Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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disastrous article

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

I think that's too generous. All the "derivations" are textbook stuff that doesn't belong here at all (I'm not saying that proofs don't belong here; I'm just saying that the theorems proved on that page are not given in any context other than that of an indiscriminate, textbook-like list, and so don't contribute to acceptable content). The "using logarithms" section is really just some competition problems that constitutes a "how-to" guide, and so should go. The continued fractions bit at the end is just an explication of a well-known algorithm for computing continued fractions that is actually given on the page for that topic. This article looks like it was written by a high-school junior taking precalculus. Ryan Reich 21:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've proposed the article for deletion. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove the deletion template. Ed H | talk 01:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now we can forget about that disaster. Ed H | talk 02:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citations for definitions of basic mathematical concepts

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

I'm not sure if it applies, but there is Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Summary style. In brief, you don't always need to give a citation above and beyond the main article you link to. Bimodal distribution and probability seem to be two cases where no citation should be needed. Wikipedia already has those articles, so a wikilink should be enough (IMO). Of course, Wikipedia doesn't have mathematics articles on everything, even everything which could conceivably be interesting to a chemist. For more exotic definitions, you probably won't find them in the Springer Encyclopedia either. Silly rabbit 12:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If a mathematical concept is not specific to a branch of science but important enough for a definition of it to be included in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology, then we probably should have an article on it. Should you encounter such concepts that can't be wikilinked to for lack of an article, please let us know.  --LambiamTalk 13:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A point well worth making! Silly rabbit 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No problem with that! I've done a quick (and necessarily incomplete) check and and I haven't found any redlinks on mathematical terms. The problems are:
  • Referencing: I don't think that "summary style" guidelines apply to these articles in the sense that Silly rabbit describes. Bimodal distribution has a well-defined, technical meaning, and we should reference that meaning if we can (IMHO). See chemical reaction, for example.
  • Imaginary unit: I just found this one on my quick check. Chemists (and physicists, I believe) are supposed to use upright type for i, as it is not a measurable quantity. In effect, it might be the same rule which requires upright type for (capital) Σ and Π as operators in equations, although chemists often use italics for other operators, e.g. H for the hamiltonian operator, Cn for the n-fold rotation operator (quick redlink warning!).
Thanks for your comments, Physchim62 (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Our article on the bimodal distribution most certainly needs a reference; I think that Silly rabbit misunderstood you. I am not so fond of using another encyclopaedia as a reference, but it's better than none at all. Apart from that, the Springer Encyclopaedia of Mathematics is reliable in my experience. I had a look at your workgroup page and I saw that I don't need to warn you that you need to actually check the article against the reference. Finally, using upright or italics for i is the mathematical equivalent of the British/American English conflict in Wikipedia: lots of discussion, no agreement, in the end we agreed to disagree. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I took the following list of redlinks from a seperate database, that of the "Green Book", but if interested editors would like to create the necessary articles or redirects (probably mostly redirects), obviously this would help clueless chemists! Physchim62 (talk) 13:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> Rotational_symmetry#n-fold_rotational_symmetry -- Jheald 00:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> identity function -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
ie ? reflection in a line, plane, or hypersurface -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> inversion in a point -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> improper rotation -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> displacement (vector) Needs cleanup -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
-> or possibly "displacement vector" as a common name for "electric field times dielectric constant". See Electric displacement field and also displacement current, which I think is what happens when you put a dielectric into a capacitor, or something like that.linas 04:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

Above, "base of natural logaritms" should be "base of natural logarithms". Some occur in the Gold Book list (for example plane angle, although without definition). The Green Book mentioned above gives some context; for example "fundamental translation vector" is used in the context of crystal lattices and undoubtedly means the translation vectors that generate the edges of the parallelepiped that is the fundamental region of the lattice.  --LambiamTalk 22:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These mostly look like symmetry operators related to crystallographic groups, heavily used particularly in quantum chemistry, to discuss the symmetry groups of molecules (see: Molecular symmetry), and hence of molcular orbitals for quantum mechanical electrons (and also perturbations of them). See also Euclidean group, Point group, Point groups in two dimensions, Point groups in three dimensions, Crystallographic point group, Plane symmetry for WP articles in this area. Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There seem to be several articles dealing with the same point symmetries and symmetry point groups here. Scope for consolidation/cross referencing ? Jheald 00:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. The (remaining) operators are used in the discussion of molecular symmetry, which has a fairly wide range of uses in chemistry. Fundamental translation vector is undoubted related to translation (geometry), although I'm not 100% sure what is "fundamental" about it: it may simply be a synonym for unit cell vector (crystallographic usage), I shall try to check. Physchim62 (talk) 09:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

Problem of points

A relatively recent addition, but in a desperate state. It is pretty hard even to work out what it is about. Has anyone heard of this problem? If so, can you elucidate? Geometry guy 16:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard of it at some time or another. It's a fairly significant historical problem in probability theory. It has something to do with the fair division of a number of stakes in a game of chance given the number of points scored among multiple players (or something along these lines). It is, if I recall correctly, the European origin of Pascal's triangle. Silly rabbit 16:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This appears to be consistent with the contents of the article! Geometry guy 20:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is notable and famous, but I have never heard it referred to by that name. Blaise Pascal briefly mentions it, without giving it any name. de Méré's problem seems to be a different problem. –Henning Makholm 20:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(I must admit, however, that Google finds a number of non-Wikipedia uses of the "problem of points" name –Henning Makholm 21:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]
If I understand the article and the history correctly, de Méré's problem is unrelated, but Pascal (and Fermat) worked on a different problem, also posted by the Chevalier de Méré, which is a special case of the problem of points. de Méré asked Pascal to consider a game in which the players threw dice, scoring one point for each successful roll, until one player had accumulated six points and so won the game and the pot. Suppose the players must abandon the game when the score is five to four. How should they split the pot? de Méré said they should split it 3-1, but his associate said that they should split it some other way, maybe 5-4, or 2-1, or something. Pascal and Fermat agreed that 3-1 was correct.
In any case, I do believe that the problem is historically significant. -- Dominus 21:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all: any chance someone could transfer these clarifications to the article? It doesn seem to be an important one, and I'm kind of busy right now. Geometry guy 21:50, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have rewritten Problem of points and think it to be in decent shape now. However the somewhat related article Chevalier de Méré is in need of somebody's loving attention. The current article, translated from French, tells an improbable story that de Méré managed to bankrupt himself by betting even odds on being able to throw at least one six in four throws of one fair die, and complained to Pascal that he had expected a 4*1/6 chance of winning. However, one easily computes that de Méré would actually have a few percent's advantage on such a bet, not likely to bankrupt him unless he bet his entire fortune on a single game. My sources agree that what de Méré actually asked of Pascal was an explanation of why the known better-than-even chances for throwing one six in four does not scale to better-than-even chances of throwing one double-six in twenty-four throws of two dice each. However even here the disadvantage is less than a percent, not likely to drive a non-idiotic gambler into immediate bankruptcy.

I might take a stab at this myself, but my available sources are very sparse with actual biographical information about de Méré. Anybody got something better? –Henning Makholm 22:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

.. on further investigation, the nonsense story about wrong odds and bankruptcy was not part of the original article that was translated from French, but was inserted later by a vandalism-only account. I have deleted it now. Some work to put reliable content in its stead still remains. –Henning Makholm 00:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to this article in French, which appeared in the Gazette des Mathématiciens, a periodical published by the Société Mathématique de France, the problem posed to Pascal was this: "how often must one throw two dice to have a priori at least a one on two chance of obtaining a double six? is it 24 or 25?" This sounds quite plausible to me; the chevalier de Méré must have known that 23 was too little and 25 sufficient.but see below! I don't know if the periodical counts as reviewed, but their website states that submitted articles will be examined by the editorial board before being accepted.
Here are some bits and pieces I found:
  • French writer (1607-1684). After studies with the Jesuits of Poitiers, he conquered Paris where he made himself well known in sophisticated society, and established ties of friendship with Guez de Balzac and the Duchess of Lesdiguières.[1]
  • He was born in Boueux near Angoulême and was, supposedly, the first instructor of Françoise d'Aubigné.[2]
  • He is responsible for quite a few aphorisms, such as: Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
 --LambiamTalk 00:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. While plausible, the formulation of the SMF article is not actually supported by the text of the letter that Pascal sent to Fermat.[3] He writes that the man − although of great wit, not a mathematician, a grave defect − complained that "... If one undertakes to make a six with one die, one is in the advantage to undertake it in 4 ... If one undertakes to make [double six] with two dice, one is in the disadvantage to undertake it in 24. And yet, 24 is to 36 ... as 4 is to 6 ...". 01:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This turned into a really nice article. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who worked on it, particularly Henning Makholm. -- Dominus 15:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm so happy that this incidental query had such a positive outcome. I agree that Henning Makholm in particular deserves much appreciation for his efforts. Thank you! Geometry guy 18:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help with article in "unconventional computation"

The article Non Universality in Computation has come to my attention. While the papers by Selim Akl that it cites don't appear to be completely incorrect, they are not actually reflective of classical computability theory because they place restrictions on the models of computation that are not permitted in the standard theory of computability. In particular, the papers assume some sort of time scale such that "computers" must complete calculations in a certain number of steps, which is incompatible with the standard definitions.

So while the articles are not completely incorrect, some of the claims that Akl makes are not correct, or overstated at least, and these claims are repeated in the WP article. The claims were also added to the Turing machine article, but someone else removed them.

I think that there is a place on WP for this information, once it has been rephrased to use standard terminology. But the article as it stands is likely to leave readers with false impressions.

I have asked the author of the WP article, User:Ewakened, to comment here, and I would appreciate hearing other opinions on the matter. CMummert · talk 23:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first cited paper by Aki (that the article is based on) seems to argue quite reasonably that the standard model of computability is not adequate. But there are some unfortunate confusing statements in the introduction that sound like they try to provide a counterexample to universality (in the classical sense) of the Turing machine. This is what went into the WP article. It becomes clearer later on in the paper that the author understands universality differently and basically searches for its meaning by a series of examples. In my opinion, not notable. Jmath666 07:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good articles

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

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

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

I suspect it is unlikely that such a caveat will be widely accepted across Wikipedia, since in non-scientific areas, GA seems to work somewhat better than it does for us. However, we could certainly add such a caveat to our own table (although I would be against making it strongly-worded, or open to criticism as a political statement). I also hesitate, for the time being, to propose removing GA from our grading scheme (I think there may well be maths editors who like to have it there, and value the green cross seal of approval from outside of the project).
However, I would like to propose a more cosmetic change: merging the B+ and GA ratings. This would amount to the following: replace the horrible lime green colour of B+ by the darker green of GA; ask VeblenBot nicely to count and list B+ and GA articles together; and adjust some of the wording in our grading scheme to reflect the merger.
It might also be worthwhile making the B+ grading more robust, and ensuring that B+ articles are properly sourced, but according to the standards of this project, not the inline citation police. In that way GA becomes "B+ with added footnotes". Comments? Geometry guy 17:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Set theory category

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

But perhaps also a subcat of general topology, which is historically what it set out to be? linas 13:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since there is no requirement that the category graph has to be a tree, the set theory category can be put into several parent categories. Personally, as a logician, I would find it very surprising if it were not in the mathematical logic category.
I think the difficulty is that there are two different meanings of "mathematical logic" in use. To researchers, it means essentially "recursion theory, proof theory, set theory, and model theory". To nonlogicians, it means something like "the logical methods used in mathematics, and the study of those logical methods." It's natural enough for nonlogicians with this viewpoint to think set theory, which has a subject of its own like algebra does, is not part of "mathematical logic" and that the logicians are trying to claim it somehow, but that isn't the historical development.
I disgree with Linas' comment - from my viewpoint the development of set theory was either contemporary with or (more likely) predated that of general topology by a few years. It is true that the phrase "set theory" had a very broad meaning in the early 20th century, but the content of topology has never included things such as models of set theory. CMummert · talk 14:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also disagree with Linas's comment. However, I'm not convinced that it is sensible to structure the category based on the logician's viewpoint (see below, and also the comments I made on Trovatore's talk page, linked above). I understand that there is a huge overlap, and it is perfectly reasonable to regard set theory as a subfield of mathematical logic: I am not complaining that logicians are trying to "claim" set theory, only suggesting that this might not be the best way to structure the category. As for the historical development, was Cantor's set theory really part of mathematical logic? Additionally, a large part of set theory, indeed the part familiar to most readers (Category:Basic concepts in set theory), doesn't have much to do with mathematical logic at all. Geometry guy 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a problem with having Category:Set theory as a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic in addition to possibly other categories. After all, the category system operates as a tool for browsing topics, and for such a purpose it does not need to be a tree — a more general directed graph should work fine (prefereably without loops...). A related question that may have been discussed before is whether the maths article classification system should follow the AMS scheme [4]. It is well established and works fairly alright. And by the way, as the habit of having multiple secondary classifications for most articles and books shows, binning of maths topics in a perfectly clean way is quite difficult. Stca74 14:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

The renaming is definitely one way forward. I agree with Charles, however, that WP categorisation has different aims than traditional or modern mathematics subject classification, and we shouldn't confuse the two. The current top-level subcats of Category:Mathematics are
arithmetic, algebra, mathematical analysis, geometry, number theory, topology, category theory, mathematical logic, discrete mathematics, applied mathematics, mathematical physics, probability and statistics, functions and mappings, numbers, sequences and equations
and several subcategories that are not related to topics in math. Some of these categories reflect what is important to WP readers, rather than mathematicians, and I think it should stay that way. It would then seem natural to include set theory in this top level for the same reason. It is the eye of the reader, not the mathematical logician which matters.
Alternatively Category:Mathematical logic and foundations could be refined into Category:Mathematical logic and Category:Mathematics foundations with set theory as a subcat of both. The two terms are closely related but have a different emphasis (rather like geometry and topology). For instance, Trovatore has suggested that Category:Category theory should be a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic. I would be uncomfortable with that, as only a small part of category theory (e.g. topos theory) is mathematical logic. On the other hand, it fits comfortably as a subcategory of Category:Mathematics foundations. Geometry guy 19:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would be strongly against distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations". In practice the terms are synonymous. Which term a person chooses to use sometimes tells you a bit about his philosophical views (though not in any reliable way); it tells you virtually nothing about the content he's discussing. I think all of category theory is math logic; see my remarks above about "math logic" not having much in particular to do with "logic" in the broader sense. --Trovatore 20:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They may be synonymous to the experts, but they aren't to non-experts. One can declare an equality math logic = foundations, but this does not address the fact that these concepts convey different meanings to the general reader (even the general mathematician). In particular, I fail to see how the really important modern subject of higher category theory can be called mathematical logic. Similarly, regarding homological algebra and universal algebra as part of mathematical logic seems odd, whereas it does not seem so unreasonable to regard them as part of foundations (as well as algebraic topology and algebra respectively), because these ideas are used in many branches of mathematics. Geometry guy 22:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really know much about "higher" category theory, so I couldn't say. The basic arrow-chasing that appears in, say, Lang's Algebra, seems to me clearly to have the character of mathematical logic. But if categorists don't think so, I'm happy to defer to them on that point. (Are there any categorists in the project? I don't know of any.)
That would make Category:Homological algebra a subcategory of mathematical logic as well. Just because X "has the character of" Y does not mean X should be a subcat of Y. Geometry guy 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
G-guy, please do not respond in-line to something in the middle of a comment; you lose attribution and sometimes break the flow of someone else's argument. Homological algebra does not strike me as having the character of mathematical logic. Category theory in general does. But I won't press the point on category theory, because I really haven't usually seen it classified as math logic. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies — I had just returned from some discussions where this was the norm rather than the exception, and had no intention to cause any annoyance or break up the flow. I hope in this case the indentation makes the attribution clear at least. Apologies again, Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should be using the standard terminology of the field, whether it's intuitive or not. I'm the first to say that calling these fields "logic" is based on a historical error, but I don't much care; it's a typical fact about language that errors eventually become correct if they're used enough. "Foundations" has its own baggage -- first, it suggests you believe in foundationalism, which you might not, and when it is used distinctively based on content, it often connotes foundational philosophy, which does not seem to be what we're talking about. And there isn't, to my knowledge, any third choice to describe these fields that seem to have a common character.
So as I say, I'm OK with renaming the cat to category:mathematical logic and foundations, but I would oppose any proposal to break that down into "logic" and "foundations" subcats. --Trovatore 01:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to clarify that my suggesion was not to introduce two subcategories of Category:Mathematical logic and foundations, but to replace this by two subcategories of Category:mathematics which could lead the reader into foundations/math logic issues in two different ways. However, if this does not find any support here, I have no intention to pursue it. I'm just trying to raise the issue. Geometry guy 18:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

Well, at the very least, I think our categorizations should not be at cross purposes with the standard terminology of the field. That would be endlessly disruptive, as authors applied categories to articles in standard ways, and as knowledgable readers were led astray.
Distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations of math" just isn't going to work; there is no standard distinction between them (except, again, insofar as "foundations" means "philosophy", which isn't what you want) and the categories will be endlessly muddled. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree: if WP categorization is at cross purposes to established hierarchies, it will confuse both readers and editors. Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BibTex for Wikipedia?

It often happens to me that I want to include a reference to, say, Hartshorne's book "Algebraic Geometry". It is somewhat annoying to always look for it at some page where the reference already is. Is this only a problem / issue of mine or do also other people wish there would be a BibTex-like system on Wikipedia? In the simplest case it would be a page including references to (at least) major math books. It might look like

Robin Hartshorne (1997). Algebraic Geometry. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90244-9. {{cite book | author = [[Robin Hartshorne]] | year = 1997 | title = [[Hartshorne%27s_Algebraic_Geometry|Algebraic Geometry]] | publisher = [[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer-Verlag]] | id = ISBN 0-387-90244-9 }}

Jakob.scholbach 17:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Of course, much more helpful would be a mechanism generating the above reference by something like {{cite book | id = Hartshorne_AG }} . Jakob.scholbach 17:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you have the ISBN, you can use the Wikipedia template filling tool referenced at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Reference resources#Citation templates. For ISBN 0-387-90244-9 it produces {{cite book |author=Robin Hartshorne |title=Algebraic geometry |publisher=Springer-Verlag |location=Berlin |year=1977 |pages= |isbn=0-387-90244-9 |oclc= |doi=}}, which displays as:
Robin Hartshorne (1977). Algebraic geometry. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90244-9.
 --LambiamTalk 20:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If Wikipedia as a whole does not keep a database, at least WikiProject Mathematics could. (I note with interest that another — more focused — wiki has adopted a scheme of giving each citation its own page.) It would be very nice to have a list, for several reasons.
  1. citation data would be easier to find
  2. corrections and additions could benefit everyone
  3. conventions and standards might be easier
I have proposed this in the past, but encountered an apparent lack of enthusiasm. Also, what is involved in creating and maintaining the data, can we do better than cut-and-paste to use it, and who will do the work? --KSmrqT 04:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not hard to parse all the math articles and extract all citations in a list. I don't know if it is worth the trouble though, the Wikipedia template filling tool mentioned above does a decent job I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The template filling tool is nice to have in our arsenal, but is rather limited. First, it requires an ISBN for a book, and does not accept ISBN-13. So I tried it on a real example, ISBN 0-875-48170-1, and got the following
{{cite book
|author=David Eugene Smith, Yoshio Mikami, 
|title=History of Japanese Mathematics
|publisher=Open Court Publishing Co ,U.S
|location=
|year=
|pages=
|isbn=0-875-48170-1
|oclc=
|doi=
}}
  • David Eugene Smith, Yoshio Mikami,. History of Japanese Mathematics. Open Court Publishing Co ,U.S. ISBN 0-875-48170-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
I deliberately used an improperly hyphenated ISBN (it should be ISBN 0-87548-170-1), and got the same back. The citation I had actually used in the article splits the two authors, splits first and last names for both, links the first author, provides a URL to an on-line copy of the work, links the publisher, provides a correctly hyphenated ISBN-13, and supports automatic linking from a Harvard-style reference in the text.
{{citation
| last1=Smith
| first1=David Eugene
| author1-link=David Eugene Smith
| last2=Mikami
| first2=Yoshio
| pages=pp. 130–132
| title=A history of Japanese mathematics
| place=Chicago
| publisher=[[Open Court Publishing Company|Open Court Publishing]]
| year=1914
| ISBN=978-0-87548-170-8
| url=http://www.archive.org/details/historyofjapanes00smituoft
}}
There is a substantial difference in favor of the latter. And how am I supposed to come up with the following (from the same article)?
{{citation
 | last =Laczkovich
 | first =Miklós
 | author-link =Miklós Laczkovich
 | title =Equidecomposability and discrepancy: A solution to Tarski's circle squaring problem
 | journal =Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik ([[Crelle's Journal|Crelle’s Journal]])
 | volume =404
 | pages =77–117
 | year =1990
 | url= http://dz-srv1.sub.uni-goettingen.de/sub/digbib/loader?ht=VIEW&did=D262326
 | id ={{ISSN|0075-4102}}<!--MR 91b:51034-->
}}
No ISBN applies, and I have no ID number; and even if I did, the tool will not provide that marvelous URL. --KSmrqT 05:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it could be useful. I have a file with half a dozen of references I use quite often. Something similar is at User:Shotwell/Standard references. I'm not so sure whether it's worth the effort for journal articles, but who knows. We can always set something up and see whether people will use it. It would be nice if we could use it in a more intelligent way than copy-paste, but I'm not sure that's possible. I would however be against extracting all the citations from articles; by doing it by hand we have some quality control. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bear in mind that each editor should cite the particular version of a source they used: so if you have a different edition of a book from another editor, you should use a citation for that edition (with the ISBN from your copy of the book) rather than just reusing the other editor's citation unmodified. This is less of an issue for journal articles (in that fewer have such multiple versions), but citations of those are also likely to be less widely reused.
Another question with reusable citations: when should links to authors (or journals, etc.) be included in them? Policy on links would suggest that a particular author should be linked just once in the references for an article; reuse would suggest that the citation shouldn't depend on the article it's being used in, so all or none (with a given author) should link to the author. Joseph Myers 18:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, I understand that there is some interest in a Wikiproject-wide list of references. I'm willing to put some effort into it, but I don't know the inner mechanisms of Wikipedia. Is it possible to create and maintain etc. a database inside Wikipedia? Otherwise I would volunteer to set up some reference database outside WP which can be edited by everybody. A mere list of references is a nice thing, but is still kind of a hassle to manually look for the item one needs, especially when the lists grows bigger and bigger as everybody adds his favourite references. It is probably also unefficient because everytime the whole list has to be saved when someone adds a new entry. The advantage, pointed out by KMSrq, of including an URL is definitely something we should not miss, because giving an URL is (at least for me personally) practically more important than the volume no. and the journal's name, at least until one is actually writing a paper and needs the paper-reference, but then good old BibTex does the job anyway. Besides the URL of the paper or book (if there is one) it would also be nice to allow the URL of a review, for example like on MathScinet. Concerning Joseph's remarks: different editions of a book are no particular problem, I guess, they should just be listed as different database entries. Whether to give a wikilink to the author's page or not might be decided by the user by checking or unchecking some checkbox "wikilink the author(s)" etc. Jakob.scholbach 17:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

David Eppstein for admin

I nominated one of us, David Eppstein, for administrator. If you are familiar with David's work, you are welcome to voice your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/David Eppstein. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pleased to say David Eppstein's nomination passed with 87 users in favor and none opposed, which is a remarkable show of support. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it called biproduct?

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

Because it's both a product (category theory) and a coproduct. Silly rabbit 20:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's a dessert topping and a floor wax? Jheald 06:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Topologists, help wanted at neighbourhood (mathematics)

Sorry to bring this up again, but two of us disagree rather strongly on whether one should define first the neighbourhood of a point, or the neighbourhood of a set, with no compromise in sight.

While the issue may be trivial, the concept of neighbourhood is important enough in mathematics, that perhaps more people should get involved. The discussion is at Talk:Neighbourhood (mathematics)#Which comes first: neighborhood of a point or of a set?. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New month, new collaboration

Hey everyone, It's June first and you know what that means... A new Mathematics Collaboration of the Month! The victor, by an overwhelming margin of 3 votes, is Integral. Everyone here should be able to contribute on this one (no excuses this time!). With a little polish and elbow grease, this article will be at A class in no time at all. See you there--Cronholm144 06:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not in the habit of participating in these events; few are. However, I'd like to put in a special request for "integral". If this esteemed assemblage of editors could just briefly stop by the page and skim it (it's quite short), then leave feeling embarrassed at the poor state of such a key article, that would be progress. If you feel like a minor edit, or perhaps an observation on the talk page, that would be better still.
Unlike Cronholm144, I've been around long enough to know that topics like this (as described below) are a huge challenge. It is a gateway topic, visible to far more readers than an expert topic like Poincaré duality. It is one of the deepest topics in mathematics, with massive amounts of material to tap. Many editors will have encountered integrals in a simplistic way, and think they know more than they really do. And the topic can be introduced and organized in many ways, with each editor drawing on different taste and training. It scares me.
That said, integral is so weak that even a little effort could make a visible difference.
So, please, take a few minutes of your time and have a look, and perhaps give it a nudge towards improvement. Thanks. --KSmrqT 07:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to reiterate my suggestions for facilitating the collaboration by proceeding in phases:
  • Phase 1 is like a peer review, in which we identify what the problems with the current version are.
  • Phase 2 is a discussion phase in which we reach consensus on the target: what are (and what are not) problems and what to do about them.
  • Phase 3 is implementing this.
 --LambiamTalk 08:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Orphan talk page

Why does Template talk:Numerical algorithms exist when its template does not? JRSpriggs 08:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Admin error! I have fixed it. There is an archived discussion concerning the former template here. Physchim62 (talk) 08:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I forgot to delete it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
JRSpriggs probably knows about this already, but for those who don't: you can use {{db-talk}} to tag a talk page whose main article is deleted, to have the talk page deleted as well. There is a list of these templates at Template:Deletiontools. CMummert · talk 16:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to Physchim62 for fixing the problem. Thanks to CMummert for the pointer to Deletiontools; I was not aware of it. However, I probably would not have used the "db-talk" template in this case because I had forgotten that the template was deleted (not paying enough attention); so I did not know why the talk page was there without a template. I do not necessarily think that leaving the talk page for a little while after the article is gone is a bad idea, but there should be some indication on it of what happened to the article and that the talk page will be deleted eventually. JRSpriggs 07:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's always admin discretion to leave a talk page when the main article has been deleted, but usually such situations are simple errors (admins are only human, after all!). Thanks for bringing it to people's attention. Physchim62 (talk) 12:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ratings

User:Geometry guy is perhaps the most prolific assigner of "ratings" on math article talk pages. He ranke deformation theory as of "mid" importance and degrees of freedom (statistics) as low.

Is there some standard according to which that is not idiotic? (I'd have said "low" for the former and "high" for the latter. And "high" for any other topic that, like this one, is covered every statistics course from kindergarten through Ph.D.-level.)

Has anyone attempted to codify standards for these ratings? Michael Hardy 22:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment it says "low" means "Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial." By that standard, ranking degrees of freedom (statistics) as "low" is profoundly illiterate. Nothing kinder can be said about it. Michael Hardy 22:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have occasionally come across ratings I didn't agree with, and adjusted them accordingly. For example (if I recall correctly), measure theory and harmonic analysis were also low. Real analysis and complex analysis were mid (should have been top). And so on. It might do to cruise through the ratings from time to time and see if there are any eyesores. I think that, rather than a codified standard, it seems to be a free-for-all in which the ratings reach a sort of equilibrium value. During some discussion, unrelated to the present one, G.Guy brought up an analogy with simulated annealing, which seems to be apt for the rating system as a whole.
By the way, I have been assigned the task of putting together an FAQ on the subject of ratings. So far, I've completely procrastinated, but now might be a good time to get it up and running. Silly rabbit 22:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, here's a counterexample, Michael. I'm going to say something kinder about it. Geometry guy is working very hard to provide a summary page where the rest of us can consult ratings vs. importance, grouped by broad subject areas. I think he's doing a great job, that everybody is human, that mistakes are inevitable, and that we will foster a better spirit of community by helping each other out than by spewing venom on this talk page.
At least I think that's a counterexample. I might be wrong, though – I've been characterized as a troglodyte in this venue before today, and I suppose it may happen again.  ;^> DavidCBryant 22:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all, thank you for your comments. I am attempting to do two things simultaneously right now. The first is to make up for the patchy coverage of the maths rating scheme by attaching maths ratings to approximately 1/3 of the 15000 articles in the List of mathematics articles. The second is to try and refine and understand what importance ratings are for, and how to assess them. These two processes feed into each other.

Importance ratings are always going to be subjective and will fluctuate, but the goal of the second task is to reduce this subjectivity and fluctuation. In the meantime, however, the first task is flawed in many ways: first, I (and others who join me in this effort) will make subjective judgements; second, we will make mistakes; third, the criteria on which these judgements are made have not yet been fully elucidated. I can only ask others to have patience, and also bear in mind that this is a wiki: anyone can fix or update a maths rating. I am saddened by how the harder I work, the more complaints I receive on my talk page. No one needs to complain: just fix the rating.

Importance seems to cause more trouble than anything else. I am beginning to wonder if it should be renamed "priority" (which is the term used by some other WikiProjects): it is not about how important a subject is, but how high a priority it is for us to have a good article on the subject (in the context of related articles.) This does not mean that there will be fewer mistakes, only (I hope) that editors will be less upset by them. Anyway, I think that the word "priority" should at least be mentioned much more in our assessment pages. Recent experiences only serve to reinforce my opinion that the terms "peripheral" and "trivial" should be eliminated as soon as possible from the summary of the low-priority rating. (These words are not actually part of the WP 1.0 scheme, which uses the term "specialist" instead, although this is problematic as well.) I will try to fix this tomorrow.

In the meantime, bear in mind that there is a lower importance rating than "low": unrated. If you know an article which has not been rated which you think should be, please rate it. So far, I have got as far as Dei, so if your favourite article comes before this in the alphabet, don't come to my talk page to complain: assess it! Best wishes to all... Geometry guy 00:09, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with DavidCBryant that Geometry guy is making substantial contributions. When I was saying nothing kinder could be said I was speaking ONLY of that one rating of that one article.
I suspect Geometry guy is seriously confused about the content of statistics, and maybe also about its importance. Michael Hardy 00:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly very few statistics articles have been given maths ratings so far: the subject really needs a champion to go through and assess them. The maths ratings project has been active for quite some time now (at least six months), but even a month ago, there were only 29 assessed probability and statistics articles; now there are 147. This five-fold increase is largely a result of my efforts: I hope this shows I am aware of the importance of statistics, even if I am confused by its content!
As I mentioned above, there is a lower importance/priority rating than "low", which is "unrated" (the bottom 2/3rds, in my view). I've had to skip over many stats articles for lack of expertise: if I were a statistician, I would be more up-in-arms for the stats article that remain unrated than for the ones whose rating is wrong. The ones to which I have added a rating are the ones I thought desperately needed to be put "on the map" for others to rate more accurately.
Anyway, in case it is any reassurance, most of the articles I am skipping over right now, with no rating, are obscure irregular polygons (sometimes in five dimensional space!). You wouldn't believe just how much of this kind of stuff there is! Geometry guy 01:05, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly believe that comments above involving the word 'idiotic' should be retracted. I would like to express support and highly praise Geometry guy for undertaking an incredibly difficult task of rating broad swaths of articles (literally, thousands). In addition to that, he and others have written rather extensively on the criteria used in ratings on this talk page, although some of the discussion is now archived. It was no sneaky action on his part, as one might erroneously infer from Michael Hardy's comment in the beginning. The unfortunate part is that we did not reach a consensus on what terms should be used for rating importance, and did not establish the clear criteria to be used (of course, individual application of any criteria will always remain subjective). In my opinion, this happened not because of any deep disagreement (indeed, most of the proposals were very close), but due to the general lack of interest to codifying the results of the discussion. As a consequence, there are now multiple attempts to adjust the ratings based on a whole slew of criteria, from the discredited and obsolete four levels to multiple interpretations of the alternative schemes that were discussed, and additionally, the adjustments that are not based on anything save highly opinionated personal choices. I feel that it's TOP PRIORITY to establish at least a draft of reasonable rating scheme that can be used as a reference.
Mid for Deformation theory is correct, in my opinion. I am not a statistitian, but in my classes from kindergarten through the university level, degrees of freedom (statistics) did not establish notability on a par with Euclidean geometry, Fractal, or Riemann sphere, to quote the first three high importance rated articles in the field of geometry. The article itself does not make for an easy determination of the importance (regardless of how you might define importance). As I have pointed out earlier in a discussion of ratings, it is difficult to rate undeveloped (start/stub class) or messy aricles in context and especially for a non-expert. Subjective judgements and even mistakes are inevitable, and we would all benefit from restraint in descriptions of others' contributions, be they posted on this page, talk pages, or as summary of edits. In this I wholeheartedly agree with DavidCBryant's comment above.
Let me repeat some earlier remarks that we should keep in mind one of the main goals of the rating enterprise: to facilitate improvement of mathematics part of Wikipedia, by identifying the key areas needing improvement and matching limited editing resources with a multitude of articles that compete for our attention. It is emphatically not an endorsement of the absolute importance of the subject of the article for mathematics as a whole, or our beloved special area! Having said this, I'd like to point out the fairly broad agreement in previous discussions that only a few articles be rated top importance and relative limited numbered high importance. I mention this, because Silly rabbit has increased importance ratings in many cases that were a lot less compelling than Real analysis, creating an impression that any important topic he would like to put into top and high classes. Hopefully, the newest Geometry guy's thoughts on the rating scheme can serve as a basis of a good rating scheme that we can all agree upon. Arcfrk 01:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Has there been some discussion on my recent upgrades that I was unaware of Arcfrk? The only case anyone bothered to bring to my attention was image (mathematics), which I promptly downrated from high to mid, favoring the isomorphism theorem for high instead. This, I hope, is significant enough that we can all agree belongs in high. Similar upgrades to asymptotic analysis, character theory, representation theory. I didn't think these would be at all controversial, but since it's clear you don't want other editors adjusting the ratings, I'll refrain. I'll just revert my ratings and let someone else handle it. BTW: Maybe you could write the FAQ, too. Silly rabbit 01:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am grateful to all for both supportive and critical comments. I would emphasise that anyone can adjust ratings. It can be a thankless task sometimes, but please don't be discouraged by disagreement! I have been trying to build on the discussions held here previously to improve the importance page and hence provide better guidance for these ratings, but it is still work in progress. I am acutely aware that this is a high priority, and I will try and push it forward later today. Geometry guy 02:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I expect the importance of an article to be highly correlated with the number of articles linking to it (not counting "List of ..." articles and redirect or disambiguation pages). For Deformation theory I count 17 linking articles, and for Degrees of freedom (statistics) 41. Is it possible to collect this information automatically, for a sanity check of already rated articles and also for checking if some important articles failed to get an importance rating?  --LambiamTalk 08:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see such a list exists already: User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles.  --LambiamTalk 08:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One of the approaches taken by Cronholm and me for adding maths ratings (following Oleg's suggestion) is to go down this list from the top. However, the correlation of this statistic with importance/priority is not entirely reliable for several reasons. First it tends to overrate articles of a more general rather than specialist nature. Second, it can be inflated by links between similar articles: see for instance the articles on polyhedra and tilings. Third it tends to underrate articles in poorly developed areas of the maths project, which are often the areas which most need our support and further development.
Furthermore, I strongly believe that articles should be assessed in the context of related articles. It doesn't make a lot of sense to compare Deformation theory and Degrees of freedom (statistics). The former seems firmly Mid to me, in comparison with related articles. I clearly slipped up rating the latter as Low, as it is certainly in the Mid-High range, not because it is "more important than deformation theory", but in the context of other statistics topics. Geometry guy 13:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One difficulty with statistics is that coverage is feeble by comparison to most math topics. One can readily imagine 30 or 40 articles in a list of topics related to degrees of freedom in statistics, but they're not there. Similarly analysis of variance is a vast topic on which one could write several thick volumes, but the article is pretty stubby. Michael Hardy 01:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zero

I have been going through the Z articles, and I have found quite a few stubs in the zero section, Zero_ideal, Zero_set, Zero_tensor, Zerosumfree_monoid, Zero_matrix, Zero_module, Zero_order. Is there any way we can unify these articles in a meaningful way. As it stands I don't see these articles growing all that much. Perhaps we could create something along the lines of the List of prime numbers article. Maybe "List of mathematics terms that include zero".--Cronholm144 05:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will take the silence as a "go for it C" and create something in my sandbox :) --Cronholm144 18:15, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zero set clearly has potential to be expanded into a solid article; Zero order may have as well, and I would give Zerosumfree monoid the chance to flourish or perish on its own merits (a redirect might be more appropriate). The other four articles are all zero elements/objects in one way or another, and there isn't much one can say about them individually. There may indeed be scope here for a list, or other unifying article, on such zero objects: in which case, "go for it C"!

Done List_of_zero_terms with redirects in place. I didn't redirect Zero matirx, just relisted it. Now all of the horribly weak stubs can grow together in one place. Feel free to move the page to a better name, just be sure to warn me so I can reset the redirects to the appropriate locations--Cronholm144 18:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA and math ratings

The discussions on Wikipedia talk:Good articles aimed at reforming the GA system seem to be going nowhere. Would there be support here for removing GA as one of the visible article quality classes on the maths rating template? The GA rating doesn't seem to have much to do with how we view the quality of math articles, and doesn't really fit into a linear scale with the other stub-start-b-a classes. Removing it from the scale would free us to assign GA articles "start" class if we feel they deserve it (for instance, Geometry Guy's "start" rating of Klee's measure problem, which I fully agree with), and it would avoid confusion about how GA and our own A-class rating system are supposed to interact. In any case if this change is made the GA status would still be visible in the separate GA banner on the talk page. —David Eppstein 20:21, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made a proposal about this above, but it is probably worth repeating it here. Basically, I proposed a less substantial change, because I think there may well be maths editors who like to have GA in the scheme, and I don't think it is necessary to remove it, only to clarify its meaning.
What I propose is a merger of B+ with GA. This would amount to the following: replace the horrible lime green colour of B+ by the darker green of GA; ask VeblenBot nicely to count and list B+ and GA articles together; and adjust some of the wording in our grading scheme to reflect the merger. In particular, an article can only be rated GA in our scheme if it is both B+ quality by our standards, and also a good article. (In particular, my rating of Klee's measure problem as Start class is entirely compatible with such a system.) Further, we can emphasise that achieving GA status has nothing to do with progression from B+ to A.
As I mentioned above, we might also want to make our B+ grading more robust, so that GA becomes, effectively, "B+ with added footnotes". Geometry guy 20:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Given what I have seen of GA and its talk page, I agree with David Eppstein that needed reform seems unlikely anytime soon. That doesn't mean we must go stripping GA tags from articles, but it does mean we should eliminate GA from our ratings. As I have suggested repeatedly, to deafening silence, in principle tags like GA could be akin to barnstars, in that any group could tag articles by any criterion they prefer. (We could have "good use of subtle humor", for example.) Such tags should be orthogonal to our system, not part of it. --KSmrqT 00:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Geometry guy's merger proposal seems to rest on the assumption that some maths editors may prefer to retain the GA rating in our scheme. Being rather fond of the Polder Model, I'd prefer the merger proposal if such editors indeed exist. If not, then it's better to eliminate the GA rating (and also the section on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics). So, could the people in favour of having GA in our scheme come forward? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the current climate, I think it is rather unlikely that regulars here (G-guy included) will have a good word to say about the GA process! So I was thinking more about "the editor in the street".
However, my proposal doesn't rest on this assumption. There are other reasons why eliminating GA entirely from the scale might not be the best way forward.
  • Most of Wikipedia 1.0 uses GA, and retaining it will help ensure compatibility, and enable us to argue that our B+ is equivalent to WP 1.0 GA, and not to WP 1.0 B.
  • It is usually wiser to proceed slowly: we introduced B+; now let us make it a valid replacement for GA; then, later, we can consider whether we want to remove GA altogether from the scheme.
  • (Closely related.) For all our misgivings about GA, and recent events, we need to be able to hold our heads high in future discussions. A too-strong knee-jerk response could marginalise us, whereas a more measured response might convince some other WikiProjects of the merits of our approach.
On the other hand, forgetting the wiki-politics, there is essentially no difference between my proposal and removing GA from our scheme. The only difference is that B+ quality articles which are also good articles will be permitted to use the letters GA instead of B+ in their quality grading. I emphasise that good articles which do not meet our B+ standards would not be so entitled, and that good article status would be even more irrelevant for progress to A Class than it is now. Geometry guy 18:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be very reluctant to merge B+ and GA. One reason is the political, we are in danger of isolating ourselves from the greater mass of wikipedia who do acknowledge GA. A situation where the maths pages become a law unto themselves could be very disruptive in the long term.
When I first though up B+, it was intended to be a little short of GA, generally well written articles which failed in one respect, often a lack of history or illustrations. The idea was that it could be used as a holding ground for articles that could be put forward to GA.
I've now put Klee's measure problem of WP:GA/R as I think it fails 3a of WP:WIAGA, lacking in illustrations, context of related problems, also the claimed use in computer graphics could do with a citation. --Salix alba (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I entirely agree about the political aspect, as I mentioned already. Anyway, my compromise is rather flexible: it can instead be viewed simply as an enhancement of the current B+ rating. We already allow A-Class without good article status, so I don't a problem in regarding GA as "B+ with external quality assurance". Geometry guy 02:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is exactly how I view GA, and why I don't think B+ should be eliminated or merged. Similarly, I view FA as essentially "A class plus external quality assurance", and would not want to merge them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, B+ is a great innovation of this project. I'm surprised by your view of FA-Class, though: in my view there is quite a jump in quality between A-Class and FA-Class. The latter is, after all, the Wikipedia gold standard. If this project takes the view that FA is "A plus external quality assurance", then quite a few A-Class articles need downrating, and the criteria for A-Class should be strengthened! I would be very much against doing that, as I think A-Class provides an important stepping stone between GA/B+ and FA. Geometry guy 16:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps "external quality assurance" isn't the right phrase. But look at the FA requirements. Only one of them relates to the content of the article independent of presentation (1b), and that one only requires that the article "does not neglect major facts and details." That's not a high fence to jump. The remainder of the FA requirements, and the bulk of the FA review process based on what I've seen, is devoted to copyediting, making sure every detail of the manual of style is followed, copyediting, etc. I just scanned through WP:FAC and it looks like most of the comments still fall into the general scope of "copyediting". One of the goals I had in mind when we made the A-class review for this project was to try to avoid that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My view of Featured Articles is more pragmatic; these articles will be featured on the Wikipedia welcome page, to impress the world with the wonders of open editing. This is not a "gold standard", but something more. A specialized mathematics article could be excellent for our purposes, yet never suitable for featured status. It is not a matter of quality control, but of purpose. For quality control, Wikipedia has a peer review option (though there may be some question about who is a suitable peer).
My view of Good Articles is that the project began as an attempt to recognize small articles and others that might not merit featured status, but has since lost its way.
Where does that leave mathematics? We have very broad coverage of mathematics topics, yet almost every one of our articles could benefit from attention. Despite the excesses of the inline citation squad and the silliness of WP:V, we can surely agree that we would like each article to cite at least one place to read more. Often the English language is roughed up, as is TeX and wiki markup. Specialized articles need not overly pander to the lay reader, but even mathematicians might appreciate more genial introductions. And here and there a figure could be wonderfully illuminating for us visual thinkers. I don't trust (many of) the current GA reviewers to assist us, but their stated criteria seem close to my own. I would hope our A-class articles meet similar standards. --KSmrqT 18:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Our A-Class review is another great innovation. I agree that on the surface FAC suffers from many of the same concerns as GAC. but in practice it seems to me to be a whole different ball game, especially for technical articles. Yes, FAC editors usually criticise form, and often only add fact tags to articles, but this is frequently accompanied by a real drive to improve the article. I have participated in a couple of FACs: Encyclopedia Britannica and Equipartition theorem, but I was impressed in both cases by the result. (1b), (1c) and (4) all refer to content (as does (1a) to some extent), but (1b) is the big one, because "comprehensive" is a big word; FAC is a high fence to jump in practice. At the B+/GA level, the story is different, because the content is not fully developed, and the GA process is mostly only able to address presentational and policy issues for technical articles.
We should also be careful not to confuse FA and FA-Class. Our descriptors of FA-Class make quite clear the distinction between A-Class and FA-Class. The latter articles are described as "definitive" and "outstanding". I would not like to place such strong requirements on A-Class articles. Geometry guy 19:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As to the content vrs presentation aspect of FA, this is perhaps all which could be expected. The people at FA are not in general going to be content specalists so it assesment in that factor will be hard. Maybe this is where A-class review fits in as a place where the subject specalists can assess the content. Also we should not underestimate the importance of presentation, a well presented article is more likely to get read than one which is not. Indeed this a a case where the FA process can help improve the article, there a lot of english majors there who can spot, and hopefully correct, an awkward turn of phrase. This is something which mathematicians have not. as a rule had much training in, its also something which is vital for mathematics articles aimed at a large audience. --Salix alba (talk) 20:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree entirely. And sometimes quite amazing things happen at FAC! Geometry guy 20:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus?

From the above there does not appear to be consensus for removing GA-Class from our ratings, especially while this is still used and accepted by most of the rest of Wikipedia 1.0. On the other hand, we are exceptional in having a B+ class rating, and there seems to be some consensus that GA-Class amounts to B+ Class with external quality assurance (at least in issues of presentation and policy).

I therefore believe that we should update our grading scheme to reflect this consensus. I also think that the other practical suggestions I made are worthy of consideration:

  1. replace the lime green colour for B+ articles with the same green colour used for GA articles; this might actually help us to incorporate our approach into the general WP 1.0 scheme;
  2. list B+ and GA articles together on maths ratings pages (this is much less essential, but is mainly cosmetic).

Please comment on these concrete suggestions. Geometry guy 20:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to start tweaking our grading scheme descriptors both to cover this issue, and also the issue that our articles often start off being technically correct but inaccessible, rather than accessible but needing expert input. I won't move on the two numbered issues yet (although I am sorely tempted to get rid of the lime green ;) Geometry guy 20:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand this. I thought we agreed that a GA tag was orthogonal to our ratings. Indeed I thought instances were noted in which an article with serious mathematical problems nevertheless received a GA tag. For that matter, a FA tag can also be earned without a sound technical review. Once again, I claim that a checklist is the way to go. Our best articles must be technically correct and readable and include at least one citation. A featured article must be pretty (and of general interest?) as well.
Is it:
  1. correct?
  2. reasonably complete and balanced?
  3. clear?
  4. compelling?
  5. reasonably accessible, given the topic?
  6. grammatical, correctly spelled, and well typeset?
  7. appropriately illustrated?
  8. well linked?
  9. helpful in providing references and additional resources?
But I repeat myself. --KSmrqT 21:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed you do :) Please read the comments of Salix Alba and Carl (CBM) above. Geometry guy 22:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm convinced by Geometry guy and Salix Alba's arguments. Let's merge B+ and GA. And please get rid of the lime green. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 23:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Changing the color is trivial. What does the merge mean, really? Would it still be possible to assign B+ ratings independent of GA? — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most definitely yes! Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "merger" for my compromise proposal. Actually it is more like a definition:
GA-Class := B+-Class {good articles}.
In this way the Stub-Start-B-Bplus-A scheme is independent of WP:GA, and also GA-Class is only assigned to good articles of B+ quality. In a sense this makes WP:GA orthogonal to maths ratings, yet also keeps GA-Class within our scheme as "B+ with external quality assurance". I hope this gives some satisfaction both to supporters of GA and to editors who want to have nothing to do with it. Geometry guy 10:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Further to KSmrq's suggestions above, perhaps this checklist could be part of our A-Class review process? I also think we should make sure that FA-Class math articles have been reviewed by this project, particularly for their content. Geometry guy 10:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we would have to come up with a new name for the merge, using the GA tag will cause confusion. Changing lime green is a little tricky, {{GA-Class}} is where the colour is set and would require discussion at Template talk:Grading scheme, creating a new template could be the way forward. The colour of {{Bplus-Class}} is yellow, very easily changed.
Options seem to be
  1. Create a new class the union of GA and B+
  2. Treat GA as orthogonal, allow a GA tag to appear in the rating template and but with an appropriate A/B+/B/Start/Stub grading as well.
  3. Just forget about GA altogether, GA listed as seperate banner on talk pages but not included in the {{maths rating}} template.
  4. Keep things as they are
My preference would be for orthogonality.
I do wonder how great the problem is, are there other GA articles which have a differet maths rating, if so it might be best to put these articles on good article review. When Klee's measure problem went to GA/R there was unanamous support for delisting, this may be the case for other problematic articles.--Salix alba (talk) 10:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely shouldn't have called it a "merge"!! Just when there appears to be some consensus, four new proposals come along! Anyway, by "lime green" I was referring to the yellow-green colour of B+ (B-Class is yellow). Sorry for any confusion, but I did spell this out. We cannot and should not change the colour of GA-Class. Salix Alba himself has argued strongly that we should maintain compatibility with the rest of WP 1.0, so GA-Class should be kept as a possible rating. I do not see the confusion here: we already use A-Class for good articles which are better than B+. I see no harm in extending this principle and only using GA-Class for good articles of B+ quality. As Salix Alba points out, this is unlikely to be an issue in practice, as good articles which have lower quality will almost certainly be delisted.
In terms of the list, this is a compromise between "orthogonality" and "keeping things as they are". Geometry guy 11:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Without orthogonality, we create the impression that an article must pass GA before it can achieve A-class. We have no consensus for such a requirement, and I think it an unsupportable idea given our current lack of comity with the GA reviewers. --KSmrqT 16:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent) As far as I am aware, it has never been a requirement to pass good article to achieve A-class, neither here nor within WP 1.0 in general. I believe that there is consensus for this policy (not merely "no consensus" for its contrary). I am not aware of there being a false impression about this: plenty of A-Class articles have not passed WP:GA. Anyway, I report with pleasure (and from the above it sounds like Jitse will be happy to) that I have now replaced the horrible B+ colour with the same green used for GA-Class. This should further clarify our policy, as will some changes to the B+ and GA descriptors which I promised to make above. Geometry guy 17:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now updated our quality grading scheme to clarify the issues discussed in this forum. Tomorrow, I will use this, together with any comments, to refine Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment. Geometry guy 20:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cofactor expansion

After viewing the Determinant article I was surprised to see that cofactor expansion (obviously one method for determining the determinant of a square matrix) doesn't have an article nor does it even serve as a redirect. I thought that I should bring it to the attention of the Wikiproject.--Jersey Devil 20:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'll eat the bullet on this one. I'll create the stub tonight.--Cronholm144 07:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. In my sandbox, I hate to put unfinished work onto the mainspace.
I'm puzzled; is there something we want to say about cofactor expansion that does not belong in the determinant article? --KSmrqT 11:26, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Me too ;) Is this really the same KSmrq who recently said to me "For those of us using popups, articles with definitions — even brief ones — are appreciated." ? :) Geometry guy 13:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and I'm being consistent. For a definition only relevant in one place, it's better to include the definition in that article. For an extreme example, look at eigenvalue and eigenvector. --KSmrqT 18:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A redirect #REDIRECT [[Determinant]] ought to have been fine here. The problem is that the Determinant article uses the term, but fails to explain it; and neither does our article Minor (linear algebra), which defines "cofactor" but not "cofactor expansion". The article in statu nascendi at User:Cronholm144/Cofactor expansion should perhaps more properly be called "Cofactor (mathematics)" and could, in finished form, replace the current redirect page of that name (now redirecting to Minor (linear algebra)), with Cofactor expansion being a redirect to Cofactor (mathematics). However, I wonder if it is not better to merge the sandbox article into the existing Minor (linear algebra) article.  --LambiamTalk 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Midway through the writing I realized the same thing and changed my article's focus to the general cofactor. I am still writing. I think I will withhold my own judgment on the merge (which is valid, but the articles have different aims at the moment) until I finish. --Cronholm144 14:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is the Cofactor expansion not the same thing as the Laplace expansion ? Jheald 15:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly appears to be doesn't it. :) It certainly looks like there are going to be an interesting set of mergers once I get done. As it stands now I think the redirect for C exp. should definitely go to L exp.--Cronholm144 15:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, considering none of us thought to look for it under Laplace expansion, maybe the redirect would be better Laplace exp -> Cofactor exp. But yes, it looks like this whole group of articles could use some merging/refactoring, so it's a good thing you're on the case. Jheald 16:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And we did not read through to the end, because Laplace expansion is mentioned there, and explained as well. It is stated to be efficient for small n. All methods are efficient for small n, but isn't it rather very inefficient for large n? Or is there some clever trick to obtain the cofactor expansion in substantially fewer than n! operations?  --LambiamTalk 16:38, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you read even further down, at Determinant#Algorithmic implementation, you'll learn the answer ;) However, I think that it doesn't happen that often in practice that you want to compute the determinant of a large matrix. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I know that the "obvious" way of using Laplace expansion to compute determinants, computing the determinants of the minors recursively with the same method, requires on the order of n! steps (obviously). I also know that there are more efficient methods that do not use Laplace expansion. Using the "naive" method of Laplace expansion, in total floor((e−1)n!) times a determinant is computed, one for the whole matrix, the others for minors, minors of minors, and so on. However, there are only 4n square sub-matrices, a number that is soon dwarfed by n! as n grows, so an awful lot of these minors get their determinants recomputed quite often. My question was, in essence, whether some clever way (other than dumb memoization) is known for organizing the computations in such a way that these recomputations are avoided. This question, which is not answered in the article, is more theoretical than practical; but, presumably, the same method could then be used for speeding up the computation of permanents.  --LambiamTalk 20:16, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have any of you heard of Lewis Carroll's method of matrix condensation? It was a rather interesting read, but I believe it partially bypassed the problems presented by large n, but I can't quite remember. aha! found it mid-write mathworld. The original article is available in JSTOR's catalouge, only six pages and a delightful read. --Cronholm144 20:36, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's discussed in Volume 2 of The Art of Computer Programming. I can look it up if you don't have a copy handy. Silly rabbit 20:19, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oops... I think it must be in one of the new installments. Here is Knuth's paper on it. Silly rabbit 20:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, you beat me to it (edit conflict) BTW since I am on an algebra writing kick... How does Methods for computing determinants sound?--Cronholm144 20:36, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's also a related technique, due to Edgar Bareis (?), using Sylvester's identity. I believe this is optimal for large n. Silly rabbit 20:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
..and modular methods for integer determinants using the Chinese remainder theorem, implemented for instance in Victor Shoup's Number Theory Library. Which, I think, work better particularly in parallel processing environments. Yes, a new article seems to be called for. Silly rabbit 20:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am surprised that no one mentioned Gaussian elimination (and related methods, such as QR decomposition) yet! Surely, these are more efficient than any expansion tricks, giving O(n3) complexity for computing the n by n determinant straight away. As far as I can remember, nothing like that exists for computation of permanents. This provides a philosophical 'explanation' why cofactor expansion, condensation, etc that apply equally to determinants and permanents cannot be (even close to) optimal in the determinant case.
Concerning Lewis Carrol method: besides in-house Dodgson condensation, see Bressoud's book referenced in Alternating sign matrix. Arcfrk 01:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, numerical analysts (like Jitse?) typically use LU decomposition (with partial pivoting, of course), then take the product of the diagonal elements.[5] However, for abstract algebra we must also consider matrices over a ring for which division is not generally available. For example, Mathematica says that it "uses modular methods and row reduction, constructing a result using the Chinese Remainder Theorem" when it cannot use the floating point methods. The computer algebra system Fermat claims to be particularly good at determinants, but I do not know the methods employed. --KSmrqT 10:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But Dodgson condensation is O(n3). I think that LU is used primarily to avoid underflow issues. Of course, per KSmrq, for non-floating point matrices LU has certain obvious problems. Silly rabbit 12:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I'd use LU decomposition. I had never heard about Dodgson condensation. I doubt underflow is an issue here. My guess would be that it is unstable, or too slow, or that nobody thought properly about it (in decreasing probability); but as I said, I'm only guessing. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:55, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Importance ratings progress

I thought I would start a new section on this, so that the old ones can be archived. Today I have done some of the things I promised to do.

  • I have made some progress on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. I have not yet summarized/developed the discussions here on context, but I have come up with a table of priority/importance descriptors, which I hope will prove to be more helpful than the general descriptors of WP 1.0.
  • I have removed our own "peripheral/trivial" description for low importance articles and replaced it (temporarily) with the WP 1.0 "specialist" description. Untimately, I think we should replace all of the WP 1.0 descriptors by our own ones, because the former have many flaws. I intend to feed these thoughts back to the WP 1.0 project.
  • I have added an additional row to the priority ratings to emphasise that there is a lower rating than low, namely "unrated". This is where the terms "peripheral" and/or "trivial" may apply, although not always. Sometimes an article could be not sufficiently relevant, or might be too specialized or technical, for it to be worth rating within this project.
  • I have threaded the word "priority" a little bit more into the whole system in order to clarify the point, which User:Arcfrk articulated previously, that "importance" ratings are about how important it is for this project to have a good article on a subject, rather than an endorsement of the absolute importance of the subject. In particular, just as quality gradings use terms such as "A-Class", it may be more helpful to use terms like "Top-priority" for importance ratings. Geometry guy 22:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, I guess I should have said explicitly: please start making comments on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance, either here, or on the talk page. Geometry guy 23:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I agree priority is a nicer word. The description on importance linked above seems a good start. Nice to emphesis that its for editors, if it was for readers you could say thats its OR. --Salix alba (talk) 12:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now bitten the bullet, and drafted the "context" section. I added some information on the scope of the assessment project as well. Also, we didn't discuss articles about mathematicians: I raised the issue before, but no one commented on it. Anyway, I have proposed that we don't make substantial use of the WikiProject Biography scheme, since I believe it is flawed, particularly in the mathematics context. Full details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. The latter page is now rather long and verbose, but I thought it would be better to do it that way while the guidelines are still being developed. Geometry guy 18:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay it looks like the plan to use X-Priority instead of X-Importance will go ahead, but the term "importance" will still be used frequently (as in "Articles by importance", "importance level" and so on). I will now also use the new importance table to update our summary table. This will be hard to get right, so other editors' input may be crucial! Geometry guy 20:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Summary table now updated at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment. Geometry guy 11:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Flagged revisions (stable versions)

There is a proposed policy at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions about stable versions. The idea is that some pages would be "flagged" and then the flagged version would be shown by default to users who aren't logged in. This has obvious implications for vandalism fighting and quality control.

This has been in development for years, but now the code is apparently finished modulo final approval. Although it is still not certain that flagged versions will be enabled on en.wikipedia.org, the proposal is an attempt to determine some community consensus on the issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Name change: CMummert → CBM

My username was recently changed from CMummert to CBM (log). This change will be seen in page histories and your watchlist, if my user pages are on it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Normal set on AfD

Prod had expired; de-prodded. --Trovatore 03:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lie algebra bundle

The recently created article Lie algebra bundle starts with the word 'definition' and consists of a rather dull definition and a list of 9 references. I cannot even think of a tag to place on it (if it's not straight AfD) — any ideas? Arcfrk 18:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a terrible start to an article on a worthy subject. Lie algebra bundles are rather important in the theory of connections (as adjoint bundles). I suggest that the best thing to do is to get the talk page going. Geometry guy 19:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For now I've added a {{Wikify}} tag.  --LambiamTalk 19:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good call! So good in fact, that Salix Alba and I tried simultaneously to do just that. He won :) Geometry guy 20:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for so promptly obeying my command :)  --LambiamTalk 22:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AfD for 1000000000000 (number)

There's some discussion about deleting it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1000000000000 (number) 2nd nomin. Someone asked "Is there a Wikiproject or something discussing these? [large numbers]". I thought perhaps the members of this wikiproject might be interested. --Itub 12:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiproject numbers is the project that you want.--Cronholm144 14:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I supposed that such a project would exist, but I tried Wikipedia:Wikiproject numbers with no success. It's with a capital N. :) --Itub 15:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Categories and #redirect pages

I've been looking at the new math pages for a couple of months now, and one thing I've observed really has me puzzled. From time to time, somebody hangs a "category" tag on a redirect page.

That really doesn't make any sense to me. What purpose does such a tag serve? I would just take the tags off, but I've encountered a few editors who seem quite vehement about keeping them in place (although they haven't explained why this matters in terms that I can understand). So I'm asking the question here. Should we have a general policy about category tags on redirect pages? Thanks! DavidCBryant 16:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The argument in favor of it is that it allows a user to browse categories like a topical index. The argument against is that the point of categories is to categorize articles, not topics. I usually remove categories from redirects when I see them and then forget about it if someone reverts me. There general WP policy does not forbid them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
wikiproject logo?
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