Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2014/Apr

More female math editors?

At a math conference this weekend I was talking to a past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics about a recent NPR report on the Smithsonian's Edit-A-Thon that was intended to increase the number of female editors in Wikipedia. I told her that I would broach the more specific problem of the lack of female math editors here.

The general problem of the lack of female editors is compounded for us because there are relatively fewer females who feel confident enough to tackle math articles. I think that it is important for this project to try to improve the picture. Due to anonymous editing, we really can't "target" female editors, but we can, with a little practice, make ourselves more inviting to newer editors in the hope that female editors would be more attracted to a less hostile environment.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

• When you have made changes (or reverts) to the edits of a "new-ish" editor, instead of packing the reason into a curt edit summary, try being a little more expressive on a talk page (the user's or the article's, depending on circumstances), indicating why you felt that the changes were necessary.
• Make sure that you add the reasons for putting up a maintenance tag on the article's talk page.
• Give a more personalized welcome on a new editor's talk page. Something a bit friendlier than the standard <<Hello - Welcome - Here are the Rules>> templates that are available.
• Perhaps someone could develop a template that would invite a new editor to consider joining this WikiProject, to be used when we see someone editing math articles.

I am sure that there are other things that we can do, both individually and collectively, to encourage and foster good editing in a non-threatening environment. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:02, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Reminding folks to be kind to new editors is good advice for any gender. We have the invitation template {{MathInvitation}}, but I do not know if it is used much. --Mark viking (talk) 21:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the existence of that template, but will start using it. Deltahedron (talk) 06:28, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I also wasn't aware of that template. It is a bit cut and dry, I was hoping for something a little more inviting. I won't mess with this template since it is transcluded in the {{MathWelcome}} templates, but I'll think about some alternate wording. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 16:31, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that the approach of making the initial experience for new editors more encouraging is sensible, as a lot of value is added by editors across the spectrum. Even though I'm no longer entirely a novice editor, I occasionally find I need a thick skin, and also still occasionally regret my own abruptness. WP is a nice context for limiting the bias/polarization on any categorization, and would not like to see this becoming a focus here, as it would subtly undermine the principles. One should also take care not to address symptoms rather than a problem. For example, if relatively few women have mathematical interest and involvement, we should expect only a roughly proportionate representation in endeavors such as editing of math articles. If there are factors acting to discourage a group more than their natural inclination, these factors should be identified and addressed directly, rather than compensatory measures being adopted to "fix the statistics". On friendly templates, would it make sense to highlight that contributions according to ability and skill have value here, regardless of the degree of skill? —Quondum 18:15, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The meta-wiki page, Proposals for more female editors, might also have suggestions that will help this project. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:40, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

WP:NPOV suggestion.

Does anyone have a suggestion for an article that would be better as an example of "Some articles don't necessarily have NPOV disputes" than Heptagonal antiprismatic prism? Naraht (talk) 14:31, 1 April 2014‎ (UTC)

Gamma function? -- Taku (talk) 16:59, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Most articles don't have NPOV disputes. What are you hoping to do with the example? RockMagnetist (talk) 17:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I've seen arguments on some articles that there is a POV on everything and as such writing an article from an NPOV is actually impossible. I thought that an article on a mathematical polytope, while people something that people couldn't touch, would qualify.Naraht (talk) 10:12, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes mathematics articles do have POV disputes, though it's not common. I like the suggestion of gamma function, because it's a very well-developed article on an important topic and doesn't have any POV disputes that I'm aware of. If you want a non-mathematical example, you might try an asteroid like 3753 Cruithne; it's hard to get worked up over a chunk of rock. Ozob (talk) 14:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that the description of a mathematical object, in the framework of a fixed mathematical theory is generally not really subject to POV. However, to be encyclopedic a mathematical article must not be restricted to the description of an object or a theory. It should explain why this object or theory has been introduced and what are its usage and applications. In Heptagonal antiprismatic prism for example, the description of this polytope is not subject to POV, even if it could be done with a more accessible formulation. But its notability is questionable, and the number of mathematicians that have encountered it and know its name is certainly very low. My POV, is that it does not deserve a specific article, and that its description would better placed in an article Polytopes that have received a name. This is a point of view. On the other hand, Gamma function is much closer to a NPOV article: The gamma function is known by all mathematicians and is used by many of them. Thus its importance may not been disputed, nor the description of its properties. However, there are several equivalent ways to define it (definite integral and analytic continuation, functional equation, differential equation, ...). The POV of the editors of this article was to choose the first definition, and to describe the other ones as properties. Other choices would be also valuable. D.Lazard (talk) 14:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I presume that the statement "there is a POV on everything" was made after an article has been tagged for having a POV. That's just a cop-out. You should make sure that the tag is associated with a discussion of some specific concerns on the talk page (see the usage notes at Template:POV). If they do, those concerns have to be addressed. If not, the tag can be removed. Either way, the status of Heptagonal antiprismatic prism or Gamma function is irrelevant. Unless the dispute is over a math article, this isn't the place to discuss it. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 02/04

Draft:István Fenyó. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:59, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Multivariate holomorphic functions

The definition seems natural, but what are the multivariate Cauchy-Riemann equations? Also, the requirement of square integrability seems very unnatural to me because it's not a requirement of the univariate case. Just for example, the holomorphic function from $f:\mathbf {C} \to \mathbf {C} f(z)=z$ does not meet that condition in the univariate case (integrals of its square over the entire complex plane and the entire real line are both infinite).--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:52, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

It says "locally square-integrable" (underscore added). So the integral is not over the entire complex plane. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:05, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

One could assume that it's a sufficient condition for holomorphicness, but I can't see why it should be a necessary' condition.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:32, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I do not know. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I think I have a partial answer to this quandary. Ohsawa's Analysis of Several Complex Variables opens with a proof that holomorphic functions are weak solutions to the Cauchy–Riemann equations; but, he says, "to keep our argument as simple as possible" he restricts to locally square integrable functions. I'm guessing Ohsawa was the original source for this claim and that this hypothesis isn't necessary. The question is what the right hypothesis should be. Probably the theorem holds for any distributional solution whatsoever, but I don't know enough about regularity of solutions to elliptic PDEs to say that with confidence. Ozob (talk) 15:09, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Hörmander does the L^2 theory, but I don't have a copy on hand to check. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:21, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

(Top of my head). Let f be a (Schwarz) distribution on an open subset $U\subset \mathbb {C} ^{n}$. Suppose f satisfies multivariable CR equations; that is, $\partial f/\partial {\overline {z}}_{j}=0,j=1,\dots ,n.$ (A fancier way is to say, ${\overline {\partial }}f=0.$) Then f also satisfies the Laplace equation; thus, by elliptic regularity, it is smooth (and everything reduces to the classical setting.) Of course, f is uniquely defined up to measure-zero set. -- Taku (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics

Hi!

I'd appreciate if a mathematician could have a look at Talk:Wave function#Inner product (again). I have had a content dispute with myself. The thing is that I'd like to see the inner product defined on solution spaces of the Schrödinger equation be the right one to yield a Hilbert space. Alternatively, given an inner product, find the "right space" of functions (if it exists) to apply it to to yield a Hilbert space.

In particular, does my last post there (as of now) have an element of truth? YohanN7 (talk) 14:10, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Should display equations be centered?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of left alignment. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:47, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

---

Screenshot of the displaystyle proposal.

The update to the MathJax code means MathJax display equations are now centered as opposed to Texvc equation and previous versions which were left-aligned. Should display equations be left-aligned, centered or configurable using the displaystyle feature?--Salix alba (talk): 14:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Survey

When I looked at some off wiki sources I was surprised to find that in many the display equations are centered, These include blogs[1], arXiv [2] and LaTeX documents. So it not so much a technical problem, fixing the formatting looks like a simple change to the MathJax config, more a style issue. Do people have views on how thing should be displayed: left, centered or configurable using the displaystyle feature mentioned above?--Salix alba (talk): 21:00, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

• Left (with an indent, please). Centered-anything looks so weird in A.D. 2013. No such user (talk) 22:32, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
• centred. I had not thought of this before, but switched to MathJax temporarily so I could ignore the align problem until it was fixed, and noticed formulae were centred and liked it. More than that it looked so incredibly natural and like most mathematical sources. Even the spacing seems better: sometimes with left-justified formulae the white space above and below formulae looks excessive when there are many of them. So I'd like it to be available. I can understand it not being a default as any change like that can be seen as disruptive, to people who prefer it as it is, and in a small number of articles where formatting/layout is worse with it on. But as an option, so voluntary, it would be a great addition. Problems then could be fixed so they look fine in both cases, left and centre justified.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:14, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

To boil it down: Currently good old pure <math> behaves differently from <math> displayed using MathJax. No good, behaviour should be identical.

If there is a need for new features, it would be wise to implement any changes in a way that the old behaviour won't be broken. I'm not telling anybody anything new. :-) --Pyrometer (talk) 16:21, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

• Left, with indent. Centered looks fine in mathematical Journals with their often rather limited column width, but on Wikipedia pages which can be displayed in all kinds of widths it's likely to break the text flow. In many cases there are rather short phrases of text between displayed formulae, and the need to jump between the left-aligned text bits and the centered formulae doesn't help readability. I'm fine with an option (preference, gadget or script) to change the default behavior to centered on a per-user basis. — HHHIPPO 19:44, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Worth pointing out that the way pages are laid out is going to change, and one change being proposed (currently in the beta - one of the things available from the 'Beta' link at the top of each page) is to make body text fixed width. This may be one reason why I support the centred option; I've had the the typography refresh beta enabled for a couple of weeks, so the formulae were centred in 715px wide text.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 11:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

    +1. Helder 16:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, that's complicating things. Both that participants in this discussion are using different interfaces, and that the standard user interface will change at some point (is there a roadmap?). My suggestion would still be to go back to left-aligned for now, for continuity. Once the typography refresh is rolled out, shouted at, fine tuned and stable, we should re-visit this question, then with all participants and also the typical readers being used to the same new boundary conditions. — HHHIPPO 21:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@S Page (WMF) and Jaredzimmerman (WMF): maybe the change in the alignment of math formulas should also be added as part of the typography refresh? Helder 15:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Helder Thanks for looping us into the conversation, my gut tells me centered looks better purely from a layout point of view, but I think this is more about comprehension, I don't know if alignment in this case helps comprehension, e.g. if formulas are on two consecutive lines, and are of different lengths, does the fact that elements from the first may more closely align with those in the second when left aligned vs centered have an effect on understandability? if so, left aligned might be more ideal. Jared Zimmerman (talk) 18:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Jared Zimmerman, I think in the cases where alignment of formulas is desired, one should use a single <math> tag and use the align environments in LaTeX. See Help:Displaying a formula#Fractions, matrices, multilines and b:LaTeX/Advanced Mathematics#Text in aligned math display ("Multiline equations") for a few examples. Helder 19:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Consistently for PNG and MathJax. Default Left, personal option for Centered. - DVdm (talk) 21:20, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
• Make it configurable either on a per-wiki basis or even per equation basis. I could see cases that in some articles with a sequence of equations on multiple lines left aligning can make things line up better. The displaystyle option could be used for this. The CSS rule .MathJax_Display { text-align : left !important; } can be used to override the default.--Salix alba (talk): 10:07, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Left This is a bug not a feature. We can still center an equation with <center>. -- Taku (talk) 14:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

  <center> is deprecated. Use CSS instead. Helder 16:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

  It should be possible to use class="center" - that works on most (all?) block-level elements on Wikipedia. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

  You can use {{center}} which works for maths equations.--Salix alba (talk): 19:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

• Center, as is the usual style in mathematical publications, and no more user preferences, please (those who want to change the default can use their personal CSS). Helder 16:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Indented Left. There is no usual style in mathematical publications that I am familiar with; about 50-50 on centered vs. indented left. With equation numbering, centered looks better, with short textual interludes between equations, indented left looks better. Since we have lots of the latter and little of the former, the choice is clear for me. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Left. In a perfect world, all equations will look the same to all users. Aside from obvious technical reasons why that is not the case, including the different (and across the board better) rendering of mathematics in MathJax compared with PNG, I don't think changes that cause MathJax to depart further from the style that PNG presents are a good idea at the moment. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, provided centering equations with MathJax enabled doesn't unintentionally break anything and makes equations always look at least as good as the left-justified manually indented versions. But consensus doesn't seem to be going in that direction. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:06, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

• Indented Left In books (or journals, or similar), I much prefer centered equation, but on Wikipedia, this doesn't make sense to me. I have a large screen (as I'm sure, many others have), and left-aligned equations just work infinitely better. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

• Left, but a comment on indentation: By the principle of WYSIWYM inherent to wiki markup, an equation should follow the same formatting defaults as regular text until otherwise specified. Of course, in practice one must consider that any extra step (like inserting the colon before each equation every time) an editor must take is another place for an error to occur, and indentation is by far the norm. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:07, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

• Indented left goes best with layout style of the encyclopedia. ~KvnG 17:45, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

• Indented left. Apart from its other merits, it might well go best with layout style, and aesthetically I do prefer it, but that cuts very little ice because aesthetics are subject to fashion and whim. In the case of short, isolated kids' stuff like e=mcc, the presentation should hardly matter, except for consistency, although possibly because of my computer background I am prejudiced in favour of indented left anyway.

However, this SHOULD not be a matter of aesthetics and preference, but of considerations of clarity, functionality and lack of distraction. So for example, when theorems and expressions are listed in context with each other, or when a single long expression won't fit onto a single line, or when it is better broken up into segments to show internal relationships or logical patterns, then nothing else works as well in general as indented left, sometimes multiple levels of indentation at that.

Even more strongly, getting beyond primary school level, when one lists derivations and proofs, particularly with interspersed corollaries, comments and lemmata then there simply is no contest; the use of indentation becomes as functionally important as the use of parentheses. Polish notation and centering have their uses, but they are not much good at exploiting real estate for conveying structured logic. JonRichfield (talk) 14:21, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

• Indented left as default, but with option to override. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:28, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
• Indented left – For the same reasons as others. United States Man (talk) 02:32, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
• Indented left as default, but with option to override. YohanN7 (talk) 21:29, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
• Left - Presentation should be consistent with PNG. Centered formulae look as bad as centered text, period. Since MathJax 2.3 (now active on Wikipedia), this option is built into its configuration, but defaults to center. There is also an indent option, which should not be enabled as the ":" markup already provides the indent (unless we want to ditch the use of ":"). — Edokter (talk) — 13:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• A conceptual question. Can we do a poll how it should look like. It would be great to have a page that I can link to for the code review and say "look this change implements the rendering in the way it was requested from the community." My propsal (which is already implemented looks like that

  

  Screenshot of the displaystyle proposal.

  You can view it live at http://math-test2.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org/wiki/Displaystyle (probably you don't want to log in).--Physikerwelt (talk) 09:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Yes we could. We could make this an WP:RFC ideally it should be publicised widely as it effect other language projects.--Salix alba (talk): 10:07, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Great! @User:Salix alba can you make a WP:RFC or a draft for that? @User:pkra can you spread it?--Physikerwelt (talk) 13:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
  • @User:Physikerwelt Do you mean copy the soon-to-be WP:RFC to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Rfc ? These should probably be separate anyway since the WP preference should not force MediaWiki preference. Pkra (talk) 22:35, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• For the record, the changed behavior has little to do with MathJax being updated. It's a heuristic written specifically for MediaWiki's math extension. Pkra (talk) 22:35, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Mathematical typography has been worked on for a very long time, not least by such luminaries as Donald Knuth, and there is a very mature body of expertise on how to optimise the appearance of mathematics on the printed page. There is a smaller but growing body of research into layout for tablets and mobiles. I do hope that WMF and its large and well-funded staff will investigate and make use of this body of knowledge rather than redesigning on the basis of "gut instinct" and an unscientific poll. Deltahedron (talk) 19:51, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Deltahedron: It sees as I'm the only person working on the Math extension in my free time. I'm a PhD student with a lot of other tasks. I'd be really interested in that research field. Maybe you can point me to publications, or people. In an optimal case we could find someone of that crowd who could also help on the Math extension. i.e. people testing and code review are really needed.

Try this page for an introduction to Knuth's papers on digital typography. His paper in the AMS Bulletin (1979) is quite inspirational. Handbook of Typography for the Mathematical Sciences by Steven Krantz also contains references to earlier works. As far as reading text on tablets, mobile devices and so on is concerned, I am not aware of the status current research but there is a huge literature on human-computer interaction. I don't want to disparage your efforts in any way but surely the WMF can afford more support one part-time student? Deltahedron (talk) 17:34, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

• Currently the automated tests for Math are broken, but a fix for that is announced for next week. So if I did a larger change there is a risk of breaking something. The change that broke the align command for example was reviewed by at least two people ... and nobody realized the error. As a workaround I could add an invisible whitespace in MathJax mode. Would that be a solution for now?--Physikerwelt (talk) 13:55, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

  I think that would be fine for now. Ozob (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

• Now that we are on it, can we switch the mathcal font from default one in tex to one used by topologies such as Lurie? see, for example, the notation for the line bundle, L in [3]. It is fairly standard today. If the switch is not desirable (conflict with some other area in math, say), then can we at least provide a topologist mathcal font as an option? -- Taku (talk) 13:49, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Temporary local fix

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63051

As a temporary measure, until the extension if fixed, a single line of CSS in Common.css will force MathJax to left-align display fomulae. Any objections? — Edokter (talk) — 17:25, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Since there's an outstanding patch to fix the problem, I think it's more important to get the patch reviewed and deployed than to make a temporary fix. But I'm not going to object to a temporary fix, either. Ozob (talk) 00:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a big problem get code review for anything maths related and this fix in particular so it may take a while. A local fix seems a sensible option.--Salix alba (talk): 00:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

That is a massive patch which does not just deal with just centering. Something that needs to be tested on test.wikipedia.org first. I'll place the fix in the mean time. — Edokter (talk) — 01:12, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Changes to Math extension

We landed fixes for bugzilla:63016, bugzilla:63574 and bugzilla:61051 this weekend and bugzilla:36060 should hopefully all be merged before tuesday. That means that these these changes will be live on english wikipedia in about 1,5 to 2 weeks. It will be appreciated if you can do some more testing on beta labs. Note that this site is considered not secure, so use a different password if you want to test MathJax. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. The fix to use local fonts instead of having to download them is especially good news as it should significantly speed rendering. I see that these fixes also include removing centering for displayed equations, discussed above, and something about color within equations. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 08/04

I've posted this in the computer science WikiProject, but it looks defunct. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Microscale and Macroscale Models. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Hsu–Robbins–Erdős theorem

Only one page links to the new article Hsu–Robbins–Erdős theorem. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:39, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Mathematics defaulters

In mathemics, how would the defaulters be retrieved, example when the wikipedia's edits in English is: 4,488,884. We have many attempt and many deleted, all of them are wikipedians, yet, not recorded among the 4,488,884, then, how would these defaulters be retrieved, these defaulters are wikipedians regardless of trivial, it generally mean that wikipedians are miscalculated in the world of mathematics, if it's only, as example: 4,488,884 are the English edits? am Jesmion 41.206.11.63 (talk) 10:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Don't think I understand two consecutive words of this. YohanN7 (talk) 11:55, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Main Page currently says "4,489,960 articles in English". It was probably 4,488,884 when you posted. I don't know what you mean by defaulters but I suspect your question is about what is included in the count. See Wikipedia:What is an article?#Lists of articles and statistics. Redirects and deleted pages don't count. Disambiguation pages do count. The count is for the English Wikipedia, i.e. the website at http://en.wikipedia.org where "en" is the language code for English. The count is made automatically and it's not checked whether the pages are actually in English. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:54, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

This User:Jesmion? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Style

There is a discussion on the perennial topic of the level of mathematical sophistication appropriate for mathematics articles at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Mathematics#Rewrite, arising out of a discussion at Talk:Waring's_problem#Copy_Editing. Deltahedron (talk) 06:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Related drama now at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Please_Temp-Block_Dicklyon_for_Disruptive_Reversions. Deltahedron (talk) 15:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Ramanujan–Sato series

This new article could use some 'cats'. Bearian (talk) 21:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

meow? YohanN7 (talk) 22:02, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Category:mathematical series? -- Taku (talk) 22:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Added. --Mark viking (talk) 16:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Category for discussion

Please see Category:0 hyperbolic volume knots and links and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 April 17#Category:0 hyperbolic volume knots and links. The discussion is about how to name the category, not whether it should be kept as a category. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:18, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Additive polynomial and Linearised polynomial

These articles seem to overlap sufficiently that a merger could be appropriate? Deltahedron (talk) 21:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Frivolous Consultant/sandbox

Dear mathematicians: This old Afc submission about something called "Tessellation conglomerate" will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is there anything here that should be saved? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

There is probably room for an article on the same general topic (counting the number of copies of some shape within a larger pattern) but that draft looks pretty hopeless to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:33, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I will let it go. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:57, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 17/04

This is another one that doesn't completely fall under the Mathematical domain, but it's been lingering in the queue for too long. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Exponential Search. Thanks, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd say this one looks credible (though I didn't read it thoroughly). Is there no Wikiproject for Computer Science? They'd be able to tell (at least if it exists). YohanN7 (talk) 05:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

There is such a project: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science. I have it watchlisted, but it's not very active compared to this one. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• Also Draft:Cell-probe model. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 23:48, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

J-structure

J-structures are an alternative approach to developing Jordan algebras proposed by T. A. Springer in a 1973 book. There is a page J-structure which currently redirects to Jordan algebra, but the latter article does not mention J-structures at all. Curiously, there is an article hidden underneath the redirect [4] which was overwritten by Mathsci on the grounds that it had been written by a banned user [5]. The article itself seems tolerable but I prefer to get consensus before restoring anything by a banned user per Wikipedia:Banning policy. Deltahedron (talk) 21:08, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Even banned editors can make good edits. Given the ban, Mathsci was right to revert the edit. But if you have independently reviewed the material and it looks sensible and the source holds up (I'll note the book is online at Google books [6]) then I don't see why the prose could not be used to start an article on the subject. --Mark viking (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

How funny, the "banner" of the banned editor edits is himself banned. Therefore, per WP:ZAUFOIHWCNA, the overwrite must be reverted. YohanN7 (talk) 21:52, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

It's just a typo. The correct link is Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Echigo mole. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:43, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

What typo? The article was turned into a redirect by Mathsci, and Mathsci is now banned. But I'm with Mark Viking: if the material by itself is found worthy to return, no matter who wrote or removed it, then it should. — HHHIPPO 09:08, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I misinterpreted an earlier comment. The edit summary linked to by Deltahedron contains a typo in its wikilink, making it hard to find the details of the banned user. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:22, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I would be rather wary of restoring anything by this banned user. There was a rather bizarre case a few years ago: I cannot remember the exact details, but it involved him harassing another editor for several years by creating poor but plausible cut-and-paste articles in areas the other editor was working on, for which he was eventually banned. I had a quick look at the deleted article, and it is part of a similar pattern: it is a jumble of close paraphrases of assorted sentences from Springer's book (so in any case may be a copyright infringement). My advice is that it will probably be less trouble in the long run to rewrite the article from scratch. r.e.b. (talk) 18:50, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that — I'll work on a copy to eliminate those problems. Deltahedron (talk) 21:30, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Is this real or a hoax?

At the risk of advertising my mathematical illiteracy, could someone take a glance at Redundant proof just be sure that it is not someone's idea of a joke? It popped up on my NPP queue and frankly if it were written in ancient Aramaic I'd have had a better shot at grasping it. Thanks... -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:23, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know anything about it so I can't be sure, but it doesn't push my "hoax" button. I suspect it's the work of a new editor adding stuff on proof compression, whatever that is exactly, and scattering it over several articles without giving sufficient context. Will need cleanup. --Trovatore (talk) 22:46, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The sole WP:RS listed in the article has only been cited 8 times (fide google scholar). Not sure this clears the notability hurdle. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 23:08, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, that could likely be addressed by consolidating the articles. I think eight cites on a highly technical topic is at least borderline, at least if they're high-quality cites, but probably better if the content isn't scattered all over the place. --Trovatore (talk) 23:41, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, good to know. In compsci systems work, my rule of thumb is >100 cites before we can hang an article on a publication. That's highly domain-specific, of course; thanks for the reminder. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 01:37, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Redundant proof is not a joke; automated theorem provers can generate sub-proofs that are redundant with the main proof or with other sub-proofs and elimination of redundancies can be important in applications like proof-carrying code. But the editor, in addition to creating a number of articles, (Redundant proof, LowerUnits, and Resolution inference), seems to be refspamming the Fontaine, et. al. ref, or at least it seems unlikely that this one ref is the best one for several different articles. --Mark viking (talk) 00:33, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

OK it looks at least somewhat legit. As for the other details, I will leave that to the experts on this forum. Thanks for the help! -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

It looks to me more like it should be a term within some other topic rather than a topic in itself and only split out if there was more on it. Wikipedia isn't a dictionary, though we can use redirects for terms within a topic so it does actually have a dictionary aspect. Dmcq (talk) 08:24, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

As far as I understand, this article is about a specific (among several) notion of formal proofs (which one?). It uses, without any definition, a non-standard notation ($\odot$), and does not explain it relationship with the standard (in operational semantics) notation of the example (I have not found where this notation is defined in WP. On the other hand, removing redundancies in proofs is a specific instance of rewriting. All this being considered, the special case considered here is particularly minor and non-notable, and I strongly support the deletion of this article. D.Lazard (talk) 11:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

[Sorry about the delay]. Doesn't appear to be a hoax (although I could be wrong), but none of the articles mentioned above are standard usage. LowerUnits should be deleted entirely; redundant proof redirected to a paragraph in proof compression, if an actual use can be found; and resolution inference be redirected to resolution (logic) (with the identical section removed as being too detailed. If I have time, I'll replace the Proof compression article with something actually referenced to usable references. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

The notability would not be as a concept (a special case of string rewriting) but a problem or research area. It might be placed under proof compression, but that can suggest a focus on efficiency of the proof, making it as small as possible, whereas finding or eliminating the generation of redundant subproofs is a relevant concern in producing human-readable proofs. As with any other program, an automated proof's lucidity can be compromised by optimization. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 00:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization of theorem titles

I started a conversation at Wikipedia Village Pump (misc):Capitalization of theorem titles before it occurred to me it would probably be more appropriate here. I'd appreciate input. --Yoda of Borg (✉) 04:00, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

TeX not rendered

Is TeX code failing to get rendered on Wikipedia today, or is it just me? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:39, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

You do not appear to be alone. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:27, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'm seeing the source code in all its glory. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:57, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I found them rendered, but as PNG, even though I used to have MathJax enabled. So I checked my preferences and found them set to "PNG" rather than "leave as TeX" and "MathJax" unchecked. The combination of "leave as TeX" and "MathJax" checked seems to give the status ante for me. — HHHIPPO 20:23, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

This is due to bugzilla:63915. All users who used to have mathjax enabled, need to enable it again manually atm. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:59, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I am getting inconsistent results with MathJax enabled. Gamma function looks fine, but most others (e.g., Calculus) are full of [Math processing error]). RockMagnetist (talk) 21:39, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you have more information ? browser, os, nageh version/core version, other installed extensions ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:25, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Mac OS 10.9.2, latest versions of Chrome, Safari and Firefox. I can't make the javascript javascript:alert(mathJax.version) work on any of them. As for extensions, do you mean Wikipedia gadgets or something else? RockMagnetist (talk) 16:37, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I advise everyone to check: "Leave it as TeX" and the "MathJax" option. The "PNG" + "MathJax" option will take some time before it is fully working. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:33, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Isn't it a bit complex having a radio button and a checkbox in the preferences. When I reset my preferences in a rush, I didn't initially notice the subtle difference. Wouldn't it be simpler just to have a three-way radio button PNG/tex/MathJax. --Salix alba (talk): 07:21, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The way the options are displayd is a logical fallacy; only one should be enabled. PNG + MathJax result in images loaded first before MathJax kicks in... what a waste of bandwidth! — Edokter (talk) — 12:27, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

No, it's on purpose, it will allow us to come closer to the point where mathjax is independent from how we serve the content. It's all with the long term vision of png reliable rendering, searchable svg math, mathjax/mathoid rendering for the pdf renderer etc etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate that the long term view is an important one, but I think there is a lesson to be learned from the fiasco of the broken align environment that the short term view cannot be ignored. If in the short run readers see something they don't expect, then there's a good chance that they will change the article to something that is actually worse when everything is finally working properly. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

• As a matter of interest, where do we go to see the official long-term view? Deltahedron (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Since support for Math is a pure volunteer driven effort, there is nothing that you could call official. And there are discussions on the wikitech-l mailing list every now and then. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I think I knew that already to be honest. Isn't it pretty disgraceful that with an income in the tens of millions, the WMF can't find any resources to allocate to support for mathematics? Deltahedron (talk) 19:11, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

That's my point. It's really not a very pleasant work to break down everything into atomic changes. With the new version of the Math extension that Gabriel Wicke and me developed in September last year MathJax is executed on the server side, which solves the performance problems. The problem with this development was that it changed from the old version to the new one in one step. I turned out that nobody from the foundation would ever find time to do a code review for such a large change. Therefore I had to break down this change into a number of small commits. This is really a lot of useless work and causes some unfortunate side effects. I'd really appreciate if the Foundation could allocate some paid developers to review the changes in the Math extension at once. But it seems that there is no money for the math extension so everything has to be developed and reviewed for free.--Physikerwelt (talk) 11:43, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Is there a test wiki we can see this in action? I tried doing all the vagrant stuff but got lost git problems. It would be nice to see what then end results of your hard work are going to be.

I've started a thread at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 161#The problem with developing maths rendering. Maybe that can help bring some foundation attention.--Salix alba (talk): 14:02, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

What are the long-term plans anyway? I use "render as PNG" since it usually works and is at least ten times faster than MathJax. Please don't tell me it's going to be MathJax only. YohanN7 (talk) 19:22, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

No. See the demo (based on the Math2.0 code from Oct. 2013) http://math2.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Dedekind_sum. With Firefox you see MathML and with Chrome the SVG output of clientside MathJaX rendering.

The checkbox option for the orthogonal client-side mathjax rendering option is availible for registed users in addition. --Physikerwelt (talk) 11:57, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

On this page I'm seeing nothing - lots of empty formulae - but for one error (the second of the two formulae here):

Failed to parse(MathML (with SVG fallback): Invalid response ('There was a problem during the HTTP request: 500 Internal Server Error') from server 'http://mathoid.eqiad.wmflabs:10042':): s(b,c)={\frac {1}{4c}}\sum _{{n=1}}^{{c-1}}\cot \left({\frac {\pi n}{c}}\right)\cot \left({\frac {\pi nb}{c}}\right).

This is with Safari 5.1.10 on Mac OS 10.6.8. On first reading 'That's my point...' my thought was something like this, i.e. hosting it on a separate server. That's how Lua was tested on test2. Then promote the heck out of it on here, at the Village Pump, any other math rendering related pages, and any discussion that math rendering's raised. That should given time let it be thoroughly tested and demonstrated to convince people to accept it in one go. --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:27, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

And I'm seeing a mass of LaTeX source code and the same red error message (Fedora/3.6.24-1.fc14 Firefox/3.6.24). Deltahedron (talk) 18:41, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm getting problems with Help:Formula not rendering with MathJax switched on. I'm getting

GET http://en.wikipedia.org/extensions/MathMenu.js 404 (Not Found)
GET http://en.wikipedia.org/extensions/MathZoom.js 404 (Not Found)  

which is odd as they are the wrong urls. I'm not sure if its some problem with my set up or a cache bug. I've narrowed down the problem a bit my sandbox does not render correctly. It would be good if someone else to verify if its a bug. --Salix alba (talk): 06:52, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Seemed to be a problem with using MathJax as a section title. Fixed now.--Salix alba (talk): 07:51, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Salix_alba#Math_demo --Physikerwelt (talk) 11:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• Perhaps meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikimedia_Foundation/Proposal_form might be a good place to ask WMF about their future plans. Deltahedron (talk) 18:43, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Gabriel and me wrote a paper about the future of the Math extension. The preview is availible at arxiv. For the reference I'd like to add a link to the gerrit code review web interface and the development branch of the Math extension that already uses MathML and SVG. Physikerwelt (talk) 10:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 25/04

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Chain Decomposition. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:21, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/James Maynard. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Arthur Engel (mathematician)

I created this article recently, but am really struggling with sources. I'm hoping someone here may be able to help? Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 08:01, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

It has now been referred to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Engel (mathematician), so any help would be appreciated. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 13:54, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Merger help request

Transclusion from Requested Merger Noticeboard involving B-Class article:

• Merge Calculus and Infinitesimal calculus. Discussion >>>HERE<<<. Unsigned request -68.145.242.176 Talk 18:01, March 28, 2014‎ (UTC)

• Tagged and awaiting consensus. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 00:05, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

• Overwhelming early support for merge indicates that proposer or someone familiar with the subject(s) can proceed boldly. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 03:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

•  Working Consensus is for merger to proceed by interested editor or proposer. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 05:19, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

=> Can someone here help with this? Regards, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 19:37, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Adaptive Filtering by Optimal Projection

Dear mathematicians: I'm not sure if this is the right place to report this, or if it is more physics or engineering. In any case, should this old Afc submission be kept and improved, or is there content that should be added to Adaptive filtering? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Royal Society journals - subscription offer for one year

I'm delighted to say that the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy for science, is offering 24 Wikipedians free access for one year to its prestigious range of scientific journals. Please note that much of the content of these journals is already freely available online, the details varying slightly between the journals – see the Royal Society Publishing webpages. For the purposes of this offer the Royal Society's journals are divided into 3 groups: Biological sciences, Physical sciences and history of science. For full details and signing-up, please see the applications page. Initial applications will close on 25 May 2014, but later applications will go on the waiting list. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 02:51, 29 April 2014 (UTC)