Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2020/Jun

A bit of help needed on Draft:Virasoro group

This article is really technical, and kind of reads like an essay (e.g. "this article will..."). However, this is a notable topic, so I'd like someone good in group theory (Lie algebras) to help me out. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:20, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

I can spend some time on summarizing the details. There’s also a bit of copyediting with the tone and bolding that needs to be done. — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:43, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

@Eumat114: I did some work on it. It could still be improved, but it's not so WP:TEXTBOOK-like anymore. — MarkH₂₁^talk 23:52, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Plural titles

Categories such as Category:6-polytopes and Category:7-polytopes have a whole lot of plural titles, where singular would be the WP way per WP:PLURALS. Many (perhaps all) created by @Tomruen: Is there any objection to a bulk fix back to singular? Dicklyon (talk) 20:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not going to defend TR's preferred article style, nomenclature, sourcing standards, or the independent notability of these topics, but articles such as Runcinated 6-simplexes appear to be about multiple distinct related topics (the Runcinated 6-simplex, Biruncinated 6-simplex, Runcitruncated 6-simplex, Biruncitruncated 6-simplex, Runcicantellated 6-simplex, Runcicantitruncated 6-simplex, and Biruncicantitruncated 6-simplex), hence the plural. So I think fixing this mess may be more than a simple rename. And may face some pushback from TR. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:49, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I understand there's more than one kind of runcinated 6-simplex, but that's not usually a reason for use plural titles. Dicklyon (talk) 00:12, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I have no preference if an automated conversion can be done. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Automation, maybe; preparing the list is the hard part. Doing it in bulk "by hand" is also possible. Dicklyon (talk) 00:12, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:PLURAL says that "Articles on groups or classes of specific things" is an exception to the rule of singular titles. This is the reason of the plural of Trigonometric functions, and clearly also of Runcinated 6-simplexes. So, it is possible that all these plural titles result simply of the application of WP rules. In this case, they must be kept plural. D.Lazard (talk) 07:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

From the leads with singular (In six-dimensional geometry, a runcinated 6-simplex is a ...), the articles are pretty clearly on the items on the class, not the classes themselves, unlike Trigonometric functions, where the lead is plural and about the class (though really, it could also be done singular; the exception is for cases where the singular makes less sense). See many singular examples such as A7 polytope and Cross-polytope, which is the normal style. Dicklyon (talk) 19:16, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@D.Lazard: Let us know if you want to object or not. I can apply for a bot to do these moves if they're uncontroversial. Dicklyon (talk) 20:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Here are the articles I found (with queries like this): Rectified_5-cubes, Steric_7-cubes, Rectified_9-cubes, Runcic_6-cubes, Runcic_7-cubes, Runcic_5-cubes, Pentic_7-cubes, Truncated_5-cubes, Rectified_6-cubes, Rectified_8-cubes, Rectified_7-cubes, Truncated_7-cubes, Truncated_6-cubes, Cantellated_6-cubes, Hexic_7-cubes, Steric_6-cubes, Steric_5-cubes, Truncated_8-cubes, Runcinated_5-cubes, Cantellated_5-cubes, Rectified_10-cubes, Runcinated_6-cubes, Cantellated_7-cubes, Stericated_6-cubes, Runcinated_7-cubes, Stericated_5-cubes, Pentellated_6-cubes, Pentic_6-cubes, Stericated_7-cubes, Pentellated_7-cubes, Hexicated_7-cubes, Hexicated_8-simplexes, Rectified_6-simplexes, Pentellated_8-simplexes, Truncated_5-simplexes, Truncated_7-simplexes, Heptellated_8-simplexes, Truncated_6-simplexes, Cantellated_6-simplexes, Rectified_8-simplexes, Rectified_7-simplexes, Truncated_8-simplexes, Rectified_10-simplexes, Rectified_9-simplexes, Runcinated_5-simplexes, Runcinated_8-simplexes, Cantellated_5-simplexes, Stericated_8-simplexes, Cantellated_8-simplexes, Runcinated_6-simplexes, Cantellated_7-simplexes, Stericated_6-simplexes, Rectified_5-simplexes, Runcinated_7-simplexes, Stericated_5-simplexes, Pentellated_6-simplexes, Stericated_7-simplexes, Pentellated_7-simplexes, Hexicated_7-simplexes, Runcinated_6-orthoplexes , Rectified_5-orthoplexes , Cantellated_5-orthoplexes , Truncated_6-orthoplexes , Truncated_5-orthoplexes , Rectified_9-orthoplexes , Rectified_7-orthoplexes , Truncated_7-orthoplexes , Truncated_8-orthoplexes , Cantellated_7-orthoplexes , Rectified_6-orthoplexes , Rectified_8-orthoplexes , Cantellated_6-orthoplexes , Runcinated_5-orthoplexes , Pentellated_6-orthoplexes , Rectified_10-orthoplexes , Stericated_6-orthoplexes , Runcinated_7-orthoplexes , Stericated_7-orthoplexes , Hexicated_7-orthoplexes , Pentellated_7-orthoplexes . I don't see others besides cubes, simplexes, and othroplexes, but I may be overlooking some. Dicklyon (talk) 19:23, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I remain convinced that the exception of WP:Plural applies here. IMO, this is not the main issue of all these articles (see below), and changing their titles to singular would be a waste of time. Nevertheless, I'll not formally object if someone is willing to spent time for this change. By the way, A7 polytope, although having a singular title, is devoted to a finite set of specific polytopes. It is amazing that this set is asserted in the first sentences of the articles to have 71, 135, and 63 elements, without any indication on the reasons of these changes of numbers!

The main issue of these articles is that they are a WP:walled garden, as all together they have very few incoming links (List of polytopes, and regular polytopes). This is difficult to merge them, because of the number of pretty figures. So, IMO, they must be moved as subpages of List of polytopes. This would be a much more useful renaming project. D.Lazard (talk) 11:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we do subpages in article space, but I'm listening if people have alternative ideas. The above list is something I can handle "by hand" in a few days, which might be easier than getting bot approval to do it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Please comment on my bot request at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Move_205_mathematics_pages_to_singular_title if you care about this. Dicklyon (talk) 22:56, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Never mind, I canceled/reverted my bot request, as this seems not as simple as I thought, since the singular redirects to a specific member of the plural class article in many cases. I'd rather let the plurals slide than bother trying to find a better way to do it at this point. Carry on... Dicklyon (talk) 04:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:MOVE IT Math (2nd nomination)

Hi all,

I have started an MfD on a program that I don’t think is notable enough for Wikipedia (there are too many of programs like it). But that’s just my judgement and I invite editors who have opinions on the matter to the discussion. —- Taku (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Unit circle

I have been having some disagreements with an editor at Unit circle (not a page that many here would have on their watchlists). He does not seem to be able to see the errors he has committed nor is he able to discuss the topic meaningfully. Extra eyes on the page would be appreciated and perhaps someone else can get through to him, as I seem to have failed.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Analysis of vector-valued curves

Could some expert in analysis have a look on this article recently created by Mgkrupa. I have some problems with it that may or may nor be caused by my lack of knowledge in analysis.

• Reading the title, I have no idea about what is or should be the content of the article.
• Is article's title a commonly used phrase, or is the title WP:OR?
• Is the article a content fork? In other terms, is the article content covered or not in other articles?

These are the questions about the article as a whole. Looking on the details, it seems that a lot of work is needed for making the article comprehensible. D.Lazard (talk) 19:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

The article just looks like an attempted introduction to various topics in functional analysis on which we already have articles, and isn’t even referenced. I’m moving it to draftspace for now. — MarkH₂₁^talk 20:42, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

So, the article title looks problematic; is it really standard one? As far as remember Rudin doesn't use that term in his "functional analysis" text. As far as I can tell, the draft is about (differential and integral) calculus on topological vector spaces, which is a perfectly valid encyclopedic topic (e.g., the early edition of Rudin's text had a chapter on that topic, I believe.) How about renaming it to something like "calculus on topological vector spaces"? Fixing the issues, it should be ok to move it back to mainspace, in my opinion. -- Taku (talk) 22:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Cap set WP:CONTENTFORK

Can someone explain to me why cap set needs to be separate from the new sort-of-article (really a proof masquerading as an article) Exponential bound on capsets? It's not like the main article is so overburdened with content that it needs WP:SUMMARY style. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:58, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I am afraid I don't understand. Looking at the article history, you originally rejected the proof as a bad fit for cap set [1], so user ProveStuff created a new article. Now you want to merge the two? I think a merge or a selective merge would be OK, depending on the appropriate level of detail in the proof. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 04:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I still think it's badly written and unencyclopedic, but that doesn't mean that putting it into a standalone article makes it better. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:48, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• The article was dedicated solely to the proofs of a theorem that by itself doesn't warrant its own article. The theorem itself could be covered in cap set, but it's not even one of the major theorems in this particular problem on cap sets, so it wouldn't really be due WP:PROPORTION to cover it or its proofs in such detail anywhere.
  I've converted the article into a redirect to Cap set#Cap set problem while only giving the statement of what Tao proves in his blog post. Even if there is consensus to cover the proofs in some form (for which there is no consensus right now), it should be at cap set rather than in its own article. — MarkH₂₁^talk 05:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm responsible for moving the draft to mainspace (I was not aware the draft was a content fork). I was not convinced that the result in the draft is notable enough for a standalone article, but was also not convinced the draft needs to be deleted without a proper review.

As for the basic question of whether we should cover the proof like that: quite generally, Wikipedia articles are essentially duplicates of existing literatures (in fact, that's requirement). We don't just mention the existence of some calculus computations and send the readers to textbooks in calculus for them to see but we do reproduce some of such; that's part of the mission of math articles in Wikipedia, I think. As for this particular one? I am not too sure; I defer the judgement to the others (and moving the draft to mainspace will facilitate that). -- Taku (talk) 08:04, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Variations on open sets

In April, Mgkrupa produced a number of stubs drawn from the Encyclopedia of general topology on minor definitions relating to openness: Preopen, Semi-preopen, Semi-open, Α-open, B-open, Δ-open, Θ-open (and maybe others that I haven't found). Each article consists of a one- or two-sentence definition, together with a statement of how it relates to the other definitions. I personally find it hard to imagine any of these ever becoming a real encyclopedia article; I tentatively propose that they be merged into a single article (maybe "list of openness properties"; better suggestions welcome), unless someone is very confident that there's lots of encyclopedic material waiting to be added to at least two of them. (If there's only encyclopedic content to be had on one of them, then I propose all the others be merged to that title.) Thoughts? --JBL (talk) 16:17, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Are there any sources other than the cited Hart (2004)? It's almost as if the original editor is copying that encyclopedia into Wikipedia. (For what it's worth, I have a Ph.D. in topology and I've never heard of most of these. But then I'm on the geometric side of topology, my experience is not universal, I'm not a reliable source, etc.) Mgnbar (talk) 17:37, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with JBL suggestion. By the way, the same user has largely expanded the navbox Template:Functional analysis. Generally, I am not fan of navboxes, because they are not useful for the searches that I need. Nevertheless, I find this navbox too large (and covering too much subjects) for being useful to anybody. I have not a clear opinion on what should be done with this template. Do the other editors have an opinion? D.Lazard (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Ditto on JBL's suggestion. As to these navboxes ... I too have had some problem with them. Having Linear algebra as a subtopic this editor has stuck this template on several Linear algebra pages. I have removed a few as not being relevant to the page, but I'm sure there are many more inappropriate placements.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 18:55, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

(I think I said this before, but) I too find the nav-box too large. I myself like a navbox; when done right, they are very useful (e.g., Template:Lie groups) and I suspect many readers use them. The problem with this one is that it essentially duplicates List of topics in functional analysis. Yesterday I have started Draft:Glossary of functional analysis, in part to move some items in the navbox over there. -- Taku (talk) 22:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, I have created a proposed new version of Draft:Template:Functional analysis. I think this version is much more useful. -- Taku (talk) 23:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

That’s the largest navbox that I’ve seen so far! Replace it with the draft as soon as possible.

Even the old version (February) was too large, at about half the size of the current one— MarkH₂₁^talk 03:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok. I have replaced the template with the new version; please do expand it or make other changes as needed. -- Taku (talk) 22:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Glossary of topology already exists. --Trovatore (talk) 23:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the glossary is the great (and standard) way to cover definitions that do not merit independent articles. -- Taku (talk) 23:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok, great. If I get up the energy I will move the seven I linked to above into the glossary, but I invite anyone else to do it first! --JBL (talk) 23:57, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I have merged all of them to Glossary of topology. --JBL (talk) 21:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Log Quaternions

I started a few days ago digging for information about the logarithm of quatnerions, and it's use. The page(s) here Wikipedia Quaternion Article, wikipedia Qatuernions and spactial rotations, barely mention them except the express the math of the operation.

Here is my test project, started to test this new-found knowledge, and other references at the bottom I've read. https://github.com/d3x0r/STFRPhysics#frame-computation-using-dual-log-quaternions

To summarize quickly, given that the rotation quaternions input (or projected from natural-log mapping) is a unit vector, the conjugate and reciprocal are the same. This means that PQ = P with Q's rotation added. QP = Q with P's rotation subtracted. or PQ = PQ and QP = P/Q. The order of the operation in natural quaternion space as multiplication is represented in natural log-quaternion space as a subtraction instead of addition; that is instead of changing the order of the operands, just subtract instead of adding.

This can be quickly visualized in the complex number case, that A * B = the rotation of A + rotation of B. where B * A can also be seen as subtracting from 1 and getting the rotation of A minus the rotation of B.

The construction of a log-quaternion

 // pass the same parameters of a direction normal and angle of rotation to make a log quaternion
 // ... without taking the log of a quaternion.
 function logQuaternion(theta, normal ) { 
   return [ Math.log( theta ), normal.x*theta, normal.y * theta, normal.z * theta ] /* w,x,y,z */ 
 }

It can be seen simply from the construction, that the angles of ln space are really simply the angles simultaneously around x, y and z axis. The exp() function takes the angles specified and normalizes them to -1 to 1 when converting to a quaternion; collapsing any accumulated rotation information.

Now see, I would love to just come back to the above mentioned articles and see a nice section on normalizing the log-quaternion to prevent radical overflows; it can certainly be translated to a quaternion and back, and lose any overflow information.

I suspect, also, that any errors between the rotations of the two systems are the fault of working in quaternion unit-vector space which truncates partial overflows, that a later subtraction might bring back to 137 instead of -17.

The accumulators of a log-quaternion vector are basically a long tape of potential angles input, without being auto modulated with within range.

Plus. The 'multiplication' or 'application' of one rotation to another for summing through a chain is a simple 4-vector addition or subtraction; the application of a log-quaternion can be combined with its exp() operation and still be cheaper than a full translation with quaternion multiplication....

So; I can't fathom why this simple method isn't already the most prominent, and is instead relegated to a dark corner and the quote 'multiplication is not commutative'... Yes; I agree, the result of multiplication in quaternion space is not; and this is reflected in tangent space by subtracting instead of adding; which means that the operation in real space actually resembles division, and not a re-ordered multiplication.

D3x0r (talk) 21:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Was Simulated Annealing developed in 1970?

A new user has been changing our article on Simulated Annealing to state that it was developed by Martin Pincus in 1970, some 13 years before it is commonly understood to have been developed by Scott Kirkpatrick. More eyes would be appreciated - MrOllie (talk) 19:58, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Jacob Barnett

I think he has been of interest to members of this Wikiproject in the past. A new draft has been submitted to AfC. --JBL (talk) 12:17, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Nothing has changed since the article on him was deleted and the attempt to recreate an article on him disguised as an article about a book was also deleted. The press coverage of him was superficially impressive but astonishingly poor upon even slightly closer inspection. As for his scientific career, his publication record is quite paltry and falls far short of WP:PROF. Three papers and a poster is a little less than what my department would expect from a student about to defend their PhD thesis, for example. So, we don't have grounds to write an article about him either as a child prodigy or as an adult physicist. XOR'easter (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks; I left a comment for the future AfC reviewer there, and pointed them back here. --JBL (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Integral operator

Please can a subject expert look at the remaining incoming links to disambiguation page Integral operator, and divert them to appropriate articles? Thanks, Certes (talk) 01:13, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I have edited Integral operator for adding a missing item, and fixing the description of the two other items, that described wrongly the linked subject. I had also to rewrite the lead of the linked article Integral transform, that was completely wrong.

IMO, this article must not be a dab page, but a broad concept article, as all items are special cases of a single concept. I'll be bold, and making this transformation. This will avoid the boring work asked for in the preceding post. D.Lazard (talk) 11:07, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, D.Lazard. I think that's the insight we were missing. If I was trying to choose between two inaccurate definitions when the most appropriate destination was missing, it's hardly surprising that I didn't get very far. Certes (talk) 12:04, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Π#Redirect_dispute

For the interested, what should Π redirect to? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:50, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

African-American mathematicians

Category:African-American mathematicians has been nominated for deletion/upmerging. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 June 13#Subgroups of African-American scientists for the discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Joint continuity

In Normed vector space, the phrase "jointly continuous" is used (for addition and scalar multiplication) without definition nor link. I have found a definition of "joint continuity" of a multiplication in Topological algebra. Linking the phrase there would be possible, although the definition and the usage do not refer to the same operations. But ...

I have never encounter this phrase elsewhere. Is it notable? If yes, where should be defined for being the target of a redirect? If not, is there another term for it or should we simply remove "jointly", and link to Function of several real variables#Continuity and limit? D.Lazard (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The term is used in mathematics, for example in the intro of the paper [2] and this book on general topology. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:51, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

This is quite esoteric terminology. The definition is trying to say that the map $V\times V\to V$ is continuous with respect to the product topology on $V\times V$. This is both a clearer and more precise way of phrasing the definition.Tazerenix (talk) 18:54, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's esoteric at all. It's a very normal phrasing, generally understood even by people who don't do point-set topology on a day-to-day basis. --Trovatore (talk) 22:59, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Extra eyes

Would someone mind taking a look at List of mathematical constants to see if they agree with my reverts of a couple recent additions? I'm at 3RR, and so I'm stuck. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 19:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

It is difficult to think of a less rewarding way to spend time than convincing someone not to include rational powers of small integers in List of mathematical constants. --JBL (talk) 19:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

What’s the inclusion criteria of the list? Restricting it to constants with their own articles might save a lot of time in general. — MarkH₂₁^talk 03:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. At least a couple items on the list had articles that have been deleted, and it might be best to remove those. XOR'easter (talk) 17:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines as well, although I could conceivably see some entries without dedicated articles if they were at least discussed in sufficient detail in some other article. I was thinking about taking a closer look this evening. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:44, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that clear inclusion criteria would be beneficial. --JBL (talk) 18:14, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

The article badly needs a rename, and the use of "mathematical constant" throughout the project should be rethought. People seem to be using it to mean interesting mathematical constants. But a mathematical constant doesn't have to be interesting. It doesn't even have to be definable. All it has to be is constant.

Maybe something like list of named numbers? --Trovatore (talk) 23:05, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

It’s a valid point, but I don’t know a good solution. Named numbers isn’t great either, since every number is effectively named under a loose interpretation of named, but a strict interpretation excludes things like Natural logarithm of 2. — MarkH₂₁^talk 23:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

List of named constants? though "named" seems a bit redundant. After all, for example, list of theorems is really a list of named theorems. -- Taku (talk) 03:59, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

We have also List of named differential equations. This is an article that I split out from Differential equation#Applications in August 2019, after the numerous additions by a single user of named differential equations (apparently, all that they have found in WP). I have chosen this title because List of differential equations seemed ambiguous for this content. So, List of named ... is fine for me. I would prefer List of named constants to list of named numbers for making clear that this is not a list of numerals, which, after all, are names for numbers. D.Lazard (talk) 08:54, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

How about List of especially notable complex numbers. JRSpriggs (talk) 15:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I thought about using "notable" but I'm worried about mixing the WP-term-of-art sense of the word with its common meaning. To Wikipedians acting as Wikipedians, "notable" means something like "significant coverage in multiple reliable sources", where again "reliable source" is a term of art. We have to be careful to remember that that isn't how normal people (or even what passes for normal mathematicians) talk.

I do prefer "number" to "constant", for the reasons I gave. It's true that lots of "normal people" confuse "number" with "numeral", but that's not a case where we're being led astray by a term of art; it's just a case where they're wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 17:04, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

List of named constants seems the best of the suggestions so far, to me. I agree that we should avoid the term "notable", since its Wikipedian definition isn't quite the same as its meaning elsewhere. XOR'easter (talk) 18:22, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I continue to object to "constant". --Trovatore (talk) 18:43, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm having a bit of a hard time following your objection in this context. (Sorry! I'm probably just being a bit dense.) If a constant is named, then surely it is "interesting" — well, interesting to enough people that a name has become established. And, likewise, if a constant is named then surely it is "definable", at least to the point where it can be discussed, even if it's not algorithmically computable. XOR'easter (talk) 19:55, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think "constant" makes sense in this context. They're numbers. How exactly would they vary? Calling them "constants" is either redundant or a propagation of what I think is an inappropriate quasi-neologism. --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem is not whether the title is correct from the point of view of mathematical logic. It is how people will understand the title. "Twenty two" and the number of the beast are named numbers and have not their place in this list. On the other hand, Euler's identity states "The identity also links five fundamental mathematical constants"; who is willing to edit the article for replacing "fundamental mathematical constant" by "fundamental number" or "fundamental mathematical number"? So, even if List of named numbers is more correct from a logical point of view, List of named constants must be preferred as less ambiguous, and clearer for most rreaders. Note also that either a section must be added for physical constants, or "mathematical" must be added to the title. D.Lazard (talk) 21:31, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this sense of "constant" is really in use. I suspect it comes from Mathworld and Eric Weissstein. I have a strong aversion to helping propagate Mathworld neologisms. --Trovatore (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Lazard that "constant" is an ok term; it's as opposed to a variable; pi is a (universal) constant even if it is just a number since it is independent of radius, volume or time, etc.. -- Taku (talk) 23:38, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

It's not a neologism. See examples from 2003, 1999, 1996, 1994, 1978 and 1877. XOR'easter (talk) 04:14, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

So nice list of attestations; got to give you credit (although your 1994 one is not an example of the sense being used here; you should strike that one). Still. What's wrong with "number"? --Trovatore (talk) 06:08, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

It is eplained in my previous post. D.Lazard (talk) 09:22, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

RfD

Hello, I wanted to notify the project of some RfD nominations for mathematical characters at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 24 I've started today. Currently, there is mostly a one-to-one discussion, which probably isn't that helpful. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:54, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Category:Field (mathematics)

Recently, Category:Field theory was speedily renamed/moved to Category:Field (mathematics). (Field theory is a disambiguation page, and so the name of Category:Field theory is/was itself ambiguous.) However, to me the name Category:Field (mathematics) suggests a category collecting articles about specific fields, and I would prefer the name Category:Field theory (mathematics), to make it match with Category:Category theory, Category:Group theory, Category:Lattice theory, Category:Module theory, Category:Ring theory, Category:Semigroup theory and so on. Then again, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." What do others say? – Tea2min (talk) 08:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The term "field theory" (referring to the collection of mathematical statements around fields) is not commonly used, AFAIK (in contrast to ring theory and other theories). I therefore don't think a category "Field theory" is a good idea. Jakob.scholbach (talk)

We have a Glossary of field theory, haivng a category of field theory seems fine by me. --JBL (talk) 11:06, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Field theory isn’t that rarely used. It’s often a term that’s applied when describing Galois theory for instance. I think Category:Field theory (mathematics) would be appropriate as a separate category from Category:Field (mathematics) (with the former containing the latter). — MarkH₂₁^talk 18:05, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Category namers sometimes use the singular to classify articles about the general topic, and the plural for individual instances. Compare Category:Surname and Category:Surnames. I would expect to find articles about an individual field in Category:Fields (something). Certes (talk) 18:18, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

L2 norm

Please, discuss at WP:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 24#L2 norm about the best target for the redirect L2 norm. D.Lazard (talk) 21:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Philip Ehrlich

Notable? --JBL (talk) 14:54, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I would tentatively say "no". He works in the philosophy of mathematics, so citation counts are going to be low and uninformative. I'd look for book reviews first, and a few do exist [3][4][5], but his two books were co-edited collections rather than treatises he authored himself. I'd hesitate to call that the kind of "body of work" that the notability guideline for authors asks for. Nor does it seem like those two co-edited collections attracted more than a baseline level of attention. I'm not seeing prestigious awards or journal editorships, either. XOR'easter (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I cannot detect that this person passes the Average Professor Test stated in the guidelines. He is accomplished, but not clearly unusually so. Mgnbar (talk) 15:54, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, both. It was PRODded a couple of years ago and declined for not convincing reasons -- eventually I may take it to AfD, if no one else gets there first. --JBL (talk) 16:42, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Now at AfD. --JBL (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2020 (UTC)