy also suggests a new title, since this is not a class of number, but an essay on bogus statistics. Can anyone think of a good one? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Imaginary number? Seriously, I think that is how such made-up numbers that achieve mythical status are known. Plenty of Google hits with this meaning.  --Lambiam^Talk 00:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Michael seems to be thinking of something more descriptive, like unsourced statistical claims; or apocryphical, anecdotal, numerical.... to which mythical number would redirect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the current title makes this a bit too much like a book ad. I'm not against citing the book, but centering the article around it is not a good idea. On the other hand, any alternative title should be in plain enough language not to be OR. Apocryphal statistics and anecdotal statistics both seem to capture the flavour of the article to me: the numerical aspect is reflected in the plain language meaning of the word "statistics". Geometry guy 19:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Which book?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, the cited reference reads a bit like a book title, but it seems to be an article. I still think the title revolves too much around one primary source. Geometry guy 20:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Protect geometry?

I put the article Geometry on my watchlist about three weeks ago. In this time, there have been multiple acts of vandalism committed on that page, from blanking and replacing it with expletives to inserting childish non-sense that the contributor considers to be amusing. Almost without an exception, these edits were performed by anonymous users, and some anonymous users (at least one of them with a history of vandalism more extensive than many an editor's list of contributions) targeted the page repeatedly. It is easy enough to understand why is this happening: this is one of the most high profile mathematics articles. Precisely for that reason I think it should also be a model article, not alternate between the states of being an encyclopaedic article and the latest in the junkyard.

It's true that it does not take too much effort to revert an unwelcome edit. However, should we just shrug and carry on, apathetically reassured by technical convenience of reverts, or can we take a more pro-active approach? My assessment is that in this case, at least, the nuisance of the anonymous vandalism far outweighs the modest benefit of having occasional serious anonymous editor contribute. What do other people here think of protecting or semiprotecting Geometry, as has been done in the past with Mathematics and other popular articles? Arcfrk 03:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey! Some of us like having geometry in the junkyard! (Not disagreeing with your point, just amused by your wording.) —David Eppstein 04:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry in a junkyard ("thrackles"?!) is not the same as throwing junk into "geometry". :-)

I, too, have watched the unending stream of petty vandalism, and would support semiprotection. (Full protection seems unnecessary.) --KSmrq^T 04:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Somehow my previous comment disappeared: Yes, I think, semiprotection would be a good idea in this case. Jakob.scholbach 05:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. While we're at it, the incidence of vandalism edits at Randomness is also high (1.6 per day, compared to 1.1 per day for Geometry, measured over the last 100 edits), presumably because the perpetrators pick, predictably, a "random" target for their random actions.  --Lambiam^Talk 05:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I applied for semi-protection of Randomness recently. It was denied (as most of my requests are) on the grounds that there was not enough vandalism to warrant action. Read that to mean that we waste less than two hours per day reverting it. By the way, KSmrq again wiped out another person's edit (Jakob.scholbach's) and did not fix it. JRSpriggs 11:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The criterion is heavy and continued vandalism. It is continued, the question is what is heavy? Charles Matthews 12:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem with semiprotecting articles is that it doesn't get rid of annoying vandals - it just moves them elsewhere. If only a few articles are protected, the vandals will just pick an unprotected one. If a large enough number of articles became semiprotected, it seems possible that the vandals would just start getting usernames, which are free anyway. On the other hand, semiprotection goes against the idea that "anyone can edit" and may discourage new productive editors from joining.

So the traditional standards for semiprotection are very high. Except in cases of libel or copyright violation, the traditional standards want the vandalism rate to be so high that it cannot be dealt with via watchlists and manual reverts.

I think that there is shifting opinion about semiprotecting articles. If you watch WP:RFPP you will see that some admins have lower standards, and the people requesting semiprotection have much lower standards, than what has been required. Maybe in a few months the standard could be lowered some.

And they keep promising that "any day now" the German wikipedia will start experimenting with stable versions, which may also reduce vandalism. CMummert · talk 13:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus among the editors that it is worth trying to semiprotect Geometry, but a caution from CMummert that it may contradict the current practices of Wikipedia's administrators. While I agree with him that protecting the page does not solve the problem of vandalism completely (e.g. the vandals that have been turned away can still cut their favourite four letter words on their desk in their classroom), I do not believe that this point is relevant for the question at hand. Of course, it all depends on how you interpret the purpose, but here is my statistical analysis of last 100 edits of Geometry, between 20:52 March 27 and 17:14 May 10:

• 2 bot additions of links
• 2 major edits (I expanded the article)
• 3 minor edits (corrections of a single word or sentence)
• 93 edits that are either acts of vandalism, addition of irrelevant information, or reverts.

Thus, over the last 100 edits the vandalism rate is 93%, while the major editing rate is 2%. To answer Charles Matthews's question, I believe that the situation can be accurately described as heavy vandalism. Now, it's true that there are fewer than fifteen attacks per day on that page, but does anyone seriously believe that unprotected status of that page contributes in any meaningful way to its development? If anything, I would conjecture that several well respected editors, while having the page on their watchlist (judging by the promptness of their reverts), choose not to contribute, given the present environment. Ksmrq indirectly confirmed it about a month ago on this very talk page. It is demoralizing to realize that the 'right for anyone to edit', which in this case translates into the opportunity for any dim-wit who has learned to swear, any pupil frustrated with his maths lessons, and anyone bored with encyclopaedic articles to vandalise the page, trumps the reasonable expectation of serious contributors to Wikipedia that their efforts to improve the content are supported in a meaningful way. Just to give you one example of how vandalism disrupts normal editing process, I stumbled across interesting pieces of text that had been a part of the text a while ago, but are no longer present. Given the vandalism rate, I do not have time to work with the page history to trace what has happened to those pieces of text.

Conclusion: if we adapt the pragmatic point of view that our goal is to improve the content of Wikipedia, then semiprotecting Geometry (while not solving the ills of the society as a whole) would be a valuable action towards accomplishing that goal. And conversely, leaving the article unprotected, as a punching bag for all sorts of vandals, sends the wrong message about Wikipedia's priorities. Arcfrk 08:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. Now if we could just get the people at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection to agree. JRSpriggs 10:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Any admin can protect or semi-protect a page; this does not require action or agreement of some kind of people "at" the requests page.  --Lambiam^Talk 12:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that Arcfrk's argument is very compelling, but I understand the arguments against protection as well, which are based on the Wikipedia Foundation policy that anyone can edit here. If this issue were limited to Geometry, I would semiprotect it right now. The main concern I have about protecting Geometry is: how many other articles would end up protected if the same standard was used on them? On my watchlist, I know Randomness would. CMummert · talk 13:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I asked about this here this morning, and there are a couple of replies in favor of (at least temporary) semiprotection. I am quite willing to protect Geometry, but I want to know how many more pages are going to be requested before I start sliding down any slopes. CMummert · talk 23:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I did mention Randomness.[2] But if all editors who have Geometry on their watchlists now add Randomness to it, I think we can manage for the next couple of weeks. :)  --Lambiam^Talk 09:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with semiprotecting this temporarily, say for a week. About the fact that this is a slippery slope, that's correct. Well, the wiki model is evolving, some limits to editing may turn out to be necessary, although of course articles should be semiprotected only when necessary and not for too long. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I have semiprotected Geometry for two weeks. C Mummert · talk 05:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

So, what's on your watchlist?

Perhaps I'm being naive, but it seems to me quite unwikipedian to go around protecting articles. Wouldn't a better way be to have some kind of shared watchlist for heavily vandalized articles? Is there already such a facility that I don't know about? If not, someone could just provide a list of problematic articles in their user namespace (or even in Wikipedia/Wikipedia_talk namespace). Others could add articles as the need arose. Silly rabbit 11:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

There's no shared watchlist. About which articles are vandalized, it is usually high profile ones, like mathematics itself, then the math portal and all its subpages, and then, well geometry. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The closest thing is the "Related changes" tool, on the left side of the screen. If you go to one of the field subpages of this table and then select "related changes" you can get a list of changes made to the pages there, like this [3]. It's not quite the same as a watchlist because multiple changes to the same article are shown. C Mummert · talk 15:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I ask because I have noticed that some (perhaps) not-so-obvious pages seem to fall into the same category. For instance, mean seems to be a mid-level target for the odd vandal now and again. And, although it certainly scores lower on any quantitative assessment of vandalism than geometry, mathematics, etc., it's also a lesser concern to editors wary of the problem of vandalism in general. Personally, I'd be happy to put any article that seemed to be in modest trouble (such as mean) onto my own watchlist. Silly rabbit 16:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

A few more pages I've seen frequent vandalism on: Pythagorean theorem, Buoyancy, Fibonacci number. —David Eppstein 16:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Algebra seems to be attacked as much as Geometry, although, amazingly, unlike the latter it undergoes productive development at the same time. Arcfrk 06:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial to create a "shared watchlist" of vulnerable pages: create a page as subpage of this WikiProject, listing links to those pages, and ask people to consult "Related Changes". Charles Matthews 14:02, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

More interesting would be a "shared patrol-list", which answers the question "has someone whom I trust reviewed the most recent changes?" That way, I can avoid reviewing something that you've already reviewed and let pass. linas 00:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algebraic bracket

Could someone have a glance at Algebraic bracket and this AFD entry? Needs expert comment on accuracy / worthiness for keeping. Thanks. Tearlach 02:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Nominate it for AfD. It has no context, and it's completely isolated on wikipedia. Such things are useful in deformation theory (see Gerstenhaber algebra), but if the need should arise, it's likely to be dealt with inline anyway. So, no harm done. Anyway, I objected to the term algebraic bracket ages ago. Silly rabbit 02:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer to keep this as a reminder that there are algebraic brackets, and this is one of them. We don't delete orphans on WP: we find them a family. I've known the term "algebraic bracket" since my early postdoctoral days, when I spent some time thinking about them with a few experts. I'd be happy to move this particular instance to a more specific title, though. In the long run, "algebraic bracket" itself might be a nice dab. Geometry guy 03:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not at all sure it's a good title, but the concept is important, and the article seems to have plenty of references (in case you needed context). Definitely keep! Arcfrk 13:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I closed the discussion after the nomination was withdrawn. The article was moved to Nijenhuis-Richardson bracket. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Most linked to math articles

I made a list of math articles which are most linked to from other math articles. The list is at User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles.

My goal was a metric for assessing the importance of math articles. I think the higher an article is on this list, the more important it probably is, and the more crucial is for it to be in good shape. This is imperfect of course, but is better than not having anything.

Also, I emphasized articles which have not yet been rated as part of the WP:1.0 project. That may help with tagging. Hope this is useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Very much so, I will get on these first--Cronholm144 03:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree this is very useful, thanks Oleg :) Of course it is not a perfect metric, as well-linked articles are more likely to be in good shape, and therefore less in need of help. So it is definitely worthwhile (though very boring, sigh) to go through all of the articles. Probability and statistics is particularly under-represented in the assessment scheme. Is there a champion out there? Geometry guy 19:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Differential equations

A recent edit of Differential equation expanded the article by adding a section Rise in importance during 20th century. I believe that it's a wrong article for this type of material (or wrong material for this type of article?), my concerns are summarized here. Can some experts in differential equations and/or numerical methods, please, take a look? Arcfrk 01:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Relations on a set of three elements

I wonder, what do people think of Relations on a set of four elements, Relations on a set of three elements, and Relations on sets of two elements and less. Surely a lot of work has gone into them, but is such content encyclopedic? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

They provide simple concrete examples of e.g. partial orders, total preorders, reflexive and irreflexive relations, etc., and also which combinations of properties are possible (at least for these small sets). For an active reader it is not too difficult to verify everything. (If something is unclear for the readers, you are welcome to add clarifications, of course. If something is unclear for yourself you can ask on the talk page.) The overviews can give a lot of insight. I do not see why they would not be encyclopedic.--Patrick 06:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the content is pretty good but it may be a violation of WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. Specifically number 6 which states that:

Textbooks and annotated texts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. It is not appropriate to create or edit articles which read as textbooks, with leading questions and step-by-step problem solutions as examples. These belong on our sister projects Wikibooks and Wikisource

Perhaps the content of this articles could be condensed and placed into the Relations article as an alternate solution.--Jersey Devil 08:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Except for the "See also" links at Transitive relation, the present collection is a mini-walled garden of orphaned articles with names that are totally implausible as search terms. Concrete examples of various types of relations, as well as information on their counting sequences, is useful if provided at the respective articles. Just like (for example) Strict weak ordering has a section The number of weak orders (meaning: on a finite set), Binary relation could have a section "The number of binary relations (on a finite set)" to which these redirect. Although the corresponding sequence is in OEIS (sequence A002416 in the OEIS), it is not identified as such, so apparently not terribly notable as such, but such a section could contain a list of See also's, like for example to Strict weak ordering#The number of weak orders.  --Lambiam^Talk 09:55, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The textbook claim may best be countered by regarding these articles as classification results. However, because the validity of this content could easily be challenged (e.g. as WP:OR, even though these are elementary verifications), it is vital that sources are provided. Also, the articles could usefully be merged under a more helpful title, reorganised, and written in a more encyclopedic tone. Geometry guy 10:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I think merging all this into Relation (mathematics) would not be appropriate, as this verbose descriptive stuff would overwhelm the Relation (mathematics) article which should focus on the concepts only and a few examples. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That was my concern too (it would be the article binary relation, by the way). I started with a section of transitive relation, but for the same reason I split it off.--Patrick 15:11, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I decided to nominate these pages for deletion as unencyclopedic. The deletion debate is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Relations on a set of four elements. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify my previous comment: I was referring to merging these articles with each other, rather than into any existing article. I'll raise this at the AfD. Geometry guy 12:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Combinatorial mathematicians have spent quite some effort on counting various types of relations, and it would be possible to base a separate article on that, but who is going to write it? The approach I outlined above is still quite feasible.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Lambiam; Patrick has now added a section Binary relation#The number of binary relations, sourced using OEIS. It seems to me that a fair amount of the material from the three articles could be used to provide a main article for this section (so that it does not overwhelm Binary relation), perhaps called Binary relations on a finite set, and sourced in the same way. Geometry guy 12:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Articles listed at Articles for deletion

• Relations on a set of four elements (AfD discussion)

Please contribute to the discussion. Uncle G 09:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Relations on a set of three elements above. Geometry guy 12:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the "Week"

I don't mean to be a nag, but Theorem has been the CotW for at least a month. I think that participation in this collaboration had been a little spotty. We could rename it Cot-month or we could get theorem to FA. In any case I am tired of looking at theorem every time I log on and feeling guilty about the article :(. What do you think?--Cronholm144 05:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

See also the last time this was being discussed: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 24#Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Week.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:19, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks as if some good ideas were thrown out, but that none of them were acted on. Perhaps the s/election of a coordinator would be a good start.--Cronholm144 07:32, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say that the Theorem CotW has been one of the better ones, the article has developed from Stub to Start or possibly B-class. In the first week very little happened and it then got a major reworking from GeometryGuy plus a couple of others.

In light of this I think a week is too short a time for people to give a particular article much attention, a month seems a more reasonable time frame. If its longer than that things get sluggish.

Yes a new cordinator would be good, fancy a job? --Salix alba (talk) 08:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Who me? or Lambiam. All I would be good for would be bothering people on their talk pages. Lambiam, Geometry Guy, Salix, Oleg, Jitse, etc... would do a better job of it. (If they don't want it then maybe...) thanks for the consideration.--Cronholm144 08:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia runs on volunteers, so the best way to get something done is to do it (or organize it) yourself. You noticed something that moved you to speak, therefore you are the obvious choice for coordinator. :-) --KSmrq^T 10:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

All right then, I gratefully accept. I will get working on it in roughly 8 hours. I will keep my promise about soliciting help from everyone. I will see you on the talk pages;)--Cronholm144 10:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Bothering other people is exactly right as a job description, so we have a perfect fit. :) Good luck. By the way, perhaps someone (K.?) should tell User:Meekohi that we are grateful for his long period of service as the self-proclaimed moderator of the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week project, but that we have managed to find a self-proclaimed replacement, so that he can retire as such and enjoy his regained freedom to give his undivided attention to actually improving articles, rather than having to spend time on moderating such activity.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Update:

Good news everyone, for the first time since I have been here an article has received more than 4 votes:). This of course means that the time to change the article has finally come. The winner is Mathematical Physics a top importance article and one of the 7 or so main categories here at the WP:WPM. I am proud to report that this article, as per the COTW requirements, is in dismal shape (another nominee by the way), so making significant improvements should be easy. I would welcome any and all to help out with this article. Also, on a more technical note, I don't know how to change the template, so if someone could do that for me I would be very appreciative. Thanks to all--Cronholm144 01:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Done: for information, see Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month#Templates involved in MATHCOTM; the last two inks contain the current and previous collaborations, so you just edit the contents of them. Geometry guy 01:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've now given the page a spring clean. In particular, I've moved around some of the templates, which were all over the place before. Also the page seemed to contradict itself about the rules, so I've attempted to rephrase them. Of course, The Coordinator is the ultimate arbiter ;) Geometry guy 11:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

POLICY DEBATE: Use of mathematical and other examples in articles

I have opened a debate on the use of examples in Wikipedia articles (mainly focusing on computer source code and mathematical proofs, equations, etc.). It seems to me that many examples currently in Wikipedia violate Wikipedia policy, so I believe we need to either clarify or change the situation. Depending on the result of the discussion, this may result in a number of examples being summarily removed from articles!

Please reply there, not here, if you wish to contribute.—greenrd 11:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I know you say to reply there, not here, but this seems a more apt place for my comment. I don't think it is appropriate to lump together mathematics examples with source code. Mathematical examples are absolutely essential in many articles. Without them, some abstract mathematical statements are often completely useless. Furthermore, examples help to supply a context for much of mathematics. For instance, the formal definition of a locally ringed space is utterly meaningless without an appropriate algebro-geometric context. The Atiyah-Singer index theorem is completely motivated by the examples which it generalizes. The list goes on...

Computer source code is, generally, an implementation detail. See, for instance, quicksort where there are several versions of the algorithm (admittedly a bit different) written variously in an Algol-like pseudocode, C, and a dialect of Pascal. In this case, I would say that the use of examples vis-a-vis source code clearly goes to far. The various versions of the algorithm should be as implementation-independent as possible, and lengthy (the C example takes over a page of scrolling to get through) source snippets in a particular language don't seem to be helpful in illustrating the differences. They are rather, it would seem, cut-n-paste tidbits for programmers a la various coding tutorial websites out there in cyberspace.

So mathematics examples are certainly of a different character than source code. They aren't a mere implementation detail. Your threat of summary deletion is troublesome to me. It potentially suggests that editors with only a vague understanding of the subject matter are going to start taking the axe to mathematics articles. Many of our articles are quite specialized, and edited by people experts in their respective fields of study. Granted, some of these could do with a bit of pruning here and there. But I suggest leaving it up to the qualified editors to decide what should go and what should stay (and what should be expanded). Implementing a broad "totalitarian" policy is definitely not the way to go. Silly rabbit 12:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Need help with Wadge hierarchy and related articles

The Wadge hierarchy stub needs help from an expert. Wadge game needs an article or a section in Wadge hierarchy. If these topics are better covered in other articles, then a paragraph in another article with a merge/redirect or blank/redirect may be in order. Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 15:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Category:Jewish mathematicians CfD

This category was recently deleted as part of the general deletion of Category:Mathematicians by religion. However the case of Category:Jewish mathematicians was put forward for deletion review and its deletion was overturned. Consequently it is now being considered for deletion again. I encourage members of the maths project to contribute to the discussion here. Geometry guy 18:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

There is possibly enough consensus to delete this category, which would be in line with the deletion and/or absense of similar religious/ethnic categories for mathematicians. However, there are users with no particular expertise who stop by at CfD's like this with a political agenda. Can I please encourage everyone here to look at the page and express their view. The outcome really does have the potential to affect the quality of life for many editors here, as the recent discussions over Georg Cantor illustrate. Please remember, though, that this is not a vote: read the contributions of other editors and express your view with comments and justification. Geometry guy 23:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that it makes any difference? I have spent enormous amount of time analyzing the previous discussions and their outcomes, and came to the conclusion that people with this political agenda and no particular expertise are very persistent, and have the proven ability to bring this category back to life. To me it appears to be a canonical example of метать бисер перед свиньями. Comparatively speaking, I would prefer reverting vandals at Geometry or Algebra, at least, it's more efficient if just as hopeless. Arcfrk 01:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, the Russian text above means "throwing pearls to the pigs", which is is used in English too, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"Pearls before swine" but I think my generation is losing this and many other great colloquialisms,:( Anyway I don't believe we should ever allow this kind of thing to encroach on the wonderful place we have created here, fight to protect it, lest we lose it.--Cronholm144 03:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

A twist of irony that; here's the line as it appears in the King James Version of Matthew VII, verse 6:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

In generations past, reading literacy was often built on a text found in many homes, so such phrases were familiar; but Matthew may have been less popular in Jewish homes.

As for the obsession some have to classify people according to Jewishness, I have expressed my sentiments in the Cantor discussion. Next I suppose we'll be forced to nationalize Leonhard Euler, who spent more time in Russia than in Switzerland. And after that we'll be counting toes. It's an idiotic waste of time; but the human race, like a human infant, is slow to mature. --KSmrq^T 04:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I take your point, but I think it could. Not only are there essentially no other similar mathematics categories, but also there are essentially no similar subcategories of Category:Jews by occupation: Category:Jewish scientists exists, but there is no Category:Jewish physicists, Category:Jewish biologists, Category:Jewish chemists, and so on. These persistent people have a general goal, but not a specific focus. If this the maths cat goes away, there is no more reason to recreate it than any of these other subcats. My best guess would be trench warfare at Category:Jewish scientists, but even that would leave many of us a little more in peace to get on with improving maths articles. So please don't be despondent! Geometry guy 01:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

To KSmrq: Thank you for the full quotation. It is one of many good sayings from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
To People in General: Please provide translations to English for any quotations you provide in a foreign language (except perhaps French which is so close to English). JRSpriggs 10:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Arab mathematicians

One of the arguments that keeps arising in these debates is the existence of Category:Arab mathematicians, which seems superficially similar to Category:Jewish mathematicians, at least to those who can't be bothered to go and see what is actually in the category. Of course, the arguments for this similarity are flawed, but it is not as easy as it could be to squash them for a couple of reasons.

1. At present Category:Arab mathematicians is a subcategory of Category:Mathematicians by nationality, and does not contain many important Category:Persian mathematicians. This suggests it could be renamed Category:Arabian mathematicians to eliminate the controversy. In that case, though, it should be about mathematicians of Arabia. And essentially it is up until the time of Al-Jayyani (989–1079). From then on, though, the listed mathematicians all lived in what was then Al-Andalus, and is now Spain, or (in a couple of cases) Morocco.
2. In contrast to Jewish mathematics (and Category:Jewish mathematics), there does exist Arabic mathematics (and Category:Arabic mathematics). However, the first of these links redirects to Islamic mathematics, and Category:Islamic mathematics is offered as the "correct" category for the second (does this need a CfD?). This seems an unfortunate choice to me!

These are rather thorny issues. I have raised the second one at here, also partly because I think there has been a misunderstanding about the meaning of the adjective "Arabic", which doesn't refer to people (that would be Arabian or Arab) but language, literature and culture.

For the first issue, is it worth creating Category:Al Andalus mathematicians or are there other ways to clarify this point? Geometry guy 17:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion both Category:Arab mathematicians and Category:Persian mathematicians should be deleted. Modern day mathematicians are better placed in Category:Iranian mathematicians, Category:Saudi Arabian mathematicians, Category:Egyptian mathematicians, etc. In the case of historical mathematicians it only creates an artificial and unnecessary split (no to forgot that a significant portion of related biographies can't, with certainty, be placed in any one of them.) I've categorized most of the biographies currently under those two categories in Category:Arabic mathematics/Category:Islamic mathematics but this has the drawback that it doesn't separate the biographies from the other topics. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Certainly not all "Islamic" mathematicians after 1079 lived in Spain. See for example Jamshīd al-Kāshī or Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi. —Ruud 17:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Clear, but both of the examples are Persian. Just out of interest, can you come up with Arabian examples? Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Al-Khalili and Ibn al-Shatir came from Damascus. Not sure if that would make them Arab or Syrian, though. —Ruud 20:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

There are some more from that period in Category:Spanish mathematicians, I think, including at least one Jew. I am in favor of a category that collects together mathematicians from the Arabian mathematics period (whatever you want to call it) and that has a name that includes islamic Spain but unambiguously excludes modern mathematicians from the same places. —David Eppstein 17:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this is a possible way forward. It almost surely not a good idea to identify such "arabic mathematicians" as Spanish, although the whole issue of geographical vs political nationality is also rather thorny. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

If there is a category for mathematicians from the Islamic/Arabic civilization, wouldn't "Category:Arabic mathematicians" be a better name? To me the primary meaning of "Arab" refers to ethnicity, and "Arabian" to the geographic area. "Arabic", on the other hand, refers foremost the language and its script, which was used as the Lingua Franca in which the mathematicians of Islamic civilization wrote their works, just like scientists in Christian civilization used Latin.  --Lambiam^Talk 19:06, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that: also Arabic refers to literature, which is quite appropriate in this case. Geometry guy 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Also see the two quotes at User:Ruud Koot/Arabic mathematics#Terminology. Here Toomer argues for the term "Arabic mathematics" and Berggren for "Islamic mathematics".

Outcome

Editors here might like to know that the outcome of the CfD for Category:Jewish mathematicians is deletion. I would like to thank others here for taking the trouble to comment at this CfD and thus express the view of general mathematics article editors. The discussion was one of the longest I have seen, so the weight of good argument that editors here contributed was very important. Geometry guy 10:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Who are the most best editors around here?

Hi, I'm looking for a small number of Wikipedia editors in the Mathematics area who are well-qualified, well-respected, and have high standards. This is for a new project that needs such talents; just now I'd rather not advertise the details. Please tell me some names, including perhaps your own if you fit the description. Thanks. --Zero^talk 10:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Methinks mostest editors went a-scurrying after reading this ungrammatical, error-filled request. linas 15:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

We're not such a judgemental lot are we? It looks more like a case of Groucho Marx to me: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member" :) Geometry guy 16:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Can people who don't edit under their real name rate articles?

At Talk:Cross product, Edgerck reverted Geometry guy's rating of that article, on the grounds that Geometry guy has an anonymous identity and since Edgerck does not agree with the rating anyway. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no. Wikipedia does not require that users reveal their real identity or credentials (it's not acceptable to fake either, but that's a separate issue). Should I not be able to rate articles because I edit under a pseudonym? Disagreeing about the rating is one thing, but he does not automatically have authority because he uses a real name. —METS501 (talk) 15:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Changing the rating because you disagree is fine (although discussion might be helpful). Removing the whole template because someone uses a pseudonym (not the normal meaning of anonymous in a Wikipedia context anyway) suggests that either there is something else going on, or Edgerck is not used to the whole procedure. JPD (talk) 15:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry guy is an established, regular, and seemingly knowledgeable editor of math articles here. To me that carries a lot more weight than knowing or not knowing his real-life name. —David Eppstein 16:30, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course! Anyone can rate articles, and anyone can change ratings. That is the whole spirit of wikipedia! One of the reasons I edit anonymously is that I do not want any of my edits to carry a stamp of authority. They should all be judged individually. I am rating a lot of articles at the moment, and am going to make mistakes (well, we all make mistakes: even a genius like Grothendieck can suggest 57 as a prime, as an anonymous IP editor pointed out to me recently). If anyone disagrees with any of my ratings, change them. Even better, add a comment and sign/date the new rating. I would only ask that they have a quick look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 first to get a feel for the system. Geometry guy 17:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. Looks like people here did not read my original comment in Oleg's page. I commented that in view of the known identity abuses at WP, an user who wishes to remain anon (which they do for their own benefit) should not venture into questionable edits. I think this could be a self-enforced rule, for fairness. This is not just about Gg's rating. To be relevant, ratings need to be 1) based on a statistically significant number of opinions and 2) provided by unique, qualified (even if anon) participants. This is standard stuff. Gg's rating goes against (1) and (2).

On the topic of anonymity, let me comment in general (not making an instance on Gg's case). I am a believer in the need for anon discourse -- for example, in political areas. But, given today's principle of academic freedom, I can't see a reason for anon discourse in physics, math, or biology, for example. And, as anyone can see, the "stamp of authority" argument is not a barrier for online questioning. So, on the contrary, in these areas I see reasons otherwise, with people in WP and elsewhere (eg, usenet groups) using anon discourse and taking pseudonyms with bogus academic qualifications in order to advance crank, niche or copyrighted material under the cloak of an IP number or nickname.

There are also people who seem "well qualified" in WP, but in discussion with them, or reading their edits, their content reveals otherwise. Users who like to patrol some articles in order to ensure conformance with their niche or particular views, with ensuing edit wars if contradicted, are usually not quite open about who they are, as their opinions and methods may backfire.

In summary, I think that transparency (which can be called sincerity etymologically) would go a long way in preventing the distortions seen in WP today, with identifiable individuals that would stand behind their opinions.

Those that wish to remain anon should by all means be allowed to do so, in the name of tolerance, but since they do this for their own benefit they should also use some measure of self-restraint in what they can do or not. While it's certainly fair for anon users to edit and provide opinion, it may not be as fair for them to place themselves as judges of opinion.

I hope this is useful.Edgerck 19:30, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

A fair enough view (the people behind Citizendium also think somewhere along these lines). But restricting anon editing goes against the spirit and policies of Wikipedia however. Not much can be done about this, I guess, unless Jimbo himself has a change of mind (which is unlikely, I think). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:36, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Oleg: A minor nit. As above, I am not for restricting anon editing, even though (just from the view point of information reliability as used in scientific research and journalism, for example) verifiable sources are a basic tenet for reliance on information (trust). What I am for is for self-restricting anon ratings, for the reasons above. Anon users should not use their invisibility cloak if they wish to judge others. Edgerck 19:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see that you have explained why we need to know the person's real name in order to judge their reliability as a WP editor, or why the rating process is so critical and inflammatory that it must only be handled by persons of known reliability. —David Eppstein 19:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

David: "Ratings" is one example of what I would call trust asymmetry in WP today. It's easy to verify that anon editing is actually a recognized problem in WP -- just see the WP policy for verifiable sources, to see the basic contradiction. Why wouldn't there be a need for authors to be verifiable if references should be? However, one can argue that the benefits of anon discourse trumps the rule for verifiable sources. That's acceptable in a balance of interests for what WP is. But using anonymity to judge others seems to be unjustifiable under the same balance of interests. It seems murky and open to distortions, for no real benefit. Reliance on information is more than just what the record says for itself -- there must be independently verifiable channels of information that provide the trust channels for that record.

On another topic, in addition to the crank and niche views, it's possible that WP has a large Intellectual Property liability under the current anon editing guidelines. This will eventually surface. Edgerck 20:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Maths ratings are not about judging others, they are about assessing articles: those who disagree should check out WP:OWN. Geometry guy 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I certainly did read Edgerck's remark on Oleg's page before commenting here: I usually try to check out where a fellow editor is coming from before I contribute. The comment "an user who wishes to remain anon (which they do for their own benefit) should not venture into questionable edits" suggests Edgerck hasn't actually read my post immediately above his, in which I explicitly state one of my own reasons for remaining anon.

The real abuse is not anonymity, but using unverifiable claims of authority to support edits. I don't do this. I do mention (for those who are interested) that I am a professor of differential geometry on my user page, but I explicitly state that I do not want anyone to take this into account when judging my edits. After all, how does the average WP editor know that User:Edgerck is the famous Ed Gerck who

received his doctorate in physics (Dr.rer.nat.) from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet and the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Quantenoptik in Munich, Germany, 1983, with maximum thesis grade ("sehr gut"). He also has titles of Electronic Engineer (1977) and Master of Science (1978) from the Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica (ITA/CTA), Brazil.

and then went on to

work in information security and election integrity received worldwide press coverage by The New York Times, Le Monde, O Globo, Forbes, CBS, CNN, Business Week, Wired and USA Today.

I'm not questioning that he is who he says he is, I am just pointing out that an eponymous username and a list of credentials doesn't help prevent abuse. As Oleg points out, Citizendium is the place for those who want verifiable credentials. Here the policy is: judge every edit on its own merits, and be bold. Don't complain about other user's edits: fix them!

Finally, as for maths ratings, my point of view is that a good result can be achieved by a process analogous to simulated annealing in which many users contribute by adjusting ratings where they think they need to be changed. If Edgerck prefers these ratings to be produced by a statistically significant number of expert opinions, he should go ahead: there are only about 10000 articles still to assess, so it shouldn't take him and him team of experts too long. Geometry guy 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me if this is repetitive. This edit is the result of an edit conflict.

"There are also people who seem "well qualified" in WP, but in discussion with them, or reading their edits, their content reveals otherwise." I would argue that in the case of Geometry guy this is precisely the opposite. He has established himself as a very skilled editor and is an active editor in the community. To my knowledge, none of his edits have been questioned except for the WP 1.0 ratings, and considering that he has over 1000 of these it seems inevitable that someone would disagree with B vs start or a high ve. mid rating, I know that I have been rating quite a few articles lately and have made more mistakes on average than Geometry guy. Rather than assuming that an anonymous editor is unqualified I think a better litmus test (and the one that I think is usually used here at WP) would be to judge the editor on the quality of their edits.

Another example is the friendly exopedian that has been patrolling Calculus and Derivative lately, He has made excellent comments and improved the articles significantly, yet he simply doesn't want to edit under anything but an IP. The W.P. rating system is rather simple, field (this can usually be ascertained by a layman) Importance(more difficult, especially if you are not experienced in said field, this could be a valid change, I know that when I make my edits this is the most frequently changed) Class(this is tricky for articles that cover the topic well, but the topic just isn't that large, but in most other cases assessing the class is rather simple as well). The goal of all these assessment is to place all the important math articles under the same proverbial roof. If you have a problem with the rating, go ahead and correct it, these templates are for use by the editors of the articles so the occasional mis rate doesn't last long assuming the editors are active and doesn't affect the casual reader. --Cronholm144 20:25, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, these ratings are not for casual readers (they are placed on the talk page): they are for other editors. Geometry guy 20:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

When we set up the maths rating process it was designed to be light weight, lacking on buracracy. Any editor can add a rating, if a another editor disagrees with a rating they can ammend it. If there is disagreement then it should discussed on the articles talk page in the first instance, just as any question about the content of the article. As yet I've seen nothing which explains why you disagree with the rating.

If this relates to a specific problem with the article then a discussion on the talk page might help to improve the article. There is even a posibility to edit Talk:Cross product/Comments if there are a comment you wish to make to support a given rating. --Salix alba (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is above -- the rating system is flawed as it stands, especially if you consider anon rating. Hope this helps. Edgerck 21:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

If you believe that, then you should believe that Wikipedia in general is flawed, as it is based on principles allowing anonymous editing of anything, including ratings. Why not join a project like Citizendium that has a more compatible philosophy to yours? —David Eppstein 21:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

David: This is getting long, so I'll be brief. Please do not tell people what they should believe. As I wrote above, my opinion is that anon editing is acceptable in a balance of interests for what WP is. But using anonymity to judge others seems to be unjustifiable under the same balance of interests. Hope this is useful. Edgerck 23:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

For lower grade articles Stub to B+ the system has served us well to date. GA, A and FA ratings have a more formal process to go though to gain those status. If you think the article deserves a higher status then by all means put it forward to WP:GAC, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating or WP:FAC. --Salix alba (talk) 21:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

break it and then fix it? It may be better to have a merit system to begin with. Asking anon users to voluntarily refrain from rating (but not editing!) does not seem to be an undue burden on the informal process. Edgerck 23:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Well it seems that your opinion is not shared by the majority of users here and is not in line with WP policy. So, while it is fine that you believe that, it is not fine to perform reverts in that vein until such criteria is adopted as general policy here. I think the consensus is that you should change the ratings that you don't agree with, rather than revert them.--Cronholm144 23:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I think several people, including me, find your insistence on this rather bizarre for a very simple reason. There are several levels of importance in editing (I will give a rather rough description to make the point). The most important is editing the article itself, creating or modifying articles. Significant errors, unseemly promotion, dubious material, libelous content, can all be introduced this way. Next level of importance contains things like categories or lists. This is because the usual reader can see if a mathematician is categorized (by the category system) as a Jew or bisexual (very contentious matters for whatever reason). Among even less important things are whether a stub gets marked as a "topology stub", "geometry stub", "math stub", or whether the stub marker goes in a section, or should go at the top, or whether a technical tag goes on the article or its talk page. Among the least important is whether a WikiProject tag on an article talk page should say "mid importance", "low importance", etc. or have a grade of "B" or "C", etc. This is the least important because it in no way affects the content of the article and is not even seen by a usual reader. This is a tag for people in a WikiProject. If you don't want to participate, that's fine (although I recommend you do so), but it's designed by other people for their use. Also, I think once you learn about the rating system, you will see that the editorial judgment of whether a topic is of "mid importance" or "top importance" is not only not as important as editing the article itself, but a much easier editorial judgment to make (and correct) than restructuring and changing an entire article. I have no idea what the Atiyah–Singer index theorem is, but I know it is very important. My ignorance prohibits me from changing that article, but you can imagine a less restrained person, after reading some pop-sci article about it, changing the lede section and mucking the whole thing up. That's what you should be worried about, not whether some helpful anonymous person who has a history of accurate mathematical contributions marks your article as "mid importance" for some maintenance purpose. --C S (Talk) 09:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Edgerck is a relatively recent user here and the ways of Wikipedia seem rather alien at first. For example, if in real life, someone does something that you disagree with, then the polite thing to do is to go to them and explain (preferably nicely) what you thought they did wrong. In Wikipedia this is not the right response: instead you should undo or change what was done, preferably with a friendly and explanatory comment in the edit summary. If this change is reverted, only then it is time to go to talk. Since this goes so much against normal real life interaction, it is not surprising that in practice users turn to talk before it is really necessary.

The mathematics project is far better than most of Wikipedia in this regard, but still several users have come to my talk page when all they really needed to do was change the rating. I have been gathering responses here. I understand the tendency to complain instead of fix, talk instead of do, and am certainly guilty of it myself, but this is a wiki: all mistakes can be fixed! It is a pity that hard-working editors rarely receive encouragement and thanks, but often receive criticism for their inevitable mistakes.

Anyway, Edgerck has expressed his opinion, and most people here have disagreed with it. It seems to me that it is time to move on. In fact I think Edgerck himself would like to move on: see e.g. this recent diff. I would love to receive an apology, but I am happy to move on as well. Geometry guy 23:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Apology? Do anonymous users get offended also? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If an anon falls in the forest and nobody is around, does anybody care?

Not at all, but they love good humour, just like regular editors! By the way, if anyone wants to see an example of what can go wrong with unfriendly edit summaries or going to talk too soon, take a look at this unedifying exchange ;) Geometry guy 00:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC) PS. And many thanks to Chan-Ho for deftly inserting the above forest line into the discussion! Geometry guy 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

As a pseudonymous (that is the better term, rather than anonymous) editor, I do not intend, because of my pseudonymity, to limit my editing in any way. Paul August ☎ 03:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Since we are on the anon user issue, could please anyone tell me their opinion whether the WP guidelines for verifiable claims apply also to anon user pages? Thanks. Edgerck 07:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia:Verifiability talks consistently about articles, and user pages are not articles. See Wikipedia:User pages for some things that you cannot have on your user page. I don't think it says so explicitly, but you're also not supposed to lie. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Correct; it also would be counterproductive to require all comments on talk pages to be verifiable. However, we accumulate reputations; see below.

And please, learn the Wikipedia distinction between a truly anonymous editor (someone editing as an IP not logged in to an account), and most other editors (an editor logged in to an account which does not reveal their real-world name). Yet somewhat ironically, an IP can reveal a great deal about the source of an edit!

In the academic world, it is not unusual for those reviewing a paper to do so blindly, without knowing the identity of the author(s). The idea is that the contents should be judged on their merits alone, not on the status or connections of the source. Wikipedia does not demand that contributors use their real name, which in some cases could have terrible personal consequences. However, every account builds a history of contributions, and it usually does not take long to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of an editor.

Wikipedia is distinctly different from a peer-reviewed journal. Some of those differences cause difficulty. For example, a 16-year-old student who is just beginning to master basic algebra has just as much right to edit an article on integral calculus as a college professor who regularly teaches the subject. Both are also free to submit a paper to a journal, but Wikipedia policy makes it rather difficult to give more weight to the professor on this topic and to quickly discard the misconceptions of the student.

Or consider the case of Carl Hewitt, an emeritus faculty member of MIT who made important contributions to computer science. He created an account here under his own name, and was accorded all due respect until it because clear that his edits were not consistent with current mainstream concensus, and were becoming highly disruptive. Arbitration was requested when dialog failed. He proved to be a very bad Wikipedia editor.

Thus I would argue that your concerns about "anonymity" are misplaced. The on-line world has a history and culture of pseudonyms, which I expect to persist at Wikipedia. Credibility and authority are linked to identity in the real world through behavior and association; the same is true here.

Wikipedia is a strange and awkward adolescent, and none of us entirely understand what it is, what it will become, and how best to guide it. We appreciate your interest and participation, and invite you to continue, even though we find this proposal unacceptable. --KSmrq^T 09:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, if a user identifies herself as a persona (a legal term) then that user could be liable for lies, impersonation and false claims. But such questions may not apply to an anon user. As a fictional character, an anon user can certainly claim academic credentials and positions that don't actually exist -- and simply say it was all a fantasy.

Now, why would an anon user who says she is anon because she does not to want any of her edits to carry a stamp of authority, claim an academic credential and a stamp of authority in her user page, and mention them as a weight in public discussions? The same questions, thus, seem to surface again, even for an anon user. Edgerck 08:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

One thing I've regretted a few times is using my real identity on Wikipedia. In any discussion with an imbecile, you will come off looking bad, no matter how well you manage to avoid falling prey to insults. Even if some onlooker (as these Wikipedia discussions will no doubt turn up in a Google search of your name) thinks you behaved well, s/he will wonder why you spend so much time arguing some lame, minor point with some 13 year old instead of working on research. I wonder how silly I will look if a potential employer finds this discussion; answer: probably not half as silly as if s/he found some other of my discussions. I think a number of people that are "Internet-savvy" realize these things quickly and are anonymous for that reason. Also, the value of personal security (of yourself and those around you) is important. I had a bad incident where somebody living in fairly close proximity to me sent threatening emails to me and some of those around me. I can't help but feel bad that some people had to endure this kind of thing because I have a hobby like editing Wikipedia. I refrain from editing truly contentious topics for this very reason, although it can be strangely difficult to avoid. --C S (Talk) 10:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Shortly after the recent tragic shooting at Virginia Tech, attempts were made to mention it in the articles on the two guns identified. There were some strong opinions about whether that was appropriate, and one editor went seriously over the line in his comments to many here. Eventually he told one woman, an admin who had cautioned him, that he lived near her, and then he threatened her life. A quick decision was made to permanently ban him from Wikipedia, and the worst of his remarks were permanently deleted (they will not even appear in histories). I would be offended by a suggestion that the threatened admin have restricted rights because of a reasonable choice to hide personal information in order to avoid such risks.

Or consider editors in Burma or Tunisia or certain other countries where the Web is censored. If they edit openly, they may risk imprisonment or assassination.

Editors choose what to expose and what to reveal, for many different reasons. The on-line community generally does not distrust partial anonymity, no more than we would mistrust someone for having a lock on the door.

And, frankly, if you really are the Ed Gerck (Ph.D.!) described here, I find your comments hard to take at face value. Perhaps they are a crude attempt to probe how trust works on Wikipedia? --KSmrq^T 12:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have a specific question for G-guy, why don't you address him on his talk page? Instead of making vague insinuations here in a public forum(I am aware this is not a sentence).--Cronholm144 09:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for my rudeness Ed, I was feeling grumpy and sleepy and thought that this issue had been put to rest. However this is no excuse for my actions. I violated my own wikipolicy and I am ashamed that I did not assume good faith. --Cronholm144 15:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Cronholm144. Your comment is framed in such kindness that I can only hope I can be of help to you in the future. Edgerck 15:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. G-guy's comment refers to the comment above this one

Thanks so much for accepting my apology.:) The thing that would help me most would be your continued involvement here, whatever form that may take. This little wikipedia community needs as many good editors as it can get. If you are up to it, your rating of unrated maths articles would be much appreciated, or feel free to contribute to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Month by voting or editing. These two have become my pet projects here. I am sure as you continue to make great edits. like you have at Cross product, you will develop a few pet project/peeves of your own. ;)--Cronholm144 16:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think I should be grateful to Edgerck for generating so much interest in mathematics article assessment! When I raised it recently at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive_25#Mathematics_article_assessment, the silence was deafening. Unfortunately, because of the lack of response, this post got archived by the bot. I encourage Edgerck and others who missed that post to take a look. If only I had appreciated the benefits of controversy earlier; I could have created a sock-puppet account and started an edit war with myself, sigh ;)

Concerning the question: why would a pseudonymous user mention their career on their user page? Personally, I find it useful to know a little bit about other users, because it helps in communicating with them using a medium which is at best suboptimal. If the user did it to add weight to their edits, then they are certainly misguided. For one thing, it doesn't work. I don't know if Edgerck has tried using his credentials in this way, but he will probably find it is more likely to make other editors hostile than reverent. The ideal at Wikipedia is to judge each edit on its own merits and if editors are judged at all, it is purely on the quality of their edits. The fact that I mentioned my profession above added no weight to my comment. I have never used it to support my edits to maths articles and never will.

Concerning verifiability: there is no contradiction between anonymous users and verifiability. It is the article that must be verifiable, not the editor. Any statement can be challenged and removed if a reliable source is not found. It doesn't make any difference who produced the statement. Indeed in some ways it is better if the statement was made by someone with unverifiable identity/credentials, since then it can only be judged on its own merits! I know an editor who contributes only as an anon IP for precisely this reason.

Finally maths ratings. I repeat again, they are not judgements or referee reports or anything of the kind. They are an organisational tool. And, quite frankly, if anons and pseudonymous users restrain themselves, mathematics article assessment is not going to get done. I was rather disappointed by the lack of response to my previous posts on this topic; Edgerck may not realise that before this post, the maths rating system was in the doldrums. Now it is moving again. Geometry guy 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Desirability for ratings to be signed and dated, on-page

I don't see a problem with ratings by users under their "noms-de-wiki". But what I think can be hard is ratings without any comment, date or signature (apart from buried in the edit history). Firstly, because it doesn't give any on-page indication as to how long ago the article was rated, as so how it might have changed since that time; and secondly, it can make it seem as if the article has been rated by an impersonal unarguable and unappealable "voice of God", rather than by a particular wiki-member of the project.

So could raters please add a name and a date into the comments space, even if they don't add a comment? Cheers, Jheald 09:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, ideally all maths ratings should be signed and dated, preferably with a brief comment on how to improve the article. However, there are many which have no such comments — see Category:Mathematics articles with no comments — and commenting takes time to do. I take the point of view that it is more useful to the project to have an important article rated without a comment than not rated at all. However, anyone who happens on a maths rating without comments has the following options:

1. They agree with the rating; then they can sign/date it, or even add a comment.
2. They disagree with the rating; then they can change the rating, sign/date it, and add a comment.
3. They can check the edit history to see who added the rating, go to that editor's user page and complain.

It is a pity that the third approach is often taken instead of the first two.

Concerning the "voice of God" point, I think there is some misperception about what maths ratings are for. They are not judgements; they are not for readers, but for editors; anyone can change them; anyone can comment on or sign them. They are aimed at directing future edits to improve our coverage, they are not "referee reports" on work done so far. Geometry guy 10:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Further to this, Cronholm and I have managed to instruct AWB to allow us to leave comments or at least sign. The list we are working through is here: these are essentially the unrated articles on Oleg's list, and are ordered by the number of articles which link to them. Any AWB fans just need to save the source for the page in a text file to join in the fun. Geometry guy 12:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Rather than grumble, I decided to take up my own suggestion and sign a few ratings. I went through the entire stub class, checking the articles, upgrading them to start class where appropriate, adding a (helpful, or often not so helpful) comment in a few cases, and signing and dating in general.

This moves the goalposts again of course, and there will undoubtedly be complaints about ratings without comments, but I am getting used to this. The number of unsigned/dated assessed articles peaked at nearly 1800 recently: it looks like it can be brought back down closer to 1000. Geometry guy 21:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: after peaking at around 1800, the number of assessed articles without comments, signature or date has come down to a more manageable 709. Of course, most of these are just a signature and date, and many of the comments are bland, not particularly helpful, or possibly even tactless ;) ! Please feel free to replace these by something more useful. I would also point out that there is nothing to stop editors from assessing or commenting on articles to which they have contributed (even substantially): it is the article that is being assessed, not the editor! Geometry guy 16:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Layout of the main assessment page

I think some overview of the assessment goals should be placed near the top of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment (which is linked from the {{maths rating}} template). When I first encountered these assessments, I was also a bit confused as to their purpose. I had to dig around a bit to determine that they are in fact a very good thing. An FAQ might also be helpful (if there isn't one already?). Silly rabbit 12:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll update that page: it's original main use was a template to be transcluded onto other pages. The main page for the article assessment scheme is Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0, but I can improve the "noinclude" information on the template to clarify this.

There is no FAQ at the moment. Could you start one? I'm sure others and myself who have been involved in the renaissance of the programme would be glad to contribute to it. Geometry guy 13:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Aye cap'n. I can start one. I'll post an announcement here once I have a working version. Silly rabbit 13:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It'll definitely be a good thing to have comments from someone not too close to the development of the programme. Meanwhile I've patched up the /Assessment page. Geometry guy 14:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving pages with assessment comments

When moving an article, you have to remember to also move the /Comments subpage if it exists. For instance, when Euler integration is moved to Euler method, the talk page Talk:Euler integration automatically goes with it, to Talk:Euler method. However, the subpage Talk:Euler integration/Comments is not automatically moved to Talk:Euler method/Comments; you have to do this by hand.

This is a pity as it will go wrong in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have any better suggestion that just telling everybody to keep this in mind. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:04, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a bot could check for this :-) --C S (Talk) 09:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Is this a problem for all articles with archived talk pages as well, eg Talk:Entropy/Archive7 ? If so, this is a much bigger problem, and should be urgently patched in the wiki software. Jheald 10:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there an extant proposal to modify Special:Movepage so that it offers an option "[ ] Move subpages (if any)" in addition to "[ ] Move associated talk page(s)"?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out Jitse! I agree that it is definitely a flaw in the wiki software, especially now that subpages are encouraged for so many things (e.g., /doc pages for templates). I would also note that if a page about a rated mathematician is moved (e.g. to make the form of the name comply with Wikipedia guidelines), then there may also be a Talk:.../Data subpage to move. Geometry guy 10:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

That was me, sorry about that. I moved the page, fixed the redirects, but did not think of the comments page. Good to know in the future. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

To answer my own question above: yes, there is such a proposal: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9626. If you think this is a good idea, you can vote for it.  --Lambiam^Talk 06:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Help required for a big development of Trigonometry and related articles.

The article is somewhat shell-ish; i outlined a framework for the new article on the article talk page. Please, let's get this article good.. i love trig! ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ ^{slurp me!} 19:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

References

Hey everyone, as you may know Geometry guy and I are working on categorization of the various Math articles. I have noticed in rating my first hundred or so that there seems to be a recurrent lack of references on various articles ranging in class and importance from stub to B and low to high. Is there anything that can be done about this? I for one have about four gigs of electronic mathematics texts and would be willing to upload them to a central location for use by editors. Let me know what your thoughts are on this. Thanks--Cronholm144 04:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, references are important. Google books is an awesome resource for finding references.

There are also a couple of tools which allow one to format references given the ISBN; template builder, and my own tool (the latter is slow and produces code which always needs tweaking, but is useful as a backup). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

These are all good tools but unfortunately Google doesn't allow for easy reading, I.E. it only shows snippits of the work. The cite tool is good, but If the author doesn't have a usable ref, it won't work quite as well. I just would like for there to be a way for editors to be able to actually cite the material, rather than to just list titles in the bibliography.--Cronholm144 04:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, it just offers a few pages. But if you know what you search for, and go through a few books in the list of results (or search through the given book for more pages), you can learn a lot of stuff and is much more efficient than digging through a real book or visiting the library, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

We do have a project-page devoted to referencing Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Reference resources. Your electronic text sounds interesting, not being attached to a university put most online journals out of my reach, however I can see problems with copyright and licences if these are put in a public space. --Salix alba (talk) 07:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I have created a page that list the references that I can provide in text form, most are DjVu or PDF. User:Cronholm144/List_of_References Be warned the list is rather extensive. I hope you all take a look. Just E-mail me and I will send you the required material...but only if I know you. My E-mail is in my UBXes under basics. Hope I can be of service!--Cronholm144 06:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Since I have not posted the texts themselves on an open site I think this is alright... anyone here know copyright law?

I had attempted to do a similar thing [4] but my list was not as comprehensive as yours. It should be easy to source most of our math articles with standard graduate school references. I felt, however, that I was being a little lazy by not tracking down the "best" sources. shotwell 11:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I have revamped the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Reference_resources. I would like some input on how to improve it further.--Cronholm144 04:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Subscripts on underbraces

In Faà di Bruno's formula, I tried to edit this not-too-satisfactory expression:

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

In normal LaTeX, as opposed to the somewhat stripped-down version of TeX used on Wikipedia, a subscript on an underbrace would be directly under the center of the underbrace. As a first step toward achieving that result here, I tried something:

$n={{\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} } \atop m_{1}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

Not surprisingly, the expression with the first underbrace looks OK by itself, but is not correctly aligned with the rest of the expression. One could of course but empty expressions under the other terms, but that seems more cumbersome than what the software ideally would provide for.

Here's the surprise: Look at the SECOND underace in the SECOND display. At least on my browser, it now appears directly under the center of the underbrace, as one would normally wish it to be, even though it code is identical to what appears in the FIRST display. Is the (temporary, at least?) solution just to put some dummy blank expression down there somewhere so that the display has enough room for these to fit down there?

And how 'bout a more permanent solution? I know nothing about who maintains the software or how; I just think of it as if it is inexplicable divine providence. Just file a bug report through the usual channels? Michael Hardy 21:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps something is temporarily broken, because the example on the formula help page looks to me the way you expect. This may have something to do with a TeX "style" decision. Compare using an explicit "\displaystyle".

$\displaystyle n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}{\text{ terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}{\text{ terms}}}$

Also note that I use "\text" instead of "\mbox", which fixes another problem not mentioned. --KSmrq^T 22:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the problem seems to have gone away for me, though the bad images are cached. --KSmrq^T 23:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

So next time you encounter this problem, change the TeX in a way that does not change make a difference, e.g., add \, or {} at the end of the equation (the problem was fixed in a software upgrade about half a year ago, but, as KSmrq said, the bad images are cached). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

An invisible change can be simpler still: add a space (almost anywhere inside the <math> tags).

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

$n=\underbrace {1+\cdots +1} _{m_{1}\ {\mbox{terms}}}+\underbrace {2+\cdots +2} _{m_{2}\ {\mbox{terms}}}$

The caching is presumably based on a hash of the characters, with no regard for meaning. Also note that in the above example pair I did nothing to fix the second problem, for those who didn't see it before. --KSmrq^T 23:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Why do they not just modify the caching so that it removes a few of the oldest entries from the cache each day? They would then be re-calculated as if they were new formulas. Then the effects of any software changes would eventually propagate to the entire cache. It seems to be an obvious solution. JRSpriggs 11:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Reliance on information

Perhaps someone might want to suggest changes or join this experiment: User_talk:Edgerck#Reliance_on_Information Comments are welcome (down the page, please!). I hope this is useful. Edgerck 11:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

5280 (number)

I nominated this for deletion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/5280 (number). Comments welcome. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Should I mention this Afd this to WP numbers? I think it is as much their issue as it is ours.--Cronholm144 05:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

AFD

I've nominated List of prime numbers for deletion here. Feel free to comment. —METS501 (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, don't feel free to comment any more. :-) Closed as speedy keep. —METS501 (talk) 02:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. :) Sometimes it helps testing the waters over here before nominating an article for deletion. If mathematicians here say a math article sucks, the rest of the crowd at AfD usually has no choice but to agree. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

...and another

Someone's nominated three coin for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three coin. Michael Hardy 00:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

still another

I have nominated table of divisors and table of prime factors for deletion. --Trovatore 04:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Quintic equation

If anyone has a minute, can they try to decipher this edit and reinsert it in coherent English? It was written by a user who doesn't speak English very well, and has been removed by me for the time being. —METS501 (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry vandalism

I take it the semi-protection of geometry has expired, because we're right back to vandalism. My assessment of the experiment is that vandalism completely disappeared during protection, and positive contributions appeared. Conclusion: semi-protection should be permanent. --KSmrq^T 04:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yuktibhasa the first treatise on Calculus

In the article Yuktibhasa it is said that the work of the same name by Indian astronomer Jyeshtadeva, is considered to be the first mathematical treatise on calculus. This became a DYK also. Most of the sources online refer to the work thus. However, certain users have questioned this notion in connection with Indian Mathematics and Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics. Rather than leaving the resolution to quasi experts, this question should be settled here, I think.

The conversation referred to is ongoing at Talk:Indian mathematics the major players are User:Jagged 85 and User:Fowler&fowler. However most articles that mention the history of calculus will be affected by the result of this conflict.--Cronholm144 07:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, as there is no original research allowed, at most certain references may have to be added. It is outside the scope of Wikipedia to rule on what is the first treatise on calculus (even if that is a meaningful statement). Charles Matthews 10:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Portal updates

I'm going to be away from Wikipedia for a few weeks and I haven't had time to update the Mathematics portal. It will go bust next Monday unless someone updates it. Every week the portal looks for a new article of the week at a specific page. These pages need to be written ahead of time. Specifically, someone needs to fill out

• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 21
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 22
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 23

You can copy the basic structure from Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 20. Just pick your favorite article and write a short blurb about it. Pictures are good. You can see a list of articles already featured at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article archive. -- Fropuff 07:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Some potential choices, culled from a discussion at the Reference desk proceeding from a request for an interesting math topic for a high-school presentation:

• Pascal's triangle (B?) article is a mess
• Interesting number paradox (stub) Too short
• Fractal (B+) Selected for 21
• Zeno's paradoxes (B+)
• Tic-tac-toe (B)
• Topology (B)
• Cardinal number (B) Difficult to find a good image; Continuum hypothesis used recently.
• Ordinal number (GA)
• p-adic number (B)
• Platonic solid (B+) Used recently
• Minimal surface (stub) Too short
• Monty Hall Problem (FA) but used last year
• Nomogram (start) Too short
• Analog computer (B)
• Map projection (GA) Selected for 22

 --Lambiam^Talk 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've commented on the above. Here also is the list from Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions. Cronholm will be shocked that some of the above have not yet been rated! Geometry guy 11:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Derivative (GA)
• Nash equilibrium (GA)
• Ordinal number (GA)
• Order theory (GA)
• String theory (GA)
• Sylvester's sequence (GA)
• Znám's problem (GA)

To save this from breaking, I've arbitrarily put Fractal in the next portal. The blurb is just a cut and paste from the introduction, so needs improvement. Geometry guy 12:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The only one that shocked me was Zeno's paradoxes and Platonic solids,the rest I can understand, I have updated the ratings.this is the other Cronholm144--Πρ 03:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sadly noone improved Fractal or has made any further suggestions. One option is to go for Pascal's triangle next, even though it needs a bit of work. There is a colourful Image:Sierpinski-rgb.png to use as the lead image, connecting fractals and binomial coefficients. Just a thought. Geometry guy 19:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried to improve Pascal's triangle, but the closer I looked, the more I found it a confusing mess. I think this one is hopeless for the portal. Most of the other articles above are either too ragged, or don't seem to offer the prospect of a decent image. Map projection might be okay, so I would suggest that. Any comments? Geometry guy 15:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

A quick skim of map projection is encouraging; looks like an above average article with a variety of content, broad appeal, and numerous figures and links. The most apparent weakness is that the mathematics does not go very deep. --KSmrq^T 15:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Now copied in... Geometry guy 12:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

...but with a link to Fractal, which a user kindly fixed today. Unfortunately it is too much work to bring deep mathematics to the portal, and no one appears to be up for that, so I've found a nice A-class basics article, namely Golden section for number 23. I guess we will just have to ask Fropuff please not to take any more holidays ;) Geometry guy 18:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Liminal property

According to this article, "liminally compact" is another way to say "locally compact". I asked the author of the page two months ago whether some reference could be added (see User talk:Wikimorphism). I got a reply that it was definitely used as claimed in the article, but no references have appeared and the author has vanished. So, is anybody familiar with this usage? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the contributor was not sure it had every appeared in print. The article is only a stub, and a dubious one at that, so it would be no great burden to recreate it should the need arise. I have PRODed it. --KSmrq^T 13:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Uh... I think I made a mistake on this one. :( after the PROD expired I "deleted" the article, but I don't think I have the power to actually delete articles. Could an admin fix my mistake? Thanks--Cronholm144 19:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell GA/R

I have nominated Bertrand Russell for WP:GA/R due to inadequate referencing. I hope the article gets the attention it deserves during this process to retain its quality rating. Please see discussions at Wikipedia:Good_article_review#Bertrand_Russell. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:54, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The review was speedily closed to delist. CMummert · talk 12:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

A speedy delist. That's a new one, isn't it? The usual result of nominating a math-related article for GA/R is argumentation and then delist. But I suppose it's wise of them to skip the usual bickering with folk from here and go ahead to the delisting. --C S (Talk) 13:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I applaud the new procedures. They save time and trouble for everyone. -- Dominus 13:51, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

However, I would suggest a change of name to Wikipedia:Articles with footnotes, since the evident criteria of the project have nothing to do with the quality of the articles. This is of course partly tongue in cheek; but if there is any support here, I will go through with it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed that there is some serious animosity here towards the standards people, along the lines that they insist on irrelevant, perhaps ignorant, and superficial changes to otherwise good articles and refuse to recognize the quality of articles whose referencing does not satisfy their arbitrary but inflexible requirements. I share this frustration regarding good mathematics articles that can never achieve Good status because the needs of mathematics differ from the needs of other, more empirical subjects where frequent, inline referencing is the only means of assessing veracity. However, Bertrand Russell is a biography, and it makes purely factual (as opposed to logical) claims that really should be justified by some reliable source, and in this article, they are not. The same is true of Georg Cantor, mentioned down the page here. Mathematical biographies are not "mathematics", referencing-wise. Just including a (however laudably-complete) list of bibliographic sources is not good enough, since how am I, the reader, to find a particular fact in any of them without any guidance? (See also the video, now on YouTube, of Serre on how not to write mathematics, regarding "citing the collected works of Euler"). Even in mathematics articles, any surprising claim should be cited in one of the sources (a deep theorem, for example); since truth is stranger than fiction, in biographies, all claims are surprising :) Ryan Reich 01:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The gruff way in which these presumably well-meaning people throw their weight around does not help to reduce that animosity, such as speedily delisting an article before even anyone had a chance to realize it had been put up for review. And what can we say about this singularly unhelpful and brusque brush-off in response to a request for clarification about a requirement for a "solid rewrite", since, as far as the WikiProject Mathematics is concerned, it is an A-class article. The response was, literally and in its totality: "If this is the case then the Maths Project needs to reconsider its rating since that is a wholly inaccurate assessment."  --Lambiam^Talk 17:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

And there is one major modern biography of Cantor: the one by Dauben (Aczel is a popularization; most of the other book-length works are either dated, or deal with the mathematics.) I would assume, without further checking, that any statement not purely mathematical and not otherwise sourced claims to refer to Dauben, who has an index. Evaluating that claim would involve reading the article alongside Dauben, which I have not done; and which Bad Articles haven't done either..

It would require doing so even if every reference to Dauben were duly footnoted, with almost as much work.

I suppose we should be grateful that juvenile and incompetent editors are engaged in this frivolity, and not doing wider harm to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Lambiam's comment: Cantor was one of the articles that was rated A-class before the very new A-class review, so it would have been conceivable that the process wasn't right. I thought that must have been the case until I noticed that the article is also rated A-class by three other wikiprojects including Biography. Nevertheless, the reviewers are probably correct that the article doesn't satisfy WP:WIAGA. People outside this project also grumble about the state of the GA process, but I haven't seen serious discussion towards reworking it from the ground up, which I think is what will be required. CMummert · talk 23:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that there exists a powerful feeling within this project is that the GA process is broken and should be ignored, and the in-house ratings of Bplus and A replace it. I have even heard a person here say that they would rather have an article stay start class forever than be reviewed by the GA process. I am actually a fan of the GA process in general and I have participated in listing GA articles in the past, but the process cannot be applied in the same way to mathematics articles. I agree that there should be a discussion of the compatibility of Maths articles and the GA process here, if only to be able to present a united front in the future.

Regarding the Bertrand Russell delist, the article, which has a tag that "consensus was reached" for its delisting, was only a candidate for delist for one hour and nineteen minutes. This does not seem appropriate even for a "speedy" delist. I will end this post with the title of the announcement that Calculus was no-longer a GA class ariticle, "Obscure article Removed Status of Good Article" You can see it in its original context here. I think that this kind of thing illustrates why some of us here are jaded. --Cronholm144 02:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I have recommended that GA be moved, at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles#Requested_move. If it is, I would be content to ignore it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Georg Cantor Good article review

Georg Cantor has been put on Good article review, I suppose, as a punishment for emphasizing his maths over his (non)-Jewishness. Feel free to comment. Arcfrk 07:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I recognize the name of the nominator; this is simply more footnote-worship. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have any problems as regards myself PMAnderson please take it to WP:ANI. If you do not, and continue to make remarks on other talk pages as regards myself, I will not hesitate in reporting you there for baiting me. We both disagree on the level of citationing an article needs, so let's leave it at that. LuciferMorgan 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I am pleased to come back from ANI bearing news that this threat seems to have been retracted. I admit I do not share LuciferMorgan's simple and unjustified faith in what citation can accomplish; but we also disagree on whether "citationing" is an English participle. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

How many internal links to "mathematics"?

The number of Wikipedia pages linking to mathematics exceeds 10,000 (ten thousand) and I stopped counting at that point.

• Is there a quick way to count them?
• Does that page hold the record, i.e. is it the one with the largest number of such links? (So I suspect.)

Michael Hardy 01:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 25#Most linked to math articles. You could ask Mathbot (i.e. Oleg) for an update of User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles, if you need current information. JRSpriggs 05:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The list is at User:Mathbot/Most_linked_math_articles: I believe this list only counts mathematics articles linking to a given mathematics article. For example, there are about 5500 mathematics articles linking to mathematics (and this is number one by a huge margin). The list is fairly up-to-date, except that since then Cronholm and I have been down the list to about the 800th most linked article adding maths ratings.

Regarding the first question, links to an article can be counted by loading the "What links here" list into AutoWikiBrowser and filtering out the links which are not in the main space. Geometry guy 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I count 13642 links; discarding redirect pages, talk pages, and pages in other namespaces, I count 10462 articles linking directly or via a redirect to Mathematics.  --Lambiam^Talk 10:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no quick way to count links using the web interface, but there are some programming APIs that can be used. The record for most links used to belong to United States. Right now that article has 301,386 links (counted using m:query.php which I learned has serious performance problems with this sort of query). CMummert · talk 22:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Iteratively Re-weighted Least Squares

Hello to everybody at the Math Wikiproject. While evaluating articles to be created at WP:AFC, I encountered this Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Today#Iteratively_Re-weighted_Least_Squares. I am not too good with things math related so can someone here who is more knowledgeable review the submission to see if it is worthy of an article? Thanks for helping. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 06:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It was created by Salix alba and subsequently edited by Lambiam and myself. In case anyone else here cares to view the results, they are now at iteratively re-weighted least squares. —David Eppstein 19:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

External link at Mathematician

I appear to be in conflict with a user who in this edit removed a link I had just added to the article Mathematician. The edit summary is: careercornerstone.org advert link, not a good quality link for this article. This user wrote to me on their talk page: "And yes I am very unflexible about this. When I clean up a mass spamming I expect it to stay cleaned up."

I don't want to get into a revert war, which this would clearly become. I'd appreciate it if some of you could give an independent judgement whether and to what extent this link is (in)appropriate.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I just saw that the AMS has several links to this organization on its website: [5], [6], and [7] (the last two having the very same link that was removed from the external links section at Mathematician). 17:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it would help to explain that you are not connected with Career Corner, or that you do not intend to mass include the link. I would have some doubts about the link: it is a commercial link, and it offers career advice. Skimming suggests that it is sound; but career advisor is one of the things WP is not. Perhaps wait a week, and then add the first AMS link above (the other two are linkfarms)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The organization behind the link is not commercial. It also has good information and seems more informative than the AMS link. The potential problem is that I'd guess there are quite a lot of similar sites and that the addition of one link will lead to many others. So, the question is: Is this one particularly good?

Yes, the user that removed the link is inflexible about it, but in my experience also susceptible to reasoning. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Jitse, I take that as a compliment! (: The story with careercornerstone.org is that it was part of a mass spamming. I only have a problem with that particular link and I am sure that there are plenty of other Mathematician career links it could be replaced with. Even a commercial link would be fine by me. (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

Since I'm visiting this math project I would like to bring up a relevant topic; The mathematics of Wikipedia mass spammings. I'm a spam fighter, I see a lot of Wikipedia spam, and I've noticed something interesting that happens during mass spammings. It doesn't make a difference how blatant or how heinous a mass spamming is. There will always be regular editors who WP:AGF and want to keep the spam. It's a constant and that number works out to be about 3%. So imagine a case where an external link is added to thousands of Wikipedia articles. Most of the spam will get deleted but some will stick and unfortunately the pro-spammers have figured out that this is a successful strategy. I can extrapolate and see an end game where all Wikipedia is consumed by this spam. I see some game theory and some statistics at work here, am I missing any related or important fields? Also from a mathematics perspective is there any advice that you can give me to help deal with this growing problem? (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

What makes a link "spam"? Is it a property of the link, or of the process and external to any intrinsic qualities of the link and is the removal a punitive measure for misbehaviour? Would the AMS put spam links on their own pages, not once but repeatedly? The web site seems pretty good to me (at least in the areas for which I can judge this, which includes mathematics). This may be because they don't need to worry about generating money and are actively supported by many of the leading professional societies (such as the AMS). It also helps that they focus on a limited range of academic disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Computing, and Medicine. As mathematicians we tend to gripe that young people have completely wrong ideas what it means to be a mathematician; well, this website does a decent job of giving the right idea. If other equally good career centre websites exist, I'm not aware of it, and I don't expect a deluge if we open the gates.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the nature of link spam? That's a complicated question. It's part property, causality, contiguity, and personal identity. Every spamming is different and no one rule applies globally. The intent of removal is more preventive than it is punitive. In fact the whole purpose of the escalating {{spam}} tags and the blacklist is to make the spam stop. Unfortunately spam usually returns and sometimes it even grows as is happening in the Mathematician article. Rewarding it is definitely the wrong course of action. I don't know anything about the AMS links you mention and I have no opinion of them. (Requestion 05:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

American Mathematical Society--Cronholm144 06:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What about this rule: if an editor in good standing adds a link, based on their judgement that the link enhances the value of the article, then the mere fact that that link has been used in other edits deemed spamming is not sufficient cause by itself to warrant reversion. Does that sound reasonable?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Why would you want to reward spamming behavior like that? Look at this as a complex interconnected dynamical system and think about how a reward plays into the game theory aspects at work. Besides, adding previously deleted spam links just isn't a good idea. Do you really want to fight over a spam link that a different editor in good standing wants to delete? (Requestion 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

Think of it this way: why would you let spammers control your criteria for what is or is not a good link? Wouldn't it be better to make that determination by judgments of knowledgeable editors, rather than by whether or not some spammer has decided to spam that link? And how do you know, in each case, that the persons responsible for creating the spam are the same as the ones rewarded by the existence of a link? —David Eppstein 18:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It's how WP works, anyway: different opinions in tension. There is a spam blacklist for links. If a link is not blacklisted, adding it is up for grabs. Charles Matthews 18:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Requisition, if there is a non-spam link that contains the same information, by all means replace it. If not, I would hate to remove a useful link just because someone decided to spam it.--Cronholm144 19:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The link wasn't there before they spammed it. (Requestion 19:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

I understand. I never meant to imply anything to the contrary, but the link is appropriate for the article--Cronholm144 20:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fact: spamming works. And consequently it blights our lives. On an individual level, it means we need to use spam filters for our emails (and check their content regularly), while for Wikipedia it means we need to have bots which systematically remove spam, and dedicated users like Requestion who patrol pages for spamming. It is a pain.

But it is worth asking why spam works. In emails, it works because for every 10000 users for whom the spam is an irritation and a violation, there may be one for whom it is just what they were looking for. The same principle applies to Wikipedia. Sometimes a spammer's link is a useful addition to an article. Requestion suggests a figure of 3% for spam links which some other editor accepts. This is surely higher than Wikipedia can tolerate and we should definitely try to bring it down (one editor's acceptance is not enough unless well argued, as it seems to be in this case). However, denying the reason that spam works will have little or no effect in reducing it. Just because a link was not there before it was spammed does not mean it is not a useful link. I hope that in more than 97% of the cases (99.9% might be more appropriate!) the spam link is removed permenantly, but that is not the same as saying that all cleaned up spam links stay cleaned up. Yes, the spammer gets a reward for spamming even if 0.1% of their links survive, but this is not a zero-sum game: as long as knowledgeable and impartial editors decide which 0.1% survives, Wikipedia can benefit too. This is no comfort for the spam fighters, I know, but putting our hands on our eyes and saying "see no evil" does nothing to reduce the evil in the world. Geometry guy 21:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you User:Geometry guy for your analysis. The 3% value I mentioned is my "spam deletion challenge rate" which is how often I get into time consuming arguments about deleted spam. The amount of raw spam that sneaks its way into articles is far higher. (Requestion 14:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC))

I previously wrote a long explanation of the origin of the term "spam", but then deleted it figuring everyone knew. But now it seems people are confusing the different notions of spam, so let me write it again. Spam, in one of its early forms, referred to unsolicited bulk emails (and subsequently other forms of messaging, such as postings to Usenet and instant messages). The key is here "unsolicited" and "bulk". You may get an unsolicited message, but it is not spam if it is not bulk. If one is subscribed to a mailing list, one will get bulk messages, but it cannot be called unsolicited.

What is spam on Wikipedia? "Unsolicited" cannot play a role in the definition, as everyone is invited to contribute to the "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit". By the very nature of Wikipedia, nobody is required to consent with an explicit permission before a link is added to Wikipedia. Rather Wikipedia "spam" only refers to the "bulk" criterion. As mentioned previously, some of us get bulk messages everyday, from various mailing lists. They may not be useful or interesting to us most of the time. But that is how it works; it is the very nature of the medium.

Now let me comment on the "winning" by spammers. We may curse the minority of people that like to get emails about "V I 4 G R 4", shake our heads, and say "the spammers won", but what about a Wikipedia contributor, the majority of whose contributions may be useless or detrimental to Wikipedia? If a few of these contributions are of great value to Wikipedia, and we keep them in Wikipedia, did this contributor "win"? What would happen if we decided to go through Wikipedia, deleting content by figuring out if the majority of contributions by one person are useless? Supposing most of Wikipedia would still be intact (as we can expect) after such an action, was this really a good thing to do? That's what is really the topic under discussion. Let's not confuse it with misleading analogies (cf apples and oranges) perpetuated by usage of similar terminology.

Ultimately, to echo Charles Matthews, unless it's on the spam blacklist, by the nature of Wikipedia, the link is up for discussion. If consensus says keep the link, keep the link. --C S (Talk) 16:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

no definition or discussion of "strong"

Hi... hey, if I had a dollar for every instance of the word "strong" in mathematics articles, I'm sure I could buy a tiny microwave from Walmart... but there doesn't seem to be any section of any article that defines/discusses "strong" (I'm told it means "result A is stronger than result B if B can immediately be deduced from A"). This is definitely strongly needed.. need something to wikilink the word "strong" to. I really appreciate your help. Ling.Nut 06:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

PS I bet it would be a small, wikilinkable subsection of a larger, more general article.. but I have no idea what article that would be... thanksLing.Nut 06:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You mean like a fortiori? —David Eppstein 06:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes I do, in fact. But the link goes to the top of a table... and it's impossible to tell which entry is meant.. say for example "blah blah blah found an even [[a fortiori|stronger]] proof that..." Is there any way to.. umm.. write an article for the term? Or write three sentences to stick in another article? Thanks! Ling.Nut 06:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe wikt:a fortiori is more satisfactory? —David Eppstein 07:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

(undent) Well, yeah, sort of. I was really hoping for a very brief discussion of how the term is used in mathematics. But for now, 'tis enough, 'twill serve, and all that... thanks!!! Oh if you ever do write such an article please drop a line to my talk. But I'll use wikt for now. thanks again. Ling.Nut 07:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Would it be satisfactory to include it at the list of words in Mathematical jargon?  --Lambiam^Talk 12:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added it there. Ryan Reich 21:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Rn

What is the convention regarding the use of $\mathbb {R} ^{n}$ versus Rⁿ? Jhausauer 20:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

See /Archive5#question about formatting of standard symbols (I didn't find a more recent discussion). The project tends not to be prescriptive, but there seems to be a preference for bold inline html, and blackboard bold math in display. Geometry guy 20:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There's another possibility: ℝⁿ (type &Ropf; or copy-and-paste the unicode). It should look more like the math version, but may work less well for people who don't have big unicode font sets installed. —David Eppstein 21:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

ℝ? Doesn't seem to work for me. Silly rabbit 21:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't look carefully enough at my source. &Ropf; should work in MathML but is unavailable in HTML. Another way of typing the same thing, that does work in HTML: &#8477;. —David Eppstein 21:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This may depend on your OS, browser, monobook.js, installed fonts, and the house Uranus is in, but for me ℝⁿ isn't very legible. ℝⁿ, with the font size one up, is almost twice as tall and quite legible, although the subscript is a bit too low.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This is mentioned in the mathematics style manual. We use "'''R'''" inline and "\R" (or equivalent) in displayed TeX equations. --KSmrq^T 05:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Archives of this page

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive Index is currently broken. I have fixed the most obvious break, which is that, after number 20, archive titles have a space before the number.

However, more seriously, the complete archive takes many seconds to load and now breaks the infamous pre-expand include limit. (What? Never heard of that? Take a look at Wikipedia:Template limits: this is useful knowledge, since it affects quite a few of our activities.) I propose that the complete archive should be replaced by a pre-2006 archive, and that the years (2006 and 2007) in the table should link to a page listing all the archives for the given year. This would not break the pre-expand include limit. I would just do it, but thought that other editors might like to know that something went wrong. Geometry guy 22:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've now implemented this. Geometry guy 00:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that. I have never tried looking at the entire archive. CMummert · talk 05:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Neighbourhood (mathematics)

There is a discussion at Talk:Neighbourhood (mathematics)#Which comes first: neighborhood of a point or of a set?, and a few more mathematicians in that neighbourhood would be appreciated. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Importance of mathematics articles

I promised several visitors to my talk page to initiate a discussion here about importance ratings in the maths rating system, and this seemed an appropriate moment to do so.

Although there are many articles for which the current class grading is wrong (and I have made many such mistakes), it is usually clearly or uncontroversially wrong, and therefore easy to fix. Importance is harder to handle for at least three reasons:

1. lack of clear definitions of what the importance levels mean (in particular, for mathematics articles);
2. lack of guidance on the context within which importance should be assessed;
3. are we rating the importance of the topic or the article?

First, here are the current definitions:

• Top Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
• High Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
• Mid Subject fills in more minor details
• Low (WP 1.0) Subject is mainly of specialist interest. (WP 1.0 Math) Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial.

The top and low importance seem to me to be the most problematic. What does "a must-have for a print encyclopedia" mean? Which encyclopedia? EB? An encyclopedia of mathematics? And does "must-have" mean that such encyclopedias have an article on the topic, or that there would be mass protests if the article were removed? As for low importance, is "specialist" the same as "peripheral"? It certainly isn't the same as "trivial". Also there seems to be quite a gap between Low and Mid, which means that Mid is getting overloaded.

A proposal to update the scheme has been made, which seems to be an improvement in some ways, but not in others. For example, it concentrates a lot on whether a topic has achieved local, continental or international notability, which is largely irrelevant for mathematics. Also it seems confused over the second issue above, context.

Consider e.g., motive (algebraic geometry): this is an extremely important topic in modern high-brow algebraic geometry, but within geometry as a whole it is relatively less so. How can we compare it to platonic solid, for example? And within mathematics as a whole it is certainly only of specialist interest, and hence, arguably, peripheral.

So far I have been taking the view that it is more helpful to assess the importance of a topic within its own context, since it is more discriminating. However, I think this needs to be discussed.

Finally, articles vs topic. For articles about mathematical subjects, the distinction is probably rather minor, but for articles about mathematicians, there is another closely related question: are we rating the importance of the mathematician or the article? So far, I believe we have been following the WikiProject Biography guidelines, which suggest the former.

To illustrate the difference, consider Ramanujan. Certainly he was a genius who made remarkable contributions, but his impact on mathematics is not in the same league as Euler or Gauss. Yet an article on Ramanujan is a must-have, not only because of his contributions, but because of the fascinating story, and the deep insights it provides into the mind of a mathematical genius.

I think these issues need to be clarified in a way that makes the importance rating as useful as possible to the Maths Project, and that we really need to have mathematics-specific descriptors. Geometry guy 15:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Overall importance or within context?

I think that we should have relatively few articles of "top" importance (say, 2% = 300 articles within mathematics) and that the majority of articles should be "low" importance. Articles of "top" importance should appeal to non-mathematicians so they can't be about deep concepts; there may be some exceptions like Poincaré conjecture that are important in maths and have hit the headlines in the newspapers. That means that we should be very selective: after 50 or so mathematicians and elementary stuff like square, triangle, addition, there is not much left.

"The importance of a topic within its own context" depends a lot on what you consider to be its own context. The article on pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets is not that important in the context of mathematics, more important in widget theory, and crucial to the theory of pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets. I hope that Geometry guy can clarify this point.

As an example, I'll explain the ratings that I have in mind for numerical analysis:

• Top: only numerical analysis itself.
• High: major subfields like optimization, interpolation, root finding, numerical integration; and also the most important methods (I haven't thought this through, but I'm thinking about Gaussian elimination, Newton method, fast Fourier transform, and no others); about a dozen in total.
• The rest to be divided between mid and low.

I haven't rated any of the articles mentioned, except numerical analysis which I upgraded from "high" to "top", so I've no idea what the actual importance ratings are. But I've seen quite a lot of articles being rated, and most importance ratings match with how I'd rate them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This is quite a different view to the one I was trying to express, but I think I agree with some of the points. At the moment there are 135 Top importance articles. About 2200 have been rated so far, and I estimate that there are about 6000 articles worth rating at the moment. So 300 seems to be about the right ballpark, although since Top importance articles are more likely to have been rated already, we are possibly undershooting. I also agree that we should have #{Low} > #{Mid} > #{High} > #{Top}. This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". For instance Lazy caterer's sequence is currently rated "High" (see the talk page history). At the moment there are more mid importance articles.

The main point where I disagree with Jitse is on the prioritization of elementary mathematics. I don't think we should be afraid to say, for example, that the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is High importance (possibly even Top). This is partly because I find it unhelpful to think of WP as a single encyclopedia like EB (which is 20 times smaller, with only about 70000 articles on 1/2 million topics) — it is more like a nested family of overlapping encyclopedias. Within our Encyclopedia of Mathematics, there is also an Encyclopedia of Numerical Analysis, and so on.

So I think there is a good case to be made for rating importance within context. When I wrote the above I wasn't sure what this should mean, but following the discussion below, I think context should be interpreted using categories. Thus if Category:pseudo-differentiable quasi-widget contains a large number of varied articles in it (and its subcategories), we can be pretty confident that its lead article is very important! On the other hand if the category doesn't exist, or is rather meagre, then the context for pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets will be a category like Category:widget theory in which it could be of rather low importance, or it could be one of the major examples.

From this point of view, Optimization (mathematics) is probably Top importance. On the other hand Square (geometry) is probably not. Triangle is also currently rated "High", but "Top" is arguably more appropriate. Addition is, of course, top importance. Geometry guy 16:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". — there is some of that, I'm sure, but I wonder if there's also a selection effect here: the articles that get enough attention to be rated are also less likely to be on topics of low importance. —David Eppstein 06:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

List of fields

I would like to propose expanding the current list of Fields for the rating scheme. Especially if we take up Geometry guy's suggestion to assess importance within its own context, it's crucial to have a proper classification for various contexts (i.e., fields) that can occur. In particular, I strongly believe that Algebraic geometry should be its own field, not part of Geometry and topology. This would greatly alleviate some of the thorny issues mentioned above, not just concerning motives, but pretty much all modern algebraic geometry. Arcfrk 03:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I definitely think we need to re-consider field, problematic articles abound say Talk:Cross product and Talk:Sheaf (mathematics) both have reasons for being in geometry and algebra, the latter could nicely fit in algebraic geometry but the former less so. One possibility is to have allow two fields so you could have field=algebra and field2=geometry. There is also a good case for an algebraic geometry field as there are a large class of articles in this group. There is also the mathematician who could well do with being listed by their field of study as well. The danger with too much expansion is that we end up duplicating the category system.

As to importance, I've always been a fan of the proposal mentioned above as it seem to be a more objective criteria, loosely we could have coverage or scope

• Of high importance across all numerate discipline - everyone should know this
• Of high importance throughout mathematics - all mathematicians should know this
• Of high importance in a major field of mathematics - all those working in the field should know this
• Of importance within one field (high importance in a sub-field) - most working in the field would know this
• Mainly limited to a sub-field
• Specialist, mainly work of one researcher.

Curiously principal component analysis could be applied to this: there are several ways to rate articles: how well known something is, the number of fields/sub-fields its covered by, how useful the result is, when its likely to be taught. These are likely to have a strong level of correlation. Assuming you could give each of these a numeric score, you could put all of these into a big matrix, find the cross correlation matrix and perform SVD to get the largest eigen vector, representing the principal mode of variation. When you get at the end is probably the important score. The task is then to find a set of words which descibes this well. ::--Salix alba (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Look again at sheaves; they are relevant to logic as well as geometry, with topos theory as common ground. In fact, MacLane and Moerdijk have written Sheaves in Geometry and Logic: A First Introduction to Topos Theory (ISBN 978-0-387-97710-2). We lose deeply interesting connections in mathematics when we try to force every topic into exactly one area. As for algebraic geometry, I think it transformed into a rather different field when it refounded itself on schemes, something that can be very confusing for a reader at the level of, say, Bézout's theorem. For example, on page 294 of Hartshorne we find, "In other words, a curve is an integral scheme of dimension 1, proper over k, all of whose local rings are regular." Few of our readers would see it that way! I'm not sure what the implications should be for this discussion, but it should at least caution us that different readers and different editors may frame a subject in radically different ways. --KSmrq^T 09:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting comments! There are certainly problems with the field system — in particular, the fact that only one field can be assigned means that compromises have to be made. However, I have not found this so difficult in practice: for instance Cross product is clearly an article set in the context of elementary Euclidean geometry, even though the same concept could be discussed in a more abstract-algebraic way. I also don't have a problem with the fact that the same subject can seem quite different at different levels of abstraction. For me, sheaves a very geometrical way of looking at things, even logic, but then I would say that ;) — there is certainly a case that they belong in foundations.

I would prefer, as far as possible, to take a pragmatic point of view. I think a field2 would overcomplicate the system. For mathematicians, an alternative would be to use the same trick that has been introduced for historical articles, i.e., replace the mathematician field (which isn't a field anyway) by a mathematician=yes tag.

I agree with Salix alba that we don't want to start duplicating the category system: categories provide plenty of context for importance assessment, and also address some of KSmrq remarks. So I am against expanding the field system to take on this role: it isn't up to the job, it isn't needed, it would be too complicated and too much work.

Pragmatically, fields were introduced to break up the assessed articles into manageable groups. I would therefore propose just to split up fields when they become too large. At the moment algebra and geometry and topology have twice as many entries as any other field, and there is no sign that this trend will change. Myself, I'd prefer to split the latter into geometry and topology, rather than separate out algebraic geometry (partly because of the overlap with number theory and algebra). (In fact, I'd already been planning to do that!)

Any ideas for subdividing algebra? Geometry guy 11:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

On the question of field2, there have been a few articles that have crossed my Watchlist recently, where I think there's quite a strong case, eg:

• Talk: Information theory. Currently Applied mathematics. Also Probability and statistics ?
• Talk: Information entropy. Currently Probability and statistics
• Talk: Asymptotic equipartition property. Currently Probability and statistics Applied mathematics.
• Talk: Sigma algebra. Currently Probability and statistics Analysis
• Talk: Spinor. Currently Geometry and topology. Also Mathematical physics ?
• Talk: Spectral theorem. Currently Analysis. Also Algebra ?

... etc.

Bearing in mind that the most important thing is the reverse lookup here -- ie what shape are articles in that are important under Probability and Statistics, under Applied Maths, etc., I think it may be quite valuable for a few articles for their ratings to appear on more than one of the sub-lists.

I also wonder whether it's right that Numerical Methods appear to be by default being filed under Analysis? (eg: Talk: Newton's method) Jheald 15:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually it is quite easy to list an article under more than one field because VeblenBot produces the tables using "What links here". All you have to do is link the relevant field page on the article talk page. However, I'm worried that this could be overused, which might reduce some of the benefits of breaking up the articles by approximate field.

For instance, information theory relates to probability, statistics, physics, and applied mathematics, but it may be better to decide on one of them. I'd prefer to go with applied, since it best reflects the variety of applications/influences. Also the applied mathematics field is rather underpopulated, and not yet clearly defined: its meaning is partly going to be determined by which topics we decide it covers. For instance, we may decide that it covers numerical analysis as well. A similar decision (between probability and analysis) could be made for topics in measure theory.

In other cases, the existence of two plausible fields may suggest a need to actually have two articles! I think this is the case for Spectral theorem, and spinor field seems to be a redirect with possibilities! Geometry guy 17:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. A lot of these issues will go away if/when Wikipedia:Category_intersection is implemented.

I would suggest pretty much all articles on information theory subjects at least go under Probability and Statistics, because it is very much a statistical idea, dealing with probabilistic quantities; and it is often provides useful ways to think about statistics and statistical questions. It is very much another tool in the statistical armoury. Information theory itself should maybe dually go under Applied mathematics as well, but constituent articles on subjects like Information Entropy, Asymptotic Equipartition Property, Minimum Message Length etc ought primarily to be under Probability & Statistics. Jheald 21:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

You may be right, I am no expert, but I am a little wary of the argument that information theory is another tool in the statistical armoury. I can only attempt an analogy: the derivative of a function is very much a geometrical idea, dealing with tangency between a line and a curve, or more generally, tangency of a linear subspace; it is one of the major tools in differential geometry. Does that mean it is most helpful to place Derivative in the geometry field? We have to try and remember that the maths rating field is not a categorization, but an organizational tool. Geometry guy 22:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit surprised to have encountered such entrenched resistance against introducing Algebraic geometry as a new field for the purposes of the rating project. For once, I would have to regretfully conclude that Geometry guy's argumentation, which is usually a model of clarity, is self-contradictory. If the field Geometry and topology is getting overloaded, then it would seemingly make sense to split off Algebraic geometry, which is uncontroversially a well-defined field of its own, with its peculiar scale of importance. Moreover, he amply illustrates the need to assign the proper context in order to rate the article, so that we do not end up comparing motive (mathematics) with platonic solid (both currently within Geometry and topology). Additional pragmatic advantages would include simplifying the task of raters and making the whole process more objective. In particular,

• it would help editors pick the articles in subjects that they are experts in and in which they can provide a fair rating and, especially, helpful comments for further development;
• for the editors involved in broad rating project across multiple fields, it would streamline the process of assigning the importance by gauging it within the correct field.

Other comments: I quite like Salix alba's definitions of levels of scope/importance, as the ones currently in use really make me scratch my head for nearly every article save the very top importance class, such as Geometry, or clearly technical ones a la Apothem. We just need to come up with descriptive, easily remembered names for his six classes. I also think that to be useful the list of fields should be less precise than the AMS Subject Classification (and of course, the categories system), but agree with Jheald's point that the reverse look up feature makes multiple fields desirable in some instances. As for specific examples of expansion, besides my suggestion of Algebraic geometry above, I think that Numerical methods should not be part of Analysis and (unless it is already covered by Applied mathematics) deserves to be its own field; and Representation theory can be split off Algebra. Arcfrk 00:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I have filed all "numerical analysis" articles under "applied". We should at least be consistent (of course I think that I'm right and that it should go under "applied" instead of "analysis"). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree and would be happy for us adopt this as a convention, accepting that their can also be a deep analytical compoment in numerical analysis. I would like to adopt a similar convention for information theory. Another issue (which maybe deserves a separate debate) is Galois theory. At present the categories emphasize the algebraic rather than number-theoretic aspects of this, which surprised me. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I only have time to reply briefly to Arcfrk. I'm sorry I was not clear, but I don't think I was being self-contradictory, nor do I see here any entrenched resistence, just a preference, expressed only by me, to split geometry and topology into a geometry field, and a topology field. The problem I have with algebraic geometry as an organizational field (rather than a category) is that it has too many points of view: arithmetic, algebraic, analytic and geometric. The overlap between number theory and algebra is already quite tricky without bringing arithmetic algebraic geometry into the picture. One would also have to decide which parts of commutative algebra are algebraic geometry (well, all of it really, but then I would say that ;) )

However, the main point I was trying to make by comparing motives with platonic solids was not that these are incomparable because one is geometry and the other is algebraic geometry. The same argument would apply to a triangle and an exotic sphere, or to an elliptic curve and a Grothendieck topos. They are incomparable. This is why I believe that context should be provided by categories, not by broad-brush fields. There is no need to reinvent the category system here. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Linking to article hierarchy

I was starting a thread on the same topic as this one but one day later on the wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 page and expressing my viewpoint that the importance assessment should better be done within the context of all of maths. Based on the discussion above, my augmented list of arguments in favour of single maths context for importance is the following:

• Assessment within disciplines would lead to a serious proliferation of Top/High labels; this I think is inevitable unless an unusual number of articles turned out to be more important viewed accross categories/fields/subdisciplines than within them, which I find hard to believe;
• Deciding how finely grained subdisciplines to use adds another layer of complexity; obviously the finer the grid the more Top/High-importance articles; this debate has clearly started on this page;
• Assessment within the totality of maths fits in my mind better with (one of) the goal(s) of the whole grading exercise: prioritising the articles form the viewpoint of importance to a high-quality encyclopaedia.
• The importance rating (or prioritization) accross all of maths is possible if difficult (and sometimes inevitably contested - but so is assessment within fields). It is in fact an execise that editors of paper encyclopaedias have had to do in the past to choose topics for major / minor articles, sections in articles or omission. For Wikipedia, while there is no cap on the number of pages to produce, we have another scarce resource: editors' time. Hence the prioritisation on the level of mathematics still makes sense, at least for as long as we are quite far from having good-quality articles covering all topics which should definately be of Top / High importance within all of maths; and
• As the rating appears on the Maths tab, related to the WikiProject mathematics, it also seems natural to keep the rating on the level of the WikiProject (unless we want to start splitting the project, which probably is not a good idea at this time).

As for how to implement importance assessment on the level of Mathematics, I made the following poropsal that would explicitily link the importance to the hierarchy of mathematics articles:

• The main subdisciplines in maths (plus some selected "general" articles) should receive Top importance (e.g., Number theory, Algebraic topology, Analysis, Integral). These articles could then refer to High-importance articles for further details.
  • (That would partially resolve the issue discussed above wrt Algebraic Geometry — no matter whether one thinks it should be a new "field" in our classification, it definately is a Top-importance article and thus creates an importance sub-hierarchy in this model)
• Second-order subdisciplines within the Top-importance areas as well as the very few most important objects / theorems should have High importance (e.g., Homology and cohomology, Elliptic curve, Harmonic analysis, Fourier transform). These articles could then link to Mid-importance articles for further details.
• Third-order subdisciplines (or theories) within High-importance topics as well as most definitions, theorems etc. that should belong to a good graduate student's general knowledge regardless of own field of speciality could for the Mid-importance layer; and
• The articles of Low importance could be those that would not likely be interesting to people outside of the speciality.

As for the very valid point that several concepts (such as sheaf) may be found at various levels in such a hierarchy (e.g., sheaf on a quite low level in analysis --> microlocal analysis compared to topology), a possible solution would be to choose the highest rating based on the article hierarchy (which in my mind would bring sheaf to High importance under Top-importance article on Topology).

In any case, a more structured hierarchy of articles, starting from ones with wide coverage with limited technicalities and progressing towards more specific and technical articles through links is something I think is needed for maths articles. And indeed, work has clearly started towards that goal on many topics (Integral, Algebraic geometry come to mind as top-level examples). I have been making a plan for algebraic topology articles for such a treatment. It would be great if the importance assessment scheme could support that kind of "global" structuring effort in addition to pointing out articles for "local" improvement.

But however we decide to use the importance scales, I agree with Salix alba that we need clear (and sufficiently verbose) definitions for the importance grades so that everyone can agree on at least the principle if not specific application of them.

Stca74 08:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I replied to the original post here. There are certainly arguments to be made about making assessments all across mathematics rather than within context, or at least partially taking into account how specialized a topic is. However, I think the comparison with a paper encyclopedia is flawed, as I have already mentioned: WP is a very different beast (encyclopedias within encyclopedias). Furthermore, we seem to keep forgetting what importance ratings are for: they are for editors, not readers! They are not there to say "These are the most important articles in mathematics, dear reader, read them first", they are there to say "Hello, editor, I see you are an expert in homotopy algebras and you want to help improve some articles: these are the articles which the project thinks are highest priority". If we rate across mathematics, all homotopy algebra articles will be low importance, which is not terribly useful. Geometry guy 09:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I surely agree that Wikipedia is different from a paper encyclopaedia, and I also quite like Geometry guy's metaphor of nested encyclopeadias. However, there is also the "top-level encyclopaedia" here, the one that this whole project started to build and the one that is being prepared for the v1.0 "fixed" edition. And it is in this context that I have seen the usefulness of the importance gardings: guidance to those who would like to contribute to finishing the "top-level" first. And I agree, this is clearly guidance to editors, not readers (a point on which I do not perceive serious disagreement in the discussion above). On the other hand, providing such "global" guidance certainly does not prevent anyone from contributing to articles of more specialised interest (this is more or less what I've been doing in the few contributions I've managed to make so far...). As for the specific example of homotopy algebra topics, this is how I would see it: Algebraic topology:TOP --> Homotopy theory:HIGH --> Homotopy algebra:MID --> Individual homotopy algebra topics:LOW (unless MID due to specific reasons..). But in the end, whether such grading is seen as useful depends very much on the ultimate goal of the importance ratings — top-down completeness of the general encyclopaedia or guidance to more specific sub-encyclopaedias. Both are valid goals, and in principle we could have parallel ratings for these purposes, but I'd prefer not to complicate the "overhead" associated to project maintenance. Further comments welcome! Stca74 13:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I am glad you like my metaphor! I am also grateful to Stca74 for bringing up the v1.0 fixed edition CD: I was about to add a comment on this myself, because I shouldn't go around boldly declaring what the ratings system is for without mentioning its original motivation to produce the v1.0 CD (which is why the assessment project is called Wikipedia 1.0 in the first place)!!

While this is still an important motiviation, the ratings system has clearly grown since then. However, I don't see an incompatibility between rating in context and building WP 1.0. In fact, it seems to me that Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic supports the in-context point of view. Specifically, it gives an example of a hierarchy History -> History of Europe -> History of Poland -> Polish kings and queens. and then goes on to say:

An article labeled as "Top-Class" for the subject of history would probably warrant inclusion in V0.5, V1.0 and other releases. A "Top-Class" article for the history of Poland would be a reasonable candidate for inclusion, but most "Top-Class" articles on Polish kings & queens would probably not be included in early releases. Nevertheless such ranking within a subject area is very helpful in deciding which articles are included first as the scope of the Wikipedia 1.0 project expands.

In other words, the kind of downrating by subtopic proposed by Stca74 will happen anyway when articles are selected. I wasn't sure when I first posted this thread, but this seems to make the case for rating in context rather compelling. Geometry guy 13:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward from here

As the discussion has died down a little, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the issues with a few comments, and outline some steps forward.

1. There seems to be agreement (or at least no disagreement) that there should be more articles rated as lower importance than higher importance, and in particular that only a few hundred articles (out of several thousand rated articles) should be rated Top importance. This is not going to happen unless some changes are made: at the moment, the Mid category is the most populated.
2. There appears to be some consensus that context should be taken into account when assessing importance, although there are concerns that this might conflict with point 1, and no agreement whether elementary material is intrinsically more important than advanced material. On the other hand, rating importance within context appears to be coherent with the v1.0 fixed edition plans.
3. There has been much less agreement on how and to what extent context should be taken into account, although several suggestions were made.
   1. The field entry in the maths rating should be the context in which importance is assessed (see also point 6 below).
   2. Context should be assessed using the main category to which the article belongs.
   3. Other mechanisms and ratings schemes should be introduced, such as User:Salix Alba's scope.
4. The fields should be clearly defined to help editors to be consistent about which topics are rated under which field. This may involve making conventional choices: for example, topics in Numerical analysis should be rated under applied, even if it is also analysis.
5. Further to this point, some editors suggested that a field2 would be useful. This can also be achieved more informally simply by linking to the relevant field page from the article talk page. However, yours truly cautioned against overuse of this feature as it might defeat part of the purpose of the field entry in the ratings template.
6. In conjunction with 3.1, Arcfrk suggested that the number of fields should be expanded and in particular that algebraic geometry should be a separate field. Certainly the geometry and topology and algebra fields are already too large to be manageable.
7. The question of how to assess importance of articles on mathematicians has not yet been discussed.

In response to this, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. At present, it mostly consists of material copied from other pages, but the intention is to develop it to provide mathematics specific guidelines which at least address points 1 and 2. I have also created /defn subpages of the field pages to provide descriptors of the fields. These are gathered together at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Fields: please improve and add to these definitions! I hope this will help to address point 4. For point 5, the linking could be tried out with some of the information theory articles, which are the most obvious examples so far where the single field approach is inadequate.

Concerning point 3, I'm not sure it matters too much that there isn't consensus for time being. As long as we agree that some context should be considered when assessing importance, a diversity of opinion on how much is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the way articles get rated. The ratings system, like the rest of Wikipedia is definitely a work in progress, and I would prefer to take a fairly conservative approach to improving it. This partly underlies my view on point 6. Some expansion of the number of fields is going to be needed, and in the long run, I could certainly imagine geometry and topology being replaced by maybe even six fields such as

elementary geometry, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, general topology, differential topology and algebraic topology.

However, doing something like this would require a lot of work, and the case for it is not yet clear, in my opinion. I would prefer to experiment with the geometry/topology split and see what the numbers look like: this would at least make it easier to subdivide geometry later on if this proves necessary.

Finally, apologies to other editors if my over-active participation in this discussion has conveyed the impression of a hidden agenda or a point of view to promote. I initiated the discussion precisely because there were several issues that I was unsure of, and some of these have been greatly clarified thanks to the comments made here so far. However, I freely admit that my developing point of view is also influenced by issues of implementation: any improvement to the rating system needs to have editors willing to do the (often substantial) work required to implement it!

Further comments most welcome either here or on the relevant talk pages in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 (such as the new pages above). Geometry guy 15:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Splitting algebra and geometry

I found about 100 articles in Geometry and topology which are clearly topology, so I guess a geometry/topology split would be about 400/120, which is not ideal. On the other hand, I only found about 70 algebraic geometry articles. Taking algebraic and differential geometry together yields about 190 articles, and the remainder (apart from the topology) is mostly elementary geometry. I would therefore suggest a three-way split into (elementary) geometry, topology and differential and algebraic geometry. The last of these could be split later if necessary.

I haven't yet investigated the Algebra field, but would guess there are quite a lot of linear algebra there. Geometry guy 16:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

No there aren't: only about 60 rated linear algebra articles so far. Geometry guy 17:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. However, then I would split algebraic geometry from differential geometry right from the beginning. There's been discussion on this in talk:Elliptic curve, and a joint algebraic/differential geometry field would increase the pressure to treat artithmetic issues and geometry in positive characteristics as part of algebra instead, a development that I would find regrettable. However, I could also accept an argument for keeping the current larger geometry and topology field as it is. Even the split of 120 topology, 70 AG and 120 diff. geom. is not that bad, in particular as none of these fields has achieved desired coverage yet. Stca74 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I just had a quick look at the exchange and the article itself: it looks like geometry to me, but there is a case for rating it as number theory either instead or in addition. I don't understand the argument for algebra, and the complex analysis point of view on these objects is covered by Riemann surface. I don't see how the split would affect the argument, and of the 190 articles, only about 100 are clearly differential geometry: this is quite a tricky interface to separate. Geometry guy 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right with the Elliptic curves article. During that exchange I was somehow under the impression that number theory does not have its own "field" either but is currently under algebra. Which is of course not true. Thus even less reason to classify that article under algebra. But back to the topic here: what I'm arguing for is that if we decide to split topology from the current geometry and topology, let's split AG as a separate fied at the same time. The latter are of course connected, but then again so are both to (algebraic) topoogy, and at least I'm not able to argue for any of the links being stronger than the two others. Stca74 19:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Using categories instead of fields

Would it be possible to use categories (which articles already have) instead of making editors choose one field for an article? It would not be particularly difficult to determine which articles are in (subcategories of subcategories of) particular "master" categories. That would make it possible to automatically sort the article into several "fields" and would let us get rid of the field= parameter entirely. That seems better than adding field2= and field3= parameters. Another benefit would be that unrated articles would be automatically detected. CMummert · talk 00:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Some impressions

I have gone over a substantial number of articles in Algebra and Geometry and Topology fields. This is likely to be a contentious issue, but let me say straight away that I have changed quite a few importance ratings, mostly, downrated (explanation below). Here is a rather haphazard list of my impressions from the rating project.

• Vast majority of articles have been filed under the correct field, but there were some (rather obvious) exceptions. I did come across a group of articles which seemed to defy the current classifications scheme, such as Nondeterministic finite state machine, currently under algebra, but in fact, belonging to computer science. Should this be a separate field?

  This issue also caused me some problems. In a sense this material is algebra in the most naive sense of manipulating symbols. However, it is also natural to rate it in the context of discrete mathematics articles. Another case is automatic group: discrete, or algebra? I'm not at all convinced I made the right choice! Geometry guy 20:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• In practice, the category system is not easy to use to gauge the importance, or provide the context. The depths of subcategories vary widely, although the case could be made that this only makes difference for rather unimportant articles. At any rate, I've become convinced that for undeveloped (stub and start class) articles, expertise in the subject is crucial to determine the importance.
• Overall, the importance ratings are inflated, in my opinion. Keeping in mind that one of the main purposes of the rating project is to facilitate the editing, and especially, identifying the 'weak links', this is not terribly important for articles in B-class and above, since they have already received a lot of expert attention. But it may nonetheless be a problem, since there are hundreds of start and stub class articles purporting to be high importance, which ones to edit first?
• Another thing to keep in mind is that the comments are a lot more valuable than the ratings. Thus it may be preferable for experts (and amateurs:-) to spend a bit more time analyzing the articles and reviewing than trying to rate as many articles as possible. There is absolutely no question that the meaningful improvement cannot keep up with the rating process, we simply do not have enough resources.
• This may be worth a separate discussion, but one thing which emerged from looking over a large number of articles is the definite trend to expand articles beyond reasonable length. The rating system has a potential to exacerbate this problem. Some articles on possibly important subjects, but not top level, are reasonably complete; yet they were put into start, or in some cases, even stub class. In my opinion, in most cases it would be unhelpful to expand them further. Yet, somehow I sense a pressure to bring the articles to higher class, which would translate into expansion or inclusion of related material that is already covered elsewhere (and may not belong to the article in question if it is focused enough). I'd be curious to know what other people think about this.
• And, need I point this out, the rating process (especially, importance) tends to be highly subjective, and examples of inconsistencies abound. I was trying to correct them to the best of my abilities, but I apologize in advance to those of you who might feel like your favorite topic got a short shrift! As Cronholm144 writes in comment pages,

Please mail your all complaints to the following P.O. box -- ...I'm kidding! Please add useful comments here. Note: these ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

Arcfrk 12:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the view that the quality assessment can have an unintended impact on articles, perhaps in particular in maths. It is interesting that the the WP:FACR do not require that even a featured article be necessarily very long. Instead, appropriate length and focus are called for. Still in practice short but otherwise adequate articles do not appear to be even proposed for GA or FA. This suggests that the application of the criteria is being skewed towards too heavy demands. Stca74 13:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

(I hadn't seen Stca74's comment)I sense the pressure to bring articles to higher classes as well. I have been responsible for rating a fair number of reasonably complete articles within their respective fields as start class, simply because of their relative length and completeness pales in comparison to the typical B-class articles. This issue has been discussed in the WP 1.0 discussion page if I remember correctly. They proposed that instead of stub, start,..., FA. They (well, someone at their talk page) introduce the idea of completeness of the coverage of the topic as a rating level, there are problems with this system, but it is the most reasonable answer to the problem of completed articles becoming perpetually start class. However the unfortunate consequence of a change of this type would be the necessity to reevaluate a large number of articles...sigh. --Cronholm144 13:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we need something like "B+ (mini)", "B (mini)", "Start (mini)" would be appropriate ratings for articles which are substantially all that is needed, and wholly adequate, yet only a few paragraphs long. Jheald 23:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I changed that humourous comment(cited by Arcfrk) into two different "templates." I find the lack of references the most common flaw in most math articles #1. If I don't have anything interesting to say #2. If there are other problems I just type something to that effect.

• needs refs, try finding some [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/References|here]].--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

• Please add useful comments here--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

I have adjusted the maths ratings template so that it includes part of this last line. For technical reasons (aka the "pre-expand include limit") the total number of kilobytes of comments needs to be controlled, and so boilerplate comments are best absorbed into the template. Feel free to edit my version of this comment at Template:Maths rating. Geometry guy 22:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I noticed and have gone through and edited myself to reflect this change. I am about through the start and stub class articles--Cronholm144 22:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I had thought previously that quality (class) gradings were more straightforward than importance ratings, but a number of issues have come up, and it indeed seems to merit separate discussion, as User:Arcfrk suggests. I agree that the system at present can encourage the expansion of articles for which expansion is either undesirable, not needed, or a low priority. I also agree that a case can be made for promoting some short Stub/Start class articles to Start/B. However, I would caution against the idea of grading a short but "reasonably complete" article too highly. In my view, it is our conception of the meaning of the class grading that needs tweaking. Such a short article should certainly hope for a B or Bplus class grading, but we need to provide space and encouragement for an article to achieve its potential.

It is surprising how much one can do to improve an article. I recently participated in the FAC for Equipartition theorem. There is no reason why this subject in particular needs such a detailed treatment, cf. Virial theorem, which hasn't had the same attention (currently rated Start by Physics, but I think it is B). To me, this illustrates what can be done to lift a short B-class article to FA, and also the fact that a B-class article can be totally respectable.

I think a lot of the problem is the wording of the class descriptors. These tend to assume that an article starts off with an ill-informed description, and is gradually improved as more expertise is brought to bear. This isn't what actually happens for many of our articles. Instead they start as a technically correct definition, which is improved to a technically solid article by expert editors. However, these articles are incomprehensible to most readers, as well as being imperfectly presented or badly sourced. But the class descriptors don't pick this out: they should be encouraging us to maximise the accessibility of our articles.

I suspect this underlies some of our problems with Good Article review, because a technically excellent B article has a big leap to make to satisfy the GA crowd. I think instead we need to encourage the improvement of technically good (i.e., "reasonable complete") articles (with examples, explanations, references) in a step-by-step process, and this applies equally to articles which are short or long. I therefore think we should adapt the descriptions of the classes to our needs, rather than create new classes for short articles. Geometry guy 23:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Article assessment

In a discussion elsewhere, I presented criteria by which I personally judge an article:

---

I would ask of an article:

1. Is it correct?
2. Is it reasonably complete and balanced?
3. Is it clear?
4. Is it compelling?
5. Is it reasonably accessible, given the topic?
6. Is it written grammatically, with correct spelling, and with good typesetting?
7. Is it appropriately illustrated, if applicable?
8. Is it well linked?
9. Is it helpful in providing references and additional resources?

These kinds of questions will be familiar to anyone who has written and reviewed for a journal.

---

The criteria are ordered roughly according to importance, and attempt to be roughly independent. Presented here for your consideration, and possible comment.

I believe I would find it more helpful to have articles given explicit ratings (yes/no/partial would suffice) against each criterion: I could assign ratings more easily, and target improvements better. Also, it would help us edit to explicit shared standards. Might this go in WP:MSM or WP:WPMER? --KSmrq^T 08:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a well thought out list of criteria for the Mathematics project articles. I have a couple of small grumbles: no.4 seems too high on importance scale (if needed at all for mathematics articles); no.6 is a classical Liar paradox type of sentence (better: is it grammatically correct? or is the grammar correct?). I would also separate the grammar and typesetting, and add another item, my Achilles' heel, is it written in idiomatically correct English? Would it be possible to make a template with these or similar criteria, and add it to subpages of the mathematics articles being rated, much in the same way as 'Comment' subpages were implemented? Arcfrk 08:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Also, in view of earlier discussion about length and completeness, one might add Is it focused? to the top of the list. Arcfrk 08:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that an important point is the overall structure. Does the article naturally flow from the start to the end, or does it jump all over the place? I feel that this is related to KSmrq's compelling (though I'm not sure what KSmrq means) and Arcfrk's focused, so perhaps these should all be combined in one point.

Considering the comments I made when rating articles, I think that I use these criteria implicitly (after all, they're pretty natural criteria, though it's not so easy to formulate them). Many articles failed point 2 (completeness). I can see why making it explicit would be helpful, but it's also more work. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Multivariable calculus

Multivariable calculus is in need of some serious expansion. I started to make some changes. Please review my work and expand/correct it. Jhausauer 21:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Normal set

I've prodded normal set, which I don't think is terminology with any particular currency, but if anyone here knows of it being used, please weigh in. --Trovatore 21:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Good articles

Problems with Good article review have generated much discussion recently (see e.g. Wikipedia talk:Good articles) and I have been attempting to encourage the GA process to reform. There are many ways in which it could be reformed, from name changes to clarity over criteria, to more lightweight procedures. Please read the discussions and comment. My current feeling is that if reform is not forthcoming, we should withdraw our support for WP:GA, and encourage the rest of Wikipedia 1.0 (in which we are a leading project) to do likewise: at present, the GA process does not fit into any coherent assessment scheme, since it concentrates too much on citation issues rather than overall article quality. Geometry guy 00:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe Good article review should rename themselves to Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Style and Form; that way, they could rate and rank articles as they wish, lessening the insult to those who write articles with A-class content and B-class style. linas 05:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to insert a caveat at Template:Grading scheme and have been continually reverted by one Revert Warrior, despite the evidence of our long conversation that there is no agreement where GA fits in that scale, or that it should. See Template_talk:Grading_scheme#Good_Articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:20, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I suspect it is unlikely that such a caveat will be widely accepted across Wikipedia, since in non-scientific areas, GA seems to work somewhat better than it does for us. However, we could certainly add such a caveat to our own table (although I would be against making it strongly-worded, or open to criticism as a political statement). I also hesitate, for the time being, to propose removing GA from our grading scheme (I think there may well be maths editors who like to have it there, and value the green cross seal of approval from outside of the project).

However, I would like to propose a more cosmetic change: merging the B+ and GA ratings. This would amount to the following: replace the horrible lime green colour of B+ by the darker green of GA; ask VeblenBot nicely to count and list B+ and GA articles together; and adjust some of the wording in our grading scheme to reflect the merger.

It might also be worthwhile making the B+ grading more robust, and ensuring that B+ articles are properly sourced, but according to the standards of this project, not the inline citation police. In that way GA becomes "B+ with added footnotes". Comments? Geometry guy 17:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Citations for definitions of basic mathematical concepts

At WikiProject Chemistry, we have recently established a workgroup to improve linking to the many (6540...) definitions contained in the IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology. However, we have noticed that one or two of these definitions are not really chemical terminology at all, but mathematical concepts, e.g. bimodal distribution, probability. The chemical usage of these terms is no different from the usage in other sciences, so it would seem misleading to cite a specifically "chemical" reference for the definition. What would you suggest as a good reference for mathematical definiions? Encyclopedia of Mathematics? Thanks for any advice! Physchim62 (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it applies, but there is Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Summary style. In brief, you don't always need to give a citation above and beyond the main article you link to. Bimodal distribution and probability seem to be two cases where no citation should be needed. Wikipedia already has those articles, so a wikilink should be enough (IMO). Of course, Wikipedia doesn't have mathematics articles on everything, even everything which could conceivably be interesting to a chemist. For more exotic definitions, you probably won't find them in the Springer Encyclopedia either. Silly rabbit 12:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If a mathematical concept is not specific to a branch of science but important enough for a definition of it to be included in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology, then we probably should have an article on it. Should you encounter such concepts that can't be wikilinked to for lack of an article, please let us know.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A point well worth making! Silly rabbit 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

No problem with that! I've done a quick (and necessarily incomplete) check and and I haven't found any redlinks on mathematical terms. The problems are:

• Referencing: I don't think that "summary style" guidelines apply to these articles in the sense that Silly rabbit describes. Bimodal distribution has a well-defined, technical meaning, and we should reference that meaning if we can (IMHO). See chemical reaction, for example.
• Imaginary unit: I just found this one on my quick check. Chemists (and physicists, I believe) are supposed to use upright type for i, as it is not a measurable quantity. In effect, it might be the same rule which requires upright type for (capital) Σ and Π as operators in equations, although chemists often use italics for other operators, e.g. H for the hamiltonian operator, C_n for the n-fold rotation operator (quick redlink warning!).

Thanks for your comments, Physchim62 (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Our article on the bimodal distribution most certainly needs a reference; I think that Silly rabbit misunderstood you. I am not so fond of using another encyclopaedia as a reference, but it's better than none at all. Apart from that, the Springer Encyclopaedia of Mathematics is reliable in my experience. I had a look at your workgroup page and I saw that I don't need to warn you that you need to actually check the article against the reference. Finally, using upright or italics for i is the mathematical equivalent of the British/American English conflict in Wikipedia: lots of discussion, no agreement, in the end we agreed to disagree. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I took the following list of redlinks from a seperate database, that of the "Green Book", but if interested editors would like to create the necessary articles or redirects (probably mostly redirects), obviously this would help clueless chemists! Physchim62 (talk) 13:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

• fundamental translation vector
• n-fold rotation operator

-> Rotational_symmetry#n-fold_rotational_symmetry -- Jheald 00:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• base of natural logaritms
• identity symmetry operator

-> identity function -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• space-fixed inversion

ie ? reflection in a line, plane, or hypersurface -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• inversion operator

-> inversion in a point -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• rotation-reflection operator

-> improper rotation -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• displacement vector

-> displacement (vector) Needs cleanup -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

-> or possibly "displacement vector" as a common name for "electric field times dielectric constant". See Electric displacement field and also displacement current, which I think is what happens when you put a dielectric into a capacitor, or something like that.linas 04:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• product sign
• summation sign
• plane angle

I filled in a couple, but it is not clear precisely what the remainder refer to, since no articles link to them, so I can't see how they are used in context. Geometry guy 15:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Above, "base of natural logaritms" should be "base of natural logarithms". Some occur in the Gold Book list (for example plane angle, although without definition). The Green Book mentioned above gives some context; for example "fundamental translation vector" is used in the context of crystal lattices and undoubtedly means the translation vectors that generate the edges of the parallelepiped that is the fundamental region of the lattice.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

These mostly look like symmetry operators related to crystallographic groups, heavily used particularly in quantum chemistry, to discuss the symmetry groups of molecules (see: Molecular symmetry), and hence of molcular orbitals for quantum mechanical electrons (and also perturbations of them). See also Euclidean group, Point group, Point groups in two dimensions, Point groups in three dimensions, Crystallographic point group, Plane symmetry for WP articles in this area. Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There seem to be several articles dealing with the same point symmetries and symmetry point groups here. Scope for consolidation/cross referencing ? Jheald 00:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Agree. The (remaining) operators are used in the discussion of molecular symmetry, which has a fairly wide range of uses in chemistry. Fundamental translation vector is undoubted related to translation (geometry), although I'm not 100% sure what is "fundamental" about it: it may simply be a synonym for unit cell vector (crystallographic usage), I shall try to check. Physchim62 (talk) 09:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I filled in three more of the redlinks. Can someone finish off? Geometry guy 18:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Set theory category

Should Category:Set theory be a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic? It seems to be regarded as a subfield by modern set theorists, but I'm not sure if this is the right criterion for populating categories with subcategories, and wonder if it would not be more helpful to have separate categories with many common subcategories. I've been discussing this with Trovatore, but I think a wider discussion is needed. Geometry guy 13:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

But perhaps also a subcat of general topology, which is historically what it set out to be? linas 13:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Since there is no requirement that the category graph has to be a tree, the set theory category can be put into several parent categories. Personally, as a logician, I would find it very surprising if it were not in the mathematical logic category.

I think the difficulty is that there are two different meanings of "mathematical logic" in use. To researchers, it means essentially "recursion theory, proof theory, set theory, and model theory". To nonlogicians, it means something like "the logical methods used in mathematics, and the study of those logical methods." It's natural enough for nonlogicians with this viewpoint to think set theory, which has a subject of its own like algebra does, is not part of "mathematical logic" and that the logicians are trying to claim it somehow, but that isn't the historical development.

I disgree with Linas' comment - from my viewpoint the development of set theory was either contemporary with or (more likely) predated that of general topology by a few years. It is true that the phrase "set theory" had a very broad meaning in the early 20th century, but the content of topology has never included things such as models of set theory. CMummert · talk 14:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I also disagree with Linas's comment. However, I'm not convinced that it is sensible to structure the category based on the logician's viewpoint (see below, and also the comments I made on Trovatore's talk page, linked above). I understand that there is a huge overlap, and it is perfectly reasonable to regard set theory as a subfield of mathematical logic: I am not complaining that logicians are trying to "claim" set theory, only suggesting that this might not be the best way to structure the category. As for the historical development, was Cantor's set theory really part of mathematical logic? Additionally, a large part of set theory, indeed the part familiar to most readers (Category:Basic concepts in set theory), doesn't have much to do with mathematical logic at all. Geometry guy 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with having Category:Set theory as a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic in addition to possibly other categories. After all, the category system operates as a tool for browsing topics, and for such a purpose it does not need to be a tree — a more general directed graph should work fine (prefereably without loops...). A related question that may have been discussed before is whether the maths article classification system should follow the AMS scheme [8]. It is well established and works fairly alright. And by the way, as the habit of having multiple secondary classifications for most articles and books shows, binning of maths topics in a perfectly clean way is quite difficult. Stca74 14:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, the category graph is not a tree, and there is no reason for it to be. In fact it is rather a long way from being a tree. The concern I have is that if specialist fields express their broadest scope in the category system, then everything will end up being a subcategory of everything else, and the category system will be useless. It seems to me that set theory is so basic, that it should be directly a subcategory of Category:Mathematics. However, in the AMS scheme, it is a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic and foundations, and that would be an alternative way to proceed. Geometry guy 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

AMS classification has different aims from WP categorisation. I'm happy with the current position: almost all of the articles within Category:Set theory are logical in interest. There is Category:Descriptive set theory, which in the old days (pre-1920 say) would have been co-extensive with Category:General topology ('sets of points'); but again almost all the content is logic. It has Category:Sets of real numbers in it, e.g. for Cantor set, which is a subcategory also of Category:Real numbers. There might be room for more connections made with Category:Discrete mathematics. Otherwise it all seems fine. Charles Matthews 15:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily be against renaming category:mathematical logic to category:mathematical logic and foundations. I kind of think the top-level subcats of category:mathematics should be fewer. The standard division I'm used to has four subfields, namely algebra, analysis, geometry/topology, and logic/foundations. I think that might be a decent place to start, although I have to admit that I don't know where to put number theory in that scheme. --Trovatore 18:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I also think it might be worth reproducing here a point I made on my talk page: mathematical logic, as the term is used today, doesn't really have much to do with logic in the sense of "the science of making valid inferences". It's entrenched historical terminology (perhaps the only truly enduring legacy of the discredited Russell–Frege logicist school), and it no longer really matters much whether it makes sense or not in terms of its component words. I think maybe this confusion explains how G-guy can say that the topics in the "basic concepts in set theory" cat don't have much to do with mathematical logic, when to my eye they obviously do. --Trovatore 18:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

In related news, I have spent a while cleaning up Category:Mathematical logic by subcategorizing a lot of articles. I have also nominated Category:Computation for deletion here. That only sounds odd until you actually look at the category. CMummert · talk 18:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The renaming is definitely one way forward. I agree with Charles, however, that WP categorisation has different aims than traditional or modern mathematics subject classification, and we shouldn't confuse the two. The current top-level subcats of Category:Mathematics are

arithmetic, algebra, mathematical analysis, geometry, number theory, topology, category theory, mathematical logic, discrete mathematics, applied mathematics, mathematical physics, probability and statistics, functions and mappings, numbers, sequences and equations

and several subcategories that are not related to topics in math. Some of these categories reflect what is important to WP readers, rather than mathematicians, and I think it should stay that way. It would then seem natural to include set theory in this top level for the same reason. It is the eye of the reader, not the mathematical logician which matters.

Alternatively Category:Mathematical logic and foundations could be refined into Category:Mathematical logic and Category:Mathematics foundations with set theory as a subcat of both. The two terms are closely related but have a different emphasis (rather like geometry and topology). For instance, Trovatore has suggested that Category:Category theory should be a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic. I would be uncomfortable with that, as only a small part of category theory (e.g. topos theory) is mathematical logic. On the other hand, it fits comfortably as a subcategory of Category:Mathematics foundations. Geometry guy 19:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I would be strongly against distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations". In practice the terms are synonymous. Which term a person chooses to use sometimes tells you a bit about his philosophical views (though not in any reliable way); it tells you virtually nothing about the content he's discussing. I think all of category theory is math logic; see my remarks above about "math logic" not having much in particular to do with "logic" in the broader sense. --Trovatore 20:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

They may be synonymous to the experts, but they aren't to non-experts. One can declare an equality math logic = foundations, but this does not address the fact that these concepts convey different meanings to the general reader (even the general mathematician). In particular, I fail to see how the really important modern subject of higher category theory can be called mathematical logic. Similarly, regarding homological algebra and universal algebra as part of mathematical logic seems odd, whereas it does not seem so unreasonable to regard them as part of foundations (as well as algebraic topology and algebra respectively), because these ideas are used in many branches of mathematics. Geometry guy 22:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know much about "higher" category theory, so I couldn't say. The basic arrow-chasing that appears in, say, Lang's Algebra, seems to me clearly to have the character of mathematical logic. But if categorists don't think so, I'm happy to defer to them on that point. (Are there any categorists in the project? I don't know of any.)

That would make Category:Homological algebra a subcategory of mathematical logic as well. Just because X "has the character of" Y does not mean X should be a subcat of Y. Geometry guy 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

G-guy, please do not respond in-line to something in the middle of a comment; you lose attribution and sometimes break the flow of someone else's argument. Homological algebra does not strike me as having the character of mathematical logic. Category theory in general does. But I won't press the point on category theory, because I really haven't usually seen it classified as math logic. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Apologies — I had just returned from some discussions where this was the norm rather than the exception, and had no intention to cause any annoyance or break up the flow. I hope in this case the indentation makes the attribution clear at least. Apologies again, Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should be using the standard terminology of the field, whether it's intuitive or not. I'm the first to say that calling these fields "logic" is based on a historical error, but I don't much care; it's a typical fact about language that errors eventually become correct if they're used enough. "Foundations" has its own baggage -- first, it suggests you believe in foundationalism, which you might not, and when it is used distinctively based on content, it often connotes foundational philosophy, which does not seem to be what we're talking about. And there isn't, to my knowledge, any third choice to describe these fields that seem to have a common character.

So as I say, I'm OK with renaming the cat to category:mathematical logic and foundations, but I would oppose any proposal to break that down into "logic" and "foundations" subcats. --Trovatore 01:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to clarify that my suggesion was not to introduce two subcategories of Category:Mathematical logic and foundations, but to replace this by two subcategories of Category:mathematics which could lead the reader into foundations/math logic issues in two different ways. However, if this does not find any support here, I have no intention to pursue it. I'm just trying to raise the issue. Geometry guy 18:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on Trovatore's talk page prompted me to read Wikipedia's guidelines on categories, namely WP:CAT. Particularly interesting is the very first one, which states:

1. Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles.

From the discussion so far (with the exception of the comment of User:Charles Matthews) it would seem that this guideline instead states:

1. Categories are mainly used to organize the hierarchy of knowledge. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories in accordance with the general practice of experts in the field.

It doesn't say that! Geometry guy 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, I think our categorizations should not be at cross purposes with the standard terminology of the field. That would be endlessly disruptive, as authors applied categories to articles in standard ways, and as knowledgable readers were led astray.

Distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations of math" just isn't going to work; there is no standard distinction between them (except, again, insofar as "foundations" means "philosophy", which isn't what you want) and the categories will be endlessly muddled. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree: if WP categorization is at cross purposes to established hierarchies, it will confuse both readers and editors. Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is turning into a general discussion, it seems. Category:Categorical logic should be a subcategory of both Category:Category theory and Category:Mathematical logic. There are good reasons why we can't intersect categories; do this instead. I see no point in Category:Mathematical logic and foundations: verbose and probably hendiadys. I think few top-level subcategories in Category:Mathematics is not going to be helpful. Charles Matthews 21:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Charles, I learned a new word :-). Yes, hendiadys is exactly right. I don't see that as a fatal problem, though, if it makes people happier to use the lengthier name. But my personal preference is for the shorter name, partly because the longer one would provide a constant temptation to break it into "logic" and "foundations" subcats. --Trovatore 21:24, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Charles' comment: yes Category:Categorical logic (and also Category:Topos theory) are, and should be, subcats both of mathematical logic and category theory.

I have a proposal to make, which I should have thought of and tried out sooner: make Category:Set theory a subcat of both Category:Mathematics and Category:Mathematical logic. This is justified because:

1. it is a branch of mathematical logic, particularly in expert usuage;
2. like Category:Functions and mappings it concerns a broad and basic topic in mathematics for the general reader, and deserves to appear at the top-level, along with categories such as Category:Arithmetic and Category:Topology.

How does that sound? Geometry guy 10:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be uncontentious, so I will go ahead. Geometry guy 18:02, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Why is it called biproduct?

Please see "Why is it called biproduct?" section in Talk:Biproduct. --Acepectif 20:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Because it's both a product (category theory) and a coproduct. Silly rabbit 20:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It's a dessert topping and a floor wax? Jheald 06:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

disastrous article

The article titled additional logarithm topics bears certain resemblances to New Orleans three days after Katrina. Probablly some of its material should get merged into existing articles or perhaps new articles on disparate topics. Michael Hardy 21:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that's too generous. All the "derivations" are textbook stuff that doesn't belong here at all (I'm not saying that proofs don't belong here; I'm just saying that the theorems proved on that page are not given in any context other than that of an indiscriminate, textbook-like list, and so don't contribute to acceptable content). The "using logarithms" section is really just some competition problems that constitutes a "how-to" guide, and so should go. The continued fractions bit at the end is just an explication of a well-known algorithm for computing continued fractions that is actually given on the page for that topic. This article looks like it was written by a high-school junior taking precalculus. Ryan Reich 21:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I've proposed the article for deletion. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove the deletion template. Ed H | talk 01:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, now we can forget about that disaster. Ed H | talk 02:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)