Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2018/Oct

Links to DAB pages

I have collected several articles which contain links to DAB pages on math maths mathematics-related topics where expert attention is needed. If you solve one of these puzzles, remove the {{disambiguation needed}} tag from the article, and post {{done}} below.

already  Done

Asymmetric cointegration  Done by removing link to the word "multivariate" that in context just meant "involving many variables" Victor Buchstaber  Done XOR'easter (talk) 23:35, 20 September 2018 (UTC) Lie point symmetry  Done (removed ambiguous link as unnecessary as the notion is detailed in the same article) jraimbau (talk) 11:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Acylindrically hyperbolic group  Done jraimbau (talk) 10:41, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Polygamma function  Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 03:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Convex measure  Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 03:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Marcinkiewicz interpolation theorem  Done (removed ambiguous link as unnecessary as the notion is detailed in the same article) Boris Tsirelson (talk) 19:08, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Mathematics, Form and Function  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:53, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Scholia  Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 03:43, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Multiplier ideal  Done Ozob (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Glossary of representation theory  Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 03:47, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Schur's property  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:58, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Virtual manipulatives for mathematics  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:43, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Worldwide Online Olympiad Training Done Motions in the time-frequency distribution  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Relative effective Cartier divisor  Done Ozob (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Mathematical sociology  Done Purgy (talk) 15:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Philip Ehrlich  Done (and also WP:PRODded, though maybe it is rescuable) List of algorithms Seems to have been  Done in this edit last month Amel Ben Abda  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:33, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Annie Leuch-Reineck  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:23, 19 September 2018 (UTC) GNSS positioning calculation  Done XOR'easter (talk) 20:46, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Lorenz energy cycle  Done Purgy (talk) 16:20, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Hahn series  Done Purgy (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC) Tsit Yuen Lam  Done jraimbau (talk) 11:20, 20 September 2018 (UTC) Albert Baernstein II Inhibition theory (last 2 dealt with by Michael Hardy) jraimbau (talk) 11:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

@Narky Blert: all done now. Purgy (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Great work, all!. I'll probably be back with more in the future. Mathematics is one of those topic areas which collect ambiguous links. Narky Blert (talk) 13:00, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at a draft?

Hi! I was wondering if anyone would be willing to look at this draft: Draft:Schwarzschild's equation for radiative transfer. One of the people involved in our Fellows program accidentally submitted it to AfC and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to look at it and if it's ready, accept it through AfC. I can't do it myself since it's a conflict of interest and I would also prefer that someone more familiar with mathematics look over it to make sure that there isn't anything major to be resolved. Thanks! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't have an appropriate background to evaluate this (a favorite phrase of a scientist), but isn't this article about a topic in physics? Meaning you might have a better luck asking a question elsewhere. -- Taku (talk) 23:10, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Massive redirect creation

An apparently new editor has created an enormous number of redirects and relatively worthless articles. Examples include:

• 1-ary through 16-ary (and a few more), which I've nominated for deletion
• Hyper-n, Hypern, n-ation, n-logarithm, n-root (not to be confused with nth root) for n up to 4–6, depending on the type of redirect. I've nominated the the 6s, as they point to a redirect, and the redirection target would be misleading.
• Base n and several others, including some with names instead of numbers. In my opinion, those which do not have actual text about the subject should be deleted.
• n-gon and several others, including some with names instead of number. In my opinion, the ones redirecting to polygon (not subsections) should be deleted
• 180-gon and a few others as articles. Here, notability is in question.
• 1210 (number) as a redirect (which I had nominated for deletion, with result "keep" those which have an actual entry in 1000 (number)) (more of interest to Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers than to this project.)

I may have missed a few categories of questionable (in my opinion) articles. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:02, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

This is also tangentially related to the section List of polygons above. -JBL (talk) 13:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Tangentially, yes. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

@Xayahrainie43: has also created 271 (number) (which is fine) and a truly enormous number of ASCII-related redirects (which I'm less convinced are OK; ASCII 61 is just useless, while I am likely to request deletion of all those redirects similar to '!' or \54 as actively harmful). power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

He is still going. He keeps creating redirects without any particular logic. Limit-theorem (talk) 11:11, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The only logic I could find is that if someone googles something obscure, they hope to redirect to a wikipedia page. Limit-theorem (talk) 11:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Please report here any discussions, even if not entirely mathematics-related: Mine are at WP:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 October 1#n-ary redirects, 9-ary, 3-ary, 2-ary, and 1-ary. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:05, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Notability (numbers)

Has there been any consensus for this change which reduced the accepted range for integers which should have individual pages to 170? It looks like an undiscussed arbitrary change to me. At least, not rationale was offered in the edit summary. SpinningSpark 12:09, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

• @Xayahrainie43:- let's see what the person who made the change has to say about it. Reyk _YO! 12:12, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

This same user has been the source of several concerned threads here in the past few days. They seem mostly unresponsive. --JBL (talk) 13:05, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I have left a long message for the user on their talk-page, encouraging them to engage in discussions. Hopefully it will help. --JBL (talk) 13:30, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Also, I can't help but notice that before September 4, it read "numbers from 1 to 101" -- the same user changed it first to 260, then to 170. I am going to restore the previous-previous version. --JBL (talk) 13:33, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

On a related note, there was a fairly major change by them to the scoring system (from one fairly arbitrary scale to another) described in WP:1729, but that's just an essay, and I'm not sure how many people really follow it. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:41, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

The same editor has added the template {{Hyperoperations}} to articles on elementary operations, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division (mathematics), exponentiation, logarithm, successor function). This seems confusing, or, at least too WP:TECHNICAL. Should we revert these additions? Should we take some action against this editor? D.Lazard (talk) 11:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

WP:COMPETENCE springs to mind as a reason to block if he can't be persuaded to stop. Even if he is a competent mathematician, he is an incompetent encyclopaedia writer. SpinningSpark 12:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

If someone reverts the hyperoperation addition to elementary articles and leaves a(nother) message on their talk page, including words like "disruptive", "consensus", "discussion", and "block", and the behavior continues without any use of talk pages, then I think it would be appropriate to escalate to WP:ANI, requesting a short block. --JBL (talk) 12:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Off-topic, flame bait

In the light of this archived, prematurely closed thread, and disregarding all expectable rebuffing for reminding of possibly righteous obituaries for WP, I express my cordial thanks for these questions getting asked − at last. WP seems barely alive outside of walled gardens. Comparing the chance of getting some ridiculous variant (e.g. formatting a sequence of digits for mnemonic reasons) not reverted to the chance of establishing a ridiculous variant of an essay, establishing premises for new articles, leaves me clueless. More recently, I could point, e.g., to some offensive deprecation for stating the opinion of Hyperphysics not to be deleted. The worm obviously ended with the fish, the fishermen, ... I don't care. Repent! Purgy (talk) 13:06, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Imho, if my impression that this editor Xayahrainie43 refuses to discuss his intentions (I just saw some announcements) is factual, I propose to roll back all of this editor's changes, even when I am neutral to adding Hyperoperations as an See also to articles about arithmetic operations. Purgy (talk) 12:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Spinningspark, this edit suggests that competence as a mathematician is dubious, too. (Not totally shocking given the foci of their mathematical editing.) --JBL (talk) 12:34, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Commutative algebra vs abstract algebra

Just wondering (cf. [1]): in the first sentence of a math article, to establish context, is "commutative algebra" considered understandable to the non-math readers? I myself tend to avoid the term, which seems a bit jargon-y and favor ones like "algebra" or "abstract algebra". Similarly, I avoid "functional analysis", which may not be understandable to readers who, gasp, don't know Hilbert spaces. I don't know a good alternative for "algebraic geometry", so I tend to use that one in the first sentence. -- Taku (talk) 23:05, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

About the first point, you can always split the difference and say something like "In commutative algebra, a branch of abstract algebra, ...", or something to that effect. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 23:36, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I would go one step further: "...a branch of mathematics, ...". Because what fraction of Wikipedia's readership knows what abstract algebra is? Mgnbar (talk) 00:30, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, true, probably better to just go with "mathematics", at which point someone can always click through to see more about what commutative algebra is if they want. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 00:40, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

I am the author of the edit that motivates this thread [2]. In this specific case, the beginning was "In abstract algebra and algebraic geometry, the spectrum of a commutative ring R, ...". In my opinion, the words "algebra" and "geometry" suffices for everybody to know that it is about mathematics. For people who know mathematics a little, I think that commutative algebra is much more informative, as there are many textbooks that having this phrase in their title and introducing the concept of the spectrum of a ring. On the other hand, no textbook of "abstract algebra", if any, introduces the concept. My edit being reverted, I have replaced "abstract algebra" by "algebra".

Discussing this particular edit should be in the talk page of this article. However, behind this case, there is a general question that deserves to be discussed here. Many article begin with In abstract algebra. This supposes implicitly that everybody understand the difference between "algebra" and "abstract algebra". My personal opinion is that "abstract algebra" is an old-fashioned term that is no more used in mathematics, except in teaching or (and this is essentially the same thing) for the study of algebraic structures for themselves, independently of their use in other branches of mathematics. For this reason, my opinion is that, in almost all cases, "In abstract algebra" should be replaced by "In algebra". D.Lazard (talk) 10:11, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

What about "in modern algebra"? --JBL (talk) 12:38, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Exactly for "abstract algebra" being used "(except) in teaching" lets me assume that there are many readers, who associate with the term "algebra" a generalized application of arithmetic, just hiding decimals behind "indeterminates", whereas "abstract algebra" lets them think about groups, fields, and possibly even rings. The term "commutative algebra" is, imho, one step above, requiring perhaps K-algebra, C*-algebra, Lie-algebra, ... to embed it in. Addendum: "Modern" is similar to "New", it automatically gets "retro". Recall "New math"? 2cents, Purgy (talk) 12:58, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Should I recall that van der Waerden's Moderne Algebra has been renamed Algebra in latest editions (German as well as English ones)? This is a reliable source for saying that "modern algebra" is old-fashioned in mathematics. Unfortunately I do not have an equivalent source for supporting the fact that mathematicians do not use "abstract algebra" anymore. D.Lazard (talk) 14:31, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

In my experience (USA-centric, perhaps not representative of the world, not a reliable source, etc.), the phrase "abstract algebra" is very common. For example, I just looked at the math course listings for three universities, and they all had courses with that title. Perhaps you are specifically excluding this fact with your phrase "except in teaching"? If so, then I don't understand why. Mathematicians choose their course titles. Those titles reflect (and subsequently influence) the culture. Mgnbar (talk) 18:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this. --JBL (talk) 18:49, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

(Thank you all for the responses.) Like before, the issue seems to be the tension between serving readers with some math background and those without it. "commutative algebra" is certainly more precise and thus informative than say "algebra". And, as Lazard said (and I'm in agreement), "abstract algebra" is not the common term used by specialists (for example, I don't really use it). But this seems to be similar to the case of a mathematical analysis; it is not the term commonly used by specialists; since other terms like functional analysis or harmonic analysis are more specific (thus informative) and "mathematical" is redundant among math people. Maybe "abstract" serves the similar role? My view is that the first sentence is mainly for establishing the context, especially for math articles (even that means not telling what it is when that depends the readers having an appropriate background). And so, again, "in commutative algebra" sounds problematic for this purpose. (Incidentally, Japanese people, both in teaching and research, almost never use "abstract algebra" and so the matter is heavily language/region/culture-dependent.) -- Taku (talk) 21:48, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Fields of mathematics continually evolve (as do their names), interbreed, intertwine …. The specific "fields" of maths impacted by a particular topic are neither a fixed collection, nor known uniformly by universally-agreed names. Note, too, that even a mathematical category on WP has multiple inheritance. E.g. cat "Polyhedra" belongs to these four cats: "Euclidean solid geometry", "Convex geometry", "Linear programming", "Polytopes" — each of which reflects an orientation, a mathematical point of view, which may well motivate the study of polyhedra by mathematicians with different sets of concerns and questions. I've recently been puzzling about what "field" to assess some maths articles as; the assessment advice or instructions given by the venerable WP:Wikipedia 1.0 project — seemingly the latest version of any consensus — remain mute, and thus useless, on how one should choose a "field". I conclude, provisionally, that such divisions of maths are arbitrary, academic — even scholastic! — and of interest only to specialists, i.e. mathematicians.

So, to answer Taku's question, I think that the general reader is probably best informed by reading "In mathematics, …". The rest of us (as specialists) can, if we deem them informative to other specialists, add (specialty) categories such as "algebraic geometry", "complex analysis", "topology", "category theory", "quasiregular polyhedra" etc. We can mention those specialties, when appropriate, to introduce particular sections of an article. (But please, if we do, let's also add the name of that specialty as a WP Category!) yoyo (talk) 14:40, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

I happen to be reading this paper and Remark 2.1.2. uses the term "abstract algebra". Maybe the author felt "commutative algebra" too restricting?

Anyway to respond to yoyo, the question is "when appropriate", really. Being too broad is a disservice to the readers looking for specific info and being too be specific can be a disservice to the general readers (we receive the constant complains that they can't tell what an article is about). While I don't think there is a simple answer to such a question, I tend to think "in mathematics" is problematic, except in disambigution situations; it's too broad and the readers can be trusted to know algebra and geometry are subjects in mathematics (in the same way we assume the reades speak English). -- Taku (talk) 23:22, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

We must use WP:LEAST. When a concept is used everywhere in mathematics without further explanation, We must start with "In mathematics", as a user which does not know the specific area of the concept, and is not interested by this area, may come to the article because he has encountered the word somewhere and need details. An example is Open set, that I have just edited. As this term is generally not defined, even when used, say, in algebra, a reader that has encountered the term and find an article beginning by "In topology" may think that it is not for him. On the other hand, when a concept is generally known (without the need of further explanation) in some part of mathematics only, a more specific beginning may be useful. In our case of the spectrum of a ring, the words "algebra", "algebraic" and "geometry" suffices to say to the layman that it is mathematics. As the concept requires explanation in a text whose readership is not supposed to know of commutative algebra or algebraic geometry, the beginning "In commutative algebra and algebraic geometry" seems the least astonishing, as a reader that has had courses called "abstract algebra", or even "advanced algebra" may wonder to have never heard of the concept of spectrum. D.Lazard (talk) 06:59, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

New biography Ailsa Land

Hello to all, I have just created a new bio for the above person who is an Emeritus professor of Operational Research at the LSE. She co-defined the branch and bound algorithm in 1960 which from what I can gather was a big deal as it helped process the Travelling salesman problem. I'm trying to find some more biographical information basic or otherwise but I am coming up short. If anyone has any sources or wishes to contribute I'd be very grateful. cheers. --Dom from Paris (talk) 15:50, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Trace inequalities → Trace inequality ?

• The article about giraffes is titled Giraffe, not Giraffes. That is standard Wikipedia usage.
• The article about Maxwell's equations is plural because it's not about a particular kind of equation, each one of which is an instance of Maxwell's equations, but about a particular set of equations. That is also standard Wikipedia usage.

• Accordingly I was about to move Trace inequalities to Trace inequality, since it's like Giraffe. But I hesitated because I thought the singular title might be construed as meaning the article is about one inequality conventionally called "the trace inequality", the word "the" implying uniqueness. Do my grounds for hesitation have any merit?

Michael Hardy (talk) 17:53, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I think WP:SINGULAR holds sway here. The very first sentence of the article indicates that there are many of this type of inequality, so I don't think there will be any lasting confusion on the part of the readers. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:04, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

n-ary

As a separate issue, n-ary probably should be a disambiguation page, including at least

• The entries in Special:PrefixIndex/n-ary (and possibly Special:PrefixIndex/k-ary), and
• List of numeral systems#Standard positional numeral systems (or some similar article)

But I would need help setting it up. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:24, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Let's start with User:Arthur Rubin/N-ary. I'll work on it, as I have time, but help would be appreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:44, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Moved to n-ary. Additions and improved descriptions are welcome. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:55, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Links to the disambiguation resolved; most to arity, but some to variadic function. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Mild confusion about Young tableau and Schur functors

If I understand correctly I think that the pages Schur_functor#Examples and Young_tableau#Applications_in_representation_theory clash in the way they talk about Young diagrams classifying irreducible representations.

The Young tableau page explains it nicely if I understand correctly, GL(n) has irreducible representations indexed by weights and if all the weights are positive then we get a young diagram, conversely if we have a young diagram with at most n rows then we get a weight. If you then look at the Schur functor page it says that given a young diagram with each row having length at most n, then the Schur module corresponding to that diagram is the representation with highest weight λ.

I'm pretty sure that in fact the highest weight should be λ^t. (I.e. if you have have a weight λ then create the young diagram associated to λ and then take its transpose, then the schur module associated to this diagram is then the wanted representation)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to mention this possible issue/mistake, let me know if it is not.

--144.82.8.225 (talk) 17:25, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

You are correct, the notation is inconsistent. There are multiple incompatible conventions in the literature. Amusingly, even though I'm the person who created the "Examples" section in Schur functor, my personal choice of notation has changed since and now agrees with the Young_tableau#Applications_in_representation_theory. So I would support transposing all Young diagrams in the Schur functor page. Dpirozhkov (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

X, E, duodecimal

Can anyone make sense of these two edits? (They adjust how numbers are displayed in articles about languages that use base-12 number systems.)

More broadly, Xayahrainie43 has been drawing a lot of attention here recently, and for those who are interested in the drama boards, I started a thread at ANI about them. --JBL (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I would assume it's just an alternate base-12 notation as mentioned at the duodecimal article. Probably not a huge deal, but if both are in use, it might be a MOS:RETAIN issue. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:31, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, Xayahrainie43 has now been blocked after not responding to the ANI thread. --JBL (talk) 21:49, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

And now they're coming back as an IP editor. I just blocked 49.214.196.80 (talk · contribs); we'll see if more surface. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Ugh :(. --JBL (talk) 12:06, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Display of \oint

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207535

${\begin{aligned}&\iint _{D}\left({\frac {\partial (\varphi f)}{\partial x}}+{\frac {\partial (\varphi g)}{\partial y}}\right)\,dx\,dy=\oint _{C}\left(-\varphi g\,dx+\varphi f\,dy\right)\\[6pt]={}&\oint _{C}\varphi \left(-{\dot {y}}\,dx+{\dot {x}}\,dy\right).\end{aligned}}$

On the browser on which I'm viewing this page, the display above renders \oint in an absurd way. It makes the integral sign with the circle a lot fatter than all other integral signs, and the subscript C is far too far to its right. I put the same code into an actual LaTeX document and got perfectly reasonable results, not like those I see here. Do others see the same thing? Can this problem somehow get corrected? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:35, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I see the same thing; it's rendered to an SVG on the server so it should be the same for everyone. This probably needs to be reported in Phabricator to get fixed. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:39, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure I saw something on phab about it when it was changed, but I can't find it now, and I don't really remember why. Maybe Physikerwelt knows something about this? –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 18:38, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't see it, this looks fine to me. I'm using Chrome with the MathJax plugin. --Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:51, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Amend that, I saw it briefly before the MathJax fix kicked in as I saved that last message.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:54, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

@Deacon Vorbis: What do you mean by "when it was changed"? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:24, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

I've added a bug report at T207535. This rendering differs from what you get using MathJax outside of the wikipedia system. --Salix alba (talk): 10:58, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: Sorry for the delay – I've been (and sort of still am) on a break here. I wish I could remember more, but I just distinctly remember that I saw some activity on phab (maybe a year ago or so?) when this was implemented, but I don't remember what the specific issue was (it might have just been that \oint didn't work at all), and I've been unable to find it again. I was hoping the texvc experts would know more. Thanks for reporting, Salix alba; would it be worth mentioning the placement of the integral limits as well? –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:19, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Periodic table of topological invariants

Periodic table of topological invariants (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Even after checking all three references, I'm unsure if this is supposed to be a concept in mathematics or in physics. I'm also unsure that it meets notability guidelines or that everything in this article is in the references (and is not WP:OR). power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:11, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The article is about topological insulators, which are a topic of physics. I don't say that to insult the content. The content is probably quite lovely. But I expected the article to be some magical organizing principle for homotopy, homology, and cohomology theories, characteristic classes, Gromov-Witten invariants, etc. It is not. Mgnbar (talk) 02:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Nothing jumped out at me as OR. I tried to do a bit of cleanup, but it's a subject I only ever studied out of curiosity, not one I really worked on. XOR'easter (talk) 15:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Peano kernel

Hi, I came across this draft while reviewing the WP:AFC queue; I'm not sure if theorems are considered notable for Wikipedia, or whether this falls under WP:NOTMANUAL. If a project member could advise, that would be great. (I'm not watching this page, so please ping me in case of any reply). --K.e.coffman (talk) 18:12, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: there's certainly no general prohibition on articles on individual theorems; we have quite a few. See category:mathematical theorems, which is unlikely to be complete. There's obviously a judgment call to be made case-by-case and I don't know which side this one would come down on, but I don't think "not a manual" is really relevant. --Trovatore (talk) 19:43, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Dixon Algebra

Will someone please review and assess this draft? My first thought was that it was too technical for someone (myself) who has forgotten a lot of higher mathematics in fifty years. (I have forgotten all of the math that I learned in college. I still remember the intermediate algebra, trigonometry, and first-year calculus that I learned in high school.) On further reading, it appears to be largely original research by Dixon seeking to publish his own research in Wikipedia. So one of my questions is whether this work has already been published in mathematical journals.

Should it be declined as consisting of original research, or should it be declined as needing to be revised to be less difficult to understand, or should it be declined as not being sufficiently notable among mathematicians, or should it be accepted? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a corner of research that aims to shake the Standard Model out of the octonions in some manner. Different people have tried in various ways, all of them related at least a bit. I could be convinced that the topic deserves an article (Quanta Magazine thought so [3], and John C. Baez wrote about it [4]), but I don't think the "Dixon algebra" should be the main focus of it. My inclination is to decline Draft:Dixon Algebra for needing clarification and for lacking notability. It is, at most, one piece of a puzzle — one mathematical construction among several studied in that niche.

Looking over our page on octonions, it could be expanded, both with the attempts to apply them to physics, and with their successful application in group theory, per Wilson's textbook The Finite Simple Groups (2009), for example. XOR'easter (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I see that it has to do with mathematics that I haven't forgotten because I never learned it in college. To answer the implied question of User:Michael Hardy, the Dixon algebra does appear to be by someone named Dixon, and doesn't say this. I did read about one of the attempts to apply octonions to the Standard Model. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:26, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I cut the draft down to size and made a decent-looking stub of it. I still don't think the Dixon algebra itself rises to the level of wiki-notability (it's just one idea in a niche field), but maybe that draft could be merged into something more substantial. XOR'easter (talk) 15:02, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Geoffrey Dixon

After brief research, I am still not sure that an article on Dixon algebra passes notability. It definitely won't be understandable by anyone but mathematicians and mathematical physicists. That doesn't in itself mean that there shouldn't be an article. The references are nearly all either by Geoffrey Dixon of the University of New Hampshire, or by Cohl Furey, whose research is largely about octonions. What I think that we need is an article on Geoffrey Dixon, who has made interesting contributions in math and outside math and appears to satisfy academic notability. Dixon appears to be trying to use Wikipedia to publicize his research rather than to publicize himself, which may have to do with being a mathematician. I think that I will decline the draft, but if I am asked to review Draft:Geoffrey Dixon, I think that I will accept it. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 30 October 2018 (UTC)