Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2008/Dec

User:Topology_Expert blocked for trolling, unblock declined

Resolved

 – User:Michael_Hardy unblocked him. Pcap ping 19:52, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:AN#User:_Moondyne_and_User:_Sarah and his talk page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pohta ce-am pohtit (talk • contribs)

I unblocked him because I have understood "trolling" to mean intentionally disruptive edits, not edits done in good faith but rashly and clumsily and needed to get reverted, and because the reasons for blocking him were not clearly stated on the discussion page that purported to state them. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:07, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The edits were intentionally disruptive. Unblock requests should be posted on the user's talk page, not a WikiProject talk page. Orderinchaos 02:23, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was unfortunate that a notice was posted here; this isn't a place to follow the activities of every editor interested in mathematics. The notice was actually removed, but Paul August (an ex-arbcom member) restored it, so apparently some people think it was appropriate to have a notice here. I think it would be better to raise any complaints with individual editors. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for making the original post here. In hindsight it festered more drama. I realize the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. On the WP:AN thread Topology Expert complained that some of his edits to math templates were being reverted by admins that were not normally involved in editing math articles but who were following discussions from this WikiProject. TE requested on his talk page (after he was blocked the first time) that a "math admin" look at his edits. But he wasn't blocked (and now reblocked) for his math edits, but for other issues which should not be discussed here. I was in a hurry yesterday when I posted this notice, and didn't give enough details, so my notice caused more heat than light. Once again, my apologies for adding fuel to the fire. Someone please archive this thread. Pcap ping 12:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD on Bishop–Keisler controversy

The article on the Errett Bishop-versus-Jerome Keisler confrontation of 1977 was nominated for deletion and is being debated at the following page: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bishop–Keisler controversy.

You should not just say Keep, Delete, Merge, ( or whatever); rather you should state your reasons for you position.

I think there is some folklore concerning this. But that seems hard to document. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Ahem, this was mentioned above [1] with a wikilink at the time the AfD was started. Mathsci (talk) 08:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

AFD has closed with the result: complete trainwreck. --C S (talk) 07:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Category:Game theorists may need sorting out

Category:Game theorists seems to conflate game theory with combinatorial game theory. For example, it lists John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern on the one hand, and John Horton Conway and David Gale on the other. —Dominus (talk) 15:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have created Category:Combinatorial game theorists and put in the people from Category:Game theorists who seem to belong there, that is Berlekamp, Conway and Gale (though going by our article Gale belongs in Category:Game theorists as well). Improvements welcome. Algebraist 17:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

It's rather strange, the game theory article doesn't mention the combinatorial game theory article at all. They are quite different, but then again there's a whole load of other things stuck into game theory like voting systems or fair division that aren't really part of the classical theory never mind all the social aspects. Dmcq (talk) 12:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

There is also no link back from combinatorial game theory to abstract strategy game and their categories say they contain practically the same things but have disjoint contents and don't mention each other: Category:Abstract strategy games and Category:Combinatorial game theory. Dmcq (talk) 19:48, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Another proposed deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Permanent is sharp-P-complete.

Do not just say Keep or Delete; give your arguments. The discussion so far is on the weak side in arguments. Lots of terse assertions; not enough arguments. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't you think that those involved in this WikiProject talk page would already have the Wikisense to write arguments for and against?  Δεκλαν Δαφισ   (talk)  18:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Most of the regulars probably do. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I have expanded the lede section of the article and added some background info and references there. However, it would really help if someone closer to the complexity theory world added more stuff there, particularly something about generalizations and applications of this theorem. I find it pretty shocking that so many users in the AfD object to having a proof of this fundamental result as a part of the article. Certainly much more useful and encyclopedic info that the numerous WP articles about various celebrities describing their favorite toothpaste, favorite color and favorite omlette and numerous articles with detailed plot descriptions of soap operas and such. Nsk92 (talk) 17:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, before the AfD is completed and with a clear consensus going for a keep, a gun-ho editor has just removed all of my improvements and moved the article to a different title with a different content. Somebody please take a quick look there. Nsk92 (talk) 18:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Comparing articles is not a good way to establish notability (there is some famous wiki argument about pokemon). Perhaps all of those articles should be deleted. (Note: I have not read the article nor do I know much about complexity theory.) I feel proofs have a very limited place in encyclopedia articles, so it is reasonable if editors aren't happy with them. Keep up the good work improving the article, and good luck. Thenub314 (talk) 18:22, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with you regarding proofs in WP articles. Non-experts will not read them, but for people reasonably familiar with mathematics they can be quite useful, if, of course, it is possible to include a reasonably short proof. Wikipedia math articles should target both audiences. Regarding the article in question, unfortunately, the version of the article that got protected does not include my improvements. I am not sure what is going to happen now. Nsk92 (talk) 19:06, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

AFD has been closed with the result of clusterf*ck (ya rly). In my opinion, a reasonable end to a reasonable discussion. David Eppstein has proposed on the article talkpage a way to proceed with the article. --C S (talk) 10:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Correct, and you may want to sound-off at the article's talk page since it is likely that the article will not be unprotected until a demonstrable consensus on what to do next is established at that talk page. Nsk92 (talk) 13:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

And there is now a new poll at the article's talk page, started by one of the delete proponents in the AfD, regarding what to do with the article next. Please take a look. Nsk92 (talk) 23:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Beryl fractal - possible OR and neologism

I removed an entry on the "Beryl fractal" from List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension. We don't have an article on it; there is only one Google hit for this term; and this source provided by Prokofiev2 is self-published and in French. Prokofiev2 reinserted the entry, on the grounds that "this fractal has been studied under the control of mathematics teachers" and may have been published in TIPE, which appears to be a French students' magazine or journal.

I believe the source provided by Prokofiev2 is not a reliable source, and that the "Beryl fractal" entry is original research, and possibly also a neologism. I am not going to start an edit war, but please comment at Talk:List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension, so that we can determine consensus and take appropriate action. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

- just a slight correction : The TIPE is actually not a journal, or a magazine, but is a research work for students in preparatory classes for the entrance in engineering schools in France.Prokofiev2 (talk) 13:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

In that case, it's clearly not a "reliable source" as to accuracy or significance. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Ring (mathematics)

I am currently editing Ring (mathematics). Does anyone want to help out there (a section on the history of ring theory would be good; I am just adding the mathematical bits)? I am aiming to get it up to the standard of Group (mathematics) (seems impossible, but at least half that standard would be good).

Point-set topologist (talk) 10:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I have added a some content to the article (not very much though), but I was wondering whether we could structure the article a bit better. For example, in the example section, there is something about subrings but the actual definition (of subrings) is not given until later in the article. So I was thinking of moving some of those examples. Please see the talk page for relevant comments. Point-set topologist (talk) 11:50, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

How does the article look now?

Point-set topologist (talk) 20:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

To me it seems surprising that there's absolutely nothing there about spectra or affine schemes. I realize much of the article is at a much more elementary level, but these are very important topics that should at least be mentioned so that more advanced readers can find them. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

They're mentioned in commutative ring. Mathsci (talk) 23:37, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

It's also worth pointing out that spectra are the wrong objects for non-commutative rings. For example, the Weyl algebra is a flat deformation of a polynomial ring, but it has no nontrivial proper two-sided ideals. This is why non-commutative algebraic geometers always talk about modules and never talk about prime ideals; for instance, for them, "Proj" means the category of all finitely generated graded modules (modulo finite length modules). Ozob (talk) 05:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

That...is very interesting. I would like to see something about that in one of these articles. Ryan Reich (talk) 06:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I will mention that. But I was trying to get the article up to Group (mathematics) and if you notice, at the very top of Group (mathematics), it says: this article is about the basic concepts in group theory. Of course, spectra are very important! But first the reader has to know what a morphism is (the article was lacking the definition sometime ago!)...

Point-set topologist (talk) 09:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

How does the article look now? I know that it is far from FA (as Jakob said) but is it close to GA, at least (what are the general opinions of editors?)? Point-set topologist (talk) 21:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Salix alba! I appreciate your work. Could someone please work on the history too? I have spent a lot of time and effort on the article and would greatly appreciate it if others (apart from Jakob and Salix) could pitch in. Currently, the most important sections to be expanded are the 'motivation' and the 'history' (I don't know much about the history of ring theory). I will start improving the motivation... Point-set topologist (talk) 10:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Point-set topologist (talk) 10:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Could someone please fix the image in the lede of ring (mathematics)? The image appears (nicely) but the description (which is important to someone who does not know the concept) does not seem to appear. I want the image (with the same size as it is now) along with the description.

Thankyou!

Point-set topologist (talk) 12:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The article is coming along nicely. Well done PST. It is however lacking in images, while the current table of algebraic structures is fine it would be nice to have something a bit more visual. We seem to have plenty of nice examples for group, has anyone got a good idea for illustrating rings? --Salix (talk): 19:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for ring (mathematics)

Please comment (and add input) there (for Wikipedia)! I am aiming to get this article to GA and then FA once citations are added and the history section is improved (these are the only two things that I cannot do).

Thanks!

Point-set topologist (talk) 12:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

What's the difference between ring and ring theory? Do we really need two separate articles? (I see that we have separate group and group theory articles.) -- Taku (talk) 13:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Good point. The ring theory article has some useful information (regarding applications) that can be added to ring (mathematics) so I will add that information and then consider proposing ring theory for deletion. Point-set topologist (talk) 13:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I mostly (almost always) try to see the good in changes to an article. But the most recent changes have really degraded the article's quality. The previous version did need some cleanup, but so much? With such changes (non-minor but apparently all the recent edits were marked as "minor"), the article no longer looks good anymore. Therefore, I will "back out" the changes and add back the good edits (remember, group (mathematics) is featured and we need the article to be like that one). Please discuss "large changes" next time before implementing them (all my changes seem to have been undone). Point-set topologist (talk) 17:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, User:Takuya Murata: I will back out your changes and add back the good ones now. Point-set topologist (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Could you respond to my posts at the talkpage of ring (mathematics)? I got the idea that you're not happy but I am blind to see why. -- Taku (talk) 17:39, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Problem editor at Talk:Bernoulli number

I am currently engaged in an argument with an editor claiming to be Peter Luschny at Talk:Bernoulli number. The presumptive Mr. Luschny believes that I acted inappropriately when I replaced a bogus citation (Luschny 2007) in the text with a {{citation needed}} tag. He feels slighted because he thinks that my edit did not give fair attribution to him. As far as I am concerned, I acted totally appropriately since there was no actual citation to verify the material against (and Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought). Could someone please look into this? I think an outside perspective might help to defuse a potentially difficult situation. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 01:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

You were acting a little hastily, in my opinion. This is mathematics, where part of verifiability is just checking the claim. Anyone can easily verify (or refute) mathematics without looking up anything. A lot of identities get proven in little known places, especially with this kind of classical stuff. It just doesn't get discussed in many modern journals. If the mathematics checks out, and if an obscure reference is the only place it appears, just leave it alone.Likebox (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

At first the problem wasn't the reference, it was that there was nothing attached to the "(Luschny 2007)" citation in the text. That is, there was not even an obscure place to look to verify that this appeared there. Had there been an obscure reference in the article, I probably would have grumbled a bit, but left it alone. However, it turned out that the notation "(Luschny, 2007)" was not intended as a citation, but rather as an attribution to the originator of this formula. (How was I to know this? It sure looks like a citation to me.) The purported originator decided to have a go at me on the talk page. I still feel that I acted correctly in replacing the non-existent reference with a {{citation needed}} tag. However, in retrospect, I feel that I may have reacted a bit hastily to a talk page thread that was personally focused on my own decisions as an editor. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 02:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't you know that Mr. Luschny (or more appropriately, Sir Luschny) is Bernoulli's great...grandson? I am disappointed that he is not taken more seriously. --Point-set topologist (talk) 13:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Ring (mathematics)

When you're looking for a short break from the holiday festivities, please consider taking a look at the above article and its talk page. There has been a lot of work done on it in the last week. User: Point-set topologist is quite intent on achieving FA status and is specifically taking the FA Group (mathematics) as a model. Taku has also been working on it. While both editors have been productive, there has been some difficulty consolidating both of their contributions, to the extent that the article now links to an alternate version. It would be truly helpful to have some other ideas and (constructive, of course) comments on this article.

For my part, I'm not sure that FA is the holy grail: it stands for "featured article", not "fantastic article", and in my opinion Group (mathematics) is not a fantastic article, but rather a pretty good one. (It certainly is a very polished and well-referenced article, which I do think is good, but there is more to being a great article than that.) By way of comparison, I think both Emmy Noether and Emanuel Lasker are fantastic articles (and yes, it is easier to write a fantastic article about a person than an entire mathematical discipline).

My big complaint with Ring (mathematics) as it stands is that it has very little in the way of interesting results or interesting examples: it reads more like the first chapter in an undergraduate text on ring theory. The article on groups mentions the classification of finite simple groups and has some nice things on Lie groups and rotation groups; I couldn't find any comparable content in the article on rings. So I decided to start adding some more colorful stuff -- I inserted a new section on examples of (what amounts to) interesting functors from other categories to the category of rings. At the moment this is mostly functioning as an anti-depressant: exactly what material about rings is important enough to be included in a single survey article is an interesting, though daunting, question. Ideas? Plclark (talk) 13:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Well really, we can't aim to include every concept there is (that would be ridiculous since there is so much!). For the advanced reader, we should create a section on "applications to other branches of mathematics" (as you have done of course) which should be a summary of the "advanced concepts" (by this I mean graduate level). Anyway, thankyou for helping out on the article! Taku seems to be in favor of my version so I think I will add some content from his version but basically keep the current version. The main problem is that his content is basically copied stuff from other articles. By the way, I may not be able to edit for the next few days; I am travelling (to Austria). So, I will respond to the comments later.

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Point-set topologist (talk • contribs) 13:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

(Just to set the record straight; I'm not in favor of Point-set topologist's version. -- Taku (talk) 23:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC))

(Maybe I should be just shut up, but I just want to put this for the record. This is my position on the matter, and is also a response to Plclark.)

My understanding is that the current article is on "basic concepts in ring theory". I strongly disagree with that approach. This article shouldn't be just about "introduction to ring theory", it should be much more. By this I don't mean to suggest the article discuss ringed spaces or, even more generally, scheme theory, because they're topics in commutative algebra. Ditto to things like Nakayama's Lemma and Hilbert XXX theorems. (Maybe I'm only ignorant, but I don't know any non-commutative counterparts of them.) The article should be about main ideas and procedures (e.g., various constructions) that are applicable to even to non-commutative rings. On the other hand, though my background isn't on non-commutative rings (not even algebra), I believe, for example, localization is still an important tool for non-commutative rings. (e.g., microlocalization) And I don't even have to mention numerous applications to non-commutative geometry. The main focus of the article should be on such topics. In particular, it follows from this view that the article shouldn't contain many examples of commutative cases; they belong to commutative ring, and that examples should focus more on non-commutative cases (e.g., matrices), since we don't have noncommutative ring (should we create one?) (copied from Talk:Ring (mathematics).)

(Clearly the implementation of the above view requires a structural change to the article, and so I'm no longer seeking that.) Again, this is just for the record. It is very unpleasant for me to be misquoted and misunderstood. -- Taku (talk) 13:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Good article nomination

I've nominated the article Mayer-Vietoris sequence for Good article nominations a month and a half ago. Of the approximately 300 candidates, it is now the third oldest nomination with no activity. Would anyone give it a look? I will try to put better pictures in the coming days. GeometryGirl (talk) 22:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

As I said, there is no enthusiasm when it comes to topology (except for a few people of course and they compensate for the lack of enthusiasam by doing a lot of hard-work). I will look at the article later on, maybe by Wednesday. Topology Expert (talk) 10:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• Remark It might be said that while I like good articles and featured articles, for my purposes a math article is complete when it has a proper definition, treatments of the subject that are both rigorous and intuitive, and perhaps incorporate some discussion of generalizations and connections with other branches of mathematics. We have lots of such articles here, and it was the often very impressive quality there that made me a fan of Wikipedia's math articles. The rest of the criteria that GA and FA types find so important-- pictures, a discussion of the history, no footnote left unplaced, etc., are very pretty to look at and often aesthetically comforting, but somewhat outside my area of interest. Thus, I tend to stay away from GA and FA discussions. Ray (talk) 20:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If no one has started reviewing this by the weekend, then I'll do it. However it is not in my area of expertise so I would appreciate some input from others if/when the time comes. Martin 12:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Great! I think it is preferable that the review is done by someone whose area of expertise isn't topology, because this is bread-and-butter stuff which should be comprehensible to a wider mathematically-literate audience. I'm happy to provide input into the review. Geometry guy 18:53, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Well unfortunately no one did review it before the weekend, so I have started it :) I would appreciate some input from algebraic topologists. My initial review can be found at Talk:Mayer–Vietoris sequence/GA1. Thanks, Martin 12:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Anyone to help Martin with his review? It has been 55 days. GeometryGirl (talk) 18:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Help with a new article?

Hiya. During NPP I ran across Parallelism, its Analysis, Design and Implementation by a General Method. I have no idea what is going on with the article, whether it needs to be rewritten or expanded or merged or deleted or what. Could someone from this project look it over and do whatever is necessary? Many thanks. // roux   07:24, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Hidden proofs

I've tried to reinvigorate the discussion we had going about proofs... please post something over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs, or here, and put your oar in! Try to read the archived talk page too... SetaLyas (talk) 11:22, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Series

I came across the article Series (mathematics). I found some parts of it in pretty bad shape, for an article described in the discussion page as "vital" and "500 most viewed". I feel that some work has to be done there. --Bdmy (talk) 20:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Precisions: the parts next to the end, in "Generalizations". --Bdmy (talk) 20:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

More: I don't understand the section "Semi-convergence".

It looks that the fact that a series of non-negative reals with bounded partial sums converges, appears nowhere in the article --Bdmy (talk) 23:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the article is missing some really basic things (definition of a sum involving the limit of a partial sum, obvious examples of conditionally cvgt sequences etc.). I may add some stuff in tonight! SetaLyas (talk) 00:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Right, made quite a few changes. Still a lot of work needs to be done though! SetaLyas (talk) 03:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Tournaments

If noone objects I plan on doing some major revising of the Tournament (graph theory) page. There are some very important conjectures concerning tournaments that aren't discussed, and the score sequence section isn't quite right. It is missing what is considered one of the most important theorems of tournaments which is Landau's Theorem.

Also I would like to add material to wikipedia concerning hyper-tournaments and multipartite-tournaments, however I do not know if I should start a new page concerning these or should I add it to the current tournaments entry.--Damelch (talk) 03:40, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

You should add that material to the page on tournaments and create redirects from the other names. When the sections on hyper-tournaments and multipartite tournaments become long enough, they can be broken out into their own articles. Ozob (talk) 06:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Edit war

See Pu Baoming and talk:Pu Baoming and their edit histories. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:46, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

I've nominated this page:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mathematical formalization of the statistical regression problem

Don't just say Keep, Delete, Merge, etc. State your reasons and arguments. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

7d Physics

7d Physics has been nominated for deletion ; article involves some 6-dimensional math. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 07:21, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Bao Ming Pu

The article was recently redirected by placing the last name first. What are the wiki standards in this area? Katzmik (talk) 21:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

“Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize.” Since all occurrences of his name in the western literature use western name order, and since he himself used the initials "P. M. Pu" in his own Pac. J. Math paper, we should go by that name: "Pao Ming Pu" or possible "Pao-Ming Pu". A comparison of Google scholar searches for P.M. Pu versus B. M. Pu shows that he is generally recognized with the P. initial. Also, note for example that we have an article named (in the English Wikipedia) Paul Erdős, although his name would natively have been Erdős Pál. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I just checked the citation profile at mathscinet. The most frequently cited article (28 citations) spells his name P. M. The second most frequent (8 citations) spells it Pao Ming. The third most frequent (1 citation) spells it Pao-Ming. Based on this criterion, it seems the best course would be to spell out the initials P. M. and move the page to Pao Ming Pu. If nobody objects, I will move it back to that location. Katzmik (talk) 12:43, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

A brief update: I tried moving the page back to Pao Ming Pu based on the discussion above, but user Keyi moved it back, on the grounds described as "standarded [sic] usage for Chinese names". Any further input? Katzmik (talk) 10:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with David Eppstein that the Western name order is probably preferable, as it seems to be the most common for him, and used for others like Shiing-Shen Chern. A side benefit is that it suggest very roughly the dates or places he worked. Don't know the standard, but using the hyphen has the benefit of clearly indicating what the family name and given names are, without it and without knowing which order, one is left guessing.John Z (talk) 11:05, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I am glad you support retaining the page either at Pao-Ming Pu or Pao Ming Pu. In the case of Chern, using the dash is the standard in the literature, which is not the case for Pu. The variations of his name are clearly explained in the lead paragraph, therefore I don't think it will cause any confusion. Katzmik (talk) 11:10, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

The user currently attempting to edit the page P. M. Pu has just used an expletive in an edit summary. I would appreciate administrative input. Katzmik (talk) 11:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Keyi is currently revising the page according to his personal WP:OR understanding of chinese history (see his edit summary), contrary to published material that he has deleted. Katzmik (talk) 12:21, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Overseas Chinese will have west style names, just as Chern. For people in Chinese mainland after 1949, it is better to follow Pinyin style.

I deleted one irrelevant paragraph about Wu wenjun, and the following sentence force without ref and evidence, and changed tow sentences suspect &"Boshishengdaoshi". This changes are based on the published material written by his students. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Keyi (talk • contribs) 12:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I checked what you said "published material that he has deleted", All this paragraph were copied from that page by someone http://books.google.com/books?id=JuY5tsWAHoUC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA19&vq=pu&dq=Systolic+geometry+and+topology&output=html

This page also didnot provide any proof for force and suspected. As for boshishengdaoshi, before 1982, China have no boshishengdaoshi.--刻意 13:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, the published material by his students that KEYI referred to is yet to appear at the page P. M. Pu. If the material is published in the communist mainland, I would question its reliability. As far as the material that was deleted, it appeared in a book published by a respected western publisher. If you disagree with its content, you can certainly express your views at the talkpage. However, your unilateral edits are inappropriate in my opinion as they reflect merely your views. Katzmik (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

. At first, the original 2nd section was copy from the link without any changes: violates copyright. It should be rewrite in your own words. What is reliability? COPY=reliability?--刻意

Your comments reveal a fundamental misconception about the way wikipedia works. Please be aware of the fact that your personal views, no matter how strongly held, are irrelevant, whereas published material, even though you are convinced it is false, IS indeed relevant. Katzmik (talk) 13:33, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, you are right. What you questioned and what I questioned all are the same. I understand what unable to advise students for most of his scientific caree mean, that maybe true, in the C R years, all the universities were force to revolutionary. Any way, that section should be re-write, not just copy from the link.--Keyi 13:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I would like to make the following points.

• User Keyi used a spelled-out form of the expletive B.S. in an edit summary when he felt that somebody disagrees with his views;
• Keyi changed the title of the page against the consensus on this page;
• Keyi deleted material that has been on the page for about a year;
• An AfD discussion of the page raised a number of objections but nobody objected to the material Keyi deleted;
• Why should we agree? Because Comrade Keyi said so? Katzmik (talk) 12:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Slow down. Most of what you say there is not so serious - changes can always be made, Charles Matthews (talk) 19:13, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Bots have stopped working

Jitse's bot is still doing daily updates to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity but it no longer adds new mathematics articles to the list, as of several days ago. Mathbot stopped doing daily updates to the "list of mathematics articles" pages a week ago.

I've just notified Jitse and Oleg. Am I the only one noticing this and notifying those who may be able to do something? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:07, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been told this may take a few days to fix. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

whats happening?

I am having some trouble here with the math environment, maybe somebody can help me? I tried to copy my LaTeX code into the math environment but it doesnt work at all, please have a look here: [2]

First of all I cannot copy my code, it produces the error "Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed;check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and convert):" although it works fine with MikTex and it also works if I split it up into several equations, so why is that?

Then the first couple of equations are ok although I cannot have them aligned as in LaTeX. But then the last two equations are missing symbols, how can that happen? It says

${\begin{aligned}[ES]&={\frac {[S][E_{0}]}{[S]+{K_{M}}}}\end{aligned}}$

and there is the [ES] missing. What should I do? It works in other places. Thanks a lot for a hint --hroest 21:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

What you have is a case of accidental success. Your code should not work, but sometimes it does anyway. The problem is that you use bare square brackets [ and ], which in LaTeX are used to set off optional arguments. The result is that if one appears in the wrong place, for example the missing [ES], the interpreter takes it to be an argument to some command preceding it, eats it, does nothing (since it was not a valid argument) but, being of an error-correcting bent, continues to typeset the rest of the expression. Sometimes, it can't correct the error, and you get the uninformative red message. Here on WP, we use "texvc", which bears only an incidental resemblance to actual LaTeX and is in particular a completely different interpreting program, so I would expect that things which work fine on your computer don't work here. There are in fact many valid LaTeX constructs that are not supported in Wikipedia, unfortunately.

Anyway, to make a long story short, you need to protect your brackets. This is really annoying, since [ is a valid character except when it means an optional argument, unlike {, which always means to begin a group. So there is no command \[ (well, there is, but it means to begin a displayed equation...another thing that won't work here and isn't what you want anyway). You might try enclosing the offending terms in { }'s, or perhaps someone else knows how to do this.

Edit(00:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)): One thing which works nicely is a find-replace taking [ to {[} and ] to {]} after you have written the lines...though it is thereafter unreadable. Ryan Reich (talk) 00:34, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

In a real LaTeX installation, I believe that you could also use \relax. \relax is a noop; in effect, it says, "Stop reading tokens!" So putting it between some offensive macro and the brackets should fix your problem. Or it would, except texvc doesn't support \relax.  :-( Ozob (talk) 04:32, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

ok thanks a lot and damn this kinetics with those bracket terms :-) I will try the "search and replace" strategy once I get some time to do it. Is there like a manual/and or program in the style of "what you can do at home and not in wikipedia math" or how to convert home-style LaTeX to wikipedia-tex? Thanks a lot --hroest 09:14, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The only brackets that needs protection are the ones immediately after \begin{align} and \\ . This is indeed a bug in the software that runs Wikipedia (two different bugs in fact, of which the first one is easy to fix). As Ryan suggests, you can write

${\begin{aligned}{[}ES]&={\frac {[S][E_{0}]}{[S]+{K_{M}}}}\end{aligned}}$

<math> \begin{align} {[}ES] &= \frac{[S][E_0]}{[S] + {K_M}} \end{align} </math>

or you can put a space \, in front of the term (spaces at the start of the line disappear):

${\begin{aligned}\,[ES]&={\frac {[S][E_{0}]}{[S]+{K_{M}}}}\end{aligned}}$

<math> \begin{align} \, [ES] &= \frac{[S][E_0]}{[S] + {K_M}} \end{align} </math>

As far as I know, the differences between the normal LaTeX and wikipedia-tex are described nowhere. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for vector spaces

The vector space article has recently passed its Good Article nomination. I think it has a reasonable state and I'd like to get broader input, especially on accessibility, balance and completeness of the article for a possible FA nomination, so I am nominating it for Peer Review. Thanks for the review, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The "current activity" page is back

...to normal, listing new articles: Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

... or maybe it's not. The only "new articles" listed today are biographical ones—quite a large number of them. But for more than a week no new articles on mathematics have been added. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

The "current activity" page is NOT back

Disregard the earlier section heading. No new math articles for several days, except one I added by hand to the list of mathematics articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Featured article nomination

I'm nominating the article Mayer–Vietoris sequence for FA. GeometryGirl (talk) 10:54, 2 January 2009 (UTC)