User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive2

• User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive1

Upper vs upper

This question is kind of irrelevant, but just out of curiosity: why did you change the redirect at Lobachevsky plane from upper to Upper? As I understand it, due to limitations in Wikimedia, all articles start with a capital letter. -- Tob 08:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of my edit was to insert the hyphen between half and plane, thereby bypassing a redirect page. An incidental other change was to make the capital U a lower-case u (not the other way around). I prefer that because capitalizing the initial sometimes makes newbies think it's necessary to capitalize the first letter of a link, and then they put a capital d in something like dog in the middle of a sentence. The first letter of a link, unlike the later letters, is case-insensitive. Michael Hardy 18:58, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Math punctuation

I understand your concerns, but my concern is that the period is very close to \cdot, which is confusing when thrown at the end of a formula. The typographical features of web browsers are rather lacking.—Kbolino 00:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Golden Mean

I posted the following on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Golden Mean:

Please don't merge or redirect: I agree that this article needs substantial improvement. However, most of it deals with the philosophical meaning of golden mean (essentially not too much, not too little), which has nothing to do with the mathematical subject of the golden ratio article; therefore, it should not be merged with that article. The confusion, which is not of our making, is that the outside world uses golden mean ambiguously: sometimes in its philosophical sense (above); other times as a synonym for the golden ratio. Golden ratio, on the other hand, is unambibuous: it refers only to the subject of the golden ratio article, which is another reason that the articles should not be merged. The Wikified solution for dealing an ambiguous term is disambiguation, and that is part of the solution for this article. Indeed Michael Hardy, who made the first post on this page (does that mean he is the one who nominated the article for deletion?) raised much the same point in a comment following his original post. The rest of the solution is (1) to delete from this article all discussion of material that is treated in the golden ratio article (and treated much better there), with an appropriate cross-reference on this page to golden ratio as another meaning of golden mean; and (2) to edit what is left of this article, dealing solely with the philosophical meaning, to improve its quality. Finell 10:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The voting is running heavily for merging the 2 articles, which I thing would be a big mistake: the other (nonmathematical) meaning of golden mean deserves its own treatment in Wikipedia, albeit a better one than the current Golden Mean article. The other meaning has no place in the Golden ratio article. What do you think? Finell 12:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

PS: You really archive your Talk page quickly!

Fisher Information

Is it wikipedia policy to scatter user-instruction into the edit log of the page? I thought that was what the "discussion" page was for, if not the "user talk" pages, but call me a "newbie" indeed if I was woefully mistaken. Furthermore, if it is a concern that "newbies" would put underbars into the visible portion of a link, does this not suggest that instead of making up yet another style rule for the humans to slavishly obey, one should simply reprogram the wikipedia to not produce the underscores that it doesn't need in the first place? mdf 17:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not unusual to explain the rationale for one's edit in the summary. Michael Hardy 19:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

constructivism (mathematics)

Hi Michael -- I see what you mean -- it hadn't occurred to me that mathematics and education overlap in mathematics education -- I was just thinking that all meanings of constructivism are created equal and there seemed to be no reason to single out education from the others. These warnings shouldn't be too long, though, I think -- is my shortened version of your warning OK?

Wrong, wrong, wrong! You're totally missing the point! "all meanings of constructivism are created equal and there seemed to be no reason to single out education from the others"? The point is: the word "constructivism" in philosophy of education and the term "constructivism" in philosophy of mathematics refer to two entirely different things. In philosophy of education, "constructivism" is a tenet about the way people learn by "constructing knowledge". In philosophy of mathematics, "constructivism" is about the sense in which mathematical objects such as numbers, functions, sets, etc. can be said to exist, and how their existence can be known. Michael Hardy 19:20, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Michael -- I think we're not as far apart on this as you think. I'm aware that "constructivism" is something different in the two cases, not just one concept applied to two fields. But it's also something different in each of the other cases listed at constructivism. I had initially not seen the point of singling out one of these cases -- the sentence that you quote from me, which you seem to have taken as me insisting on that view, was just to explain my thinking at the time I made the first change. I did then see why you might think that a confusion with the use of the term in the theory of education might be more likely to arise than in the other cases, but I still think it's a good idea that the link now points to constructivism, not to constructivism (learning theory) as before.

Regarding your criticism of my shortened version, I didn't mean to imply that one meaning of the word was being applied to two fields, but I can see why you think that it might be interpreted that way. I can't think of any shorter way to express the distinctions that you feel are important, so I'll leave it at that (apart from the typo :-).

it's also something different in each of the other cases listed at constructivism

But those other cases are not the ones causing the confusion. People have kept inserting stuff about Piaget and the like into the article under the mistaken impression that that's what it's supposed to be about. Michael Hardy 00:47, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Deletion request

Hello Michael. I accidentally uploaded the file Image:Default Title d.ogg, with a wrong title. This same file was then reuploaded with its correct title, as indicated in the image's page. Could you please delete it? —AugPi 19:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Birthday paradox

Greetings. In fact, friendly greetings.

Do you know the Uncle Remus story of the Tar Baby? You asked mathematicians to get in on the discussion about the Halmos section of the birthday paradox, so I got involved. But now I feel stuck in it beyond my real interest. Rather than continue to watch, talk, and edit, I'm going to back away. If you still have an interest, you'll need to grapple with the tar baby yourself. I'll watch your talk page if you want to reply. Best of luck! :-) --KSmrq^T 02:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Too many capital letters

Hi, Michael. Thanks for fixing the capitalization in the Posidonius article. --Tregonsee 17:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

no, i checked, was someone else. was worried, because i tend to have brain farts, particularly in front of a class. i just expect them to translate my gibberish on the fly ;)

Missing articles in the list of probability topics

Hi Michael. I promised a while ago to help maintaining lists of math topics. I could update them in the same manner as I do for now with the list of mathematical topics, but that would require too much oversight, as there are hundreds of math lists to take care of.

What I did so far, I tried an experiment. I listed at Talk:list of probability topics some articles missing from the List of probability topics. One could then add them to the List of probability topics by hand.

One can update that list on the talk page on demand, by clicking on a link. I also put there an editable list of categories to be searched for probability articles.

Anyway, wonder if you can take a look there and let me know what you think. This approach is not fully automatic, but I could extend it to every single math list we have in here, as long as a human would be willing to do part of the work. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:51, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

math vandal

User 161.184.8.128 has recently vandalized several math pages. I dont know how to sort this out, but I guess you do. R.e.b. 16:23, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

And it's almost surely to their credit...

I removed "almost surely" because it added an uncertainty that doesn't exist: an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters *will* begin to produce every work *possible* immediately. Finding Hamlet among the infinite array of monkeys, though -- that would be a little trickier... :) -- Seth Ilys 15:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't familiar with the usage, and I deal with statistics a fair amount. I think that, for the untrained reader, the first impression will be that "almost surely" means "with probability slightly less than 1" - that's what I thought it meant. Re-including it and linking to the almost surely article, though, would be fine. -- Seth Ilys 19:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Mathematics list of lists

Hi Michael - I notice that there is an article List of probability distributions which apparently duplicates the list in probability distribution. I have added a number of probability distributions to the latter, but I was not aware of the former. Do you have an objection to removing the duplicate list in probability distribution and replacing it with a link to the list? PAR 22:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Please vote on list of lists

Hi Michael. I realised it was a featured list candidate, so I won't be changing my vote. I believe that it is a very useful page, and perhaps is worth featuring somehow. But, I think it doesn't really fit into what the featured lists seem to be -- lists for reference purposes where the information is there on the page, rather than lists of links to other articles. I would not say that this list of lists could never become suitable to be a featured list, but I don't think it really fits at this point in time. Cheers, Ben Cairns 12:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello Michael. I wrongly put my vote (mild support with some precautions) in the discussion section instead in the voting section where it should have been. The remarks I left there are meant as a suggestion to improve the overall structure of the list (and not as an argument against the featured list). Concerning the comments made there: As I have now seen the "List of wave topics" does not yet have an entry "Maxwells' equation". On the other hand "Maxwell's equation" appears in the "List of partial differential equations" (under Named equations) and the rather large "List of equations". This means that the topic "Maxwell's equations" is not really covered by the existing set of lists inside "Mathematical physics" (whose coverage seems too narrow). One could add a "List of fundamental equations in mathematical physics" there where Maxwell' equation would fit well together with other equations (Einstein-, Schrödinger, maybe Navier-Stokes) from Mathematical physics. At least in this section the "List of list of mathematical topics" does not seem to be in the desired "stable (featured) state". --212.18.24.11 16:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Quantum indeterminacy

Please see and comment on Talk:Quantum indeterminacy#Dispute status of this article. Thanks --CSTAR 18:08, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1

As regards 68.238.97.2 and his comments at this page, I am absolutely convinced you are wasting your time by trying to convince them that something they won't believe is true. Mathematical discussion of this topic is fruitless when one side of the argument feels free to impose unique limitations on basic definitions of mathematical constructs.

Just a thought. Mallocks 14:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

link to scale

At scale space you created one or more links to scale. Since scale is (as you would of course expect) a disambiguation page, it would be better to link to one of the articles listed on that page. Michael Hardy 23:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint. I changed the links so they point now to more appropriate articles. Ben ^T/_C 00:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Michael, just a note to tip you the wink. At present this nomination is in the balance. However, Bjcairns, Stevenj and OpenToppedBus, for example, have all made points that could be looked at. If you could deal with some of these, it will be much easier to promote the list. Kind regards, jguk 12:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Two things

I'd be interested in a Maths Wikireader! What's the chance of getting one of these off the ground? The second thing is... I just don't get present value... could you explain this to me? Cheers Michael :-) BTW, I really like your list of list of math topics. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:23, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Henry the Navigator

An article that you've edited before (Henry the Navigator) is nominated for Biography Collaboration of the Week. If you want go there and vote. Thanks. Gameiro 20:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Cloveius' comments on FLC

Hi Michael. I think you are overreacting on Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. It seems to me that all Cloveius did is to move his comments to a more logical place (the timestamp wasn't changed). Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Central limit theorem

In central limit theorem, I think "Let X_n be a sequence of independent random variables defined on the same probability space (and not necessarily independent)" is unclear. --Henrygb 21:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Haste makes waste -- for some reason I thought it was one of those variants with weaker assumptions than independence. I've reverted. Michael Hardy 21:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Eyes requested

In the recent past you have laid hands on "Proof that 0.999... equals 1". By one of my typically wandering paths of browsing through Wikipedia, I came across the page, read it, and gagged. (Comments on the talk page.) Then I boldly rewrote the whole text to make any handwaving either explicit or more tolerably subtle, and to better serve the likely audience. I left the external references alone, though I don't much like any of them. Peer review can be a Good Thing, and I'd appreciate it if you'd have a look. I know it's not as sexy a topic as, say, de Rham cohomology or Calabi-Yau manifold, but the general public deserves an honest treatment of fundamentals, and it seems like the sort of thing that might fall within your interests. --KSmrq^T 07:10, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

In case I was unclear: I'm not attacking your edits, or those of anyone else. (Frankly, once I began I was dismayed at how much time and care it took to do a decent job on such a basic topic.) Rather, I'm hoping that because of your previous interest (you touched it) and expertise you'll have a look. Thanks. —KSmrq^T 19:50, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello. I've done a couple of minor edits a few minutes ago; I'll look at it further later. Michael Hardy 19:56, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Punctuation

Are you sure? OK, I'm only 49, but back in the 1920s Fowler criticised the use of the stop in abbreviations such as "Mrs.", and I've certainly seen "Mr", "Dr", "Mrs", etc., in books from the late nointeenth century. My understanding was that use of stops was somewhat haphazard until the last couple of centuries, gradually settling down into the current standards. I'm no expert on the history of punctuation, though, so any sources you can offer would be gratefully received and read with interest. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 20:36, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, on alt.usage.english, someone posted that when he was in school in England in 1940, he was taught to write "Mrs. Jones" and "Dr. Jones" and so on, rather than "Mrs Jones" and "Dr Jones" which are now standard in England. And spelling and punctuation seem to have changed more in England in the last 80 years or so than in America; my impression is that "baptise" is now standard in England whereas 100 years ago "baptize" was often (maybe always?) used. Michael Hardy 20:43, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

"Baptize" is more etymologically faithful; I suspect that's why Noah Webster preferred it and his preferences are what became American conventions. Michael Hardy 20:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Even in the 1940s there were some odd teachers around... With regard to "-ize" and -"ise", though, U.K. English has generally gone for one of two approaches (sometimes an uncomfortable combination): either use the former for verbs with the Greek root "-izein" and the latter for those without, or treat them all as reaching English through French, and making them all "-ise". "Baptize" and "baptise" are both OK, though modern U.K. usage is drifting towards always using "-ise". I've no problems with U.S. usage in cases like "baptize", but I find "analyze" and the like positively painful. (I wish that more people followed the style tip on your User page, incidentally.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Punctuation 2

Mr. Hardy! Thank you so much for correcting my capitalization. There is no substitute for a good editor. From now on I will use External links and Extent and duration and in general only capitalize the first word of a title. I will also correct any I see done wrong. Good day to you.Dave 01:59, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Postural Integration

Hello Michael, re your rerouting our trade mark registered method to "integration" I accept your intentions were good, but it is like saying that the airline British Airways must be written British airways or Aer Lingus written Aer lingus just for grammatical correctness sake.

Please accept our recorrecting our organisation's method.
Greetings. Osioni 12:33, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Blue screen of death/Red screen of death

Hello. The merge of articles is disputed. I much appreciate your opnion, thanks. --Mateusc 02:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Infrared vandalism

Hi Michael - keep your eye on infrared -- it was vandalized by User:219.88.100.31... I discovered this while following his trail. Best regards Bryan 04:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Punctuation as a hobby

>>Simiarly, in the link to golden ratio, the initial "g" should not be capitalized in the middle of a sentence; "Golden" is not a person after whom the ratio is named. Michael Hardy 19:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

And just to think, all this time I thought it was named after the home of Coors Beer (Golden, Colorado). --AustinKnight 19:54, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the "B" in "Beer" should not be capitalized, since the official name of the product is "Coors". PAR 22:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm convinced...but tell that to Wikipedia: Beer --AustinKnight 22:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

But one can also write beer with a lower-case initial. The first letter of a link (unlike the later letters) is case-insensitive. Michael Hardy 22:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

beer with a lower-case intial? Come on Michael, this is not water, or orange juice, or if you wish hot chocolate. It is Beer, for Bacchus' sake! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:04, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

As am I. But I thank you for your edits, Michael. I stand corrected. --AustinKnight 22:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Papacy

The Pope as you may know is Bishop of Rome. The conclave (i.e. cardinal-electors) would have to grant dispensation from the rule of celibacy in the case of electing a married man, because it will be required of this layman that he accept ordination (the sacrament of Holy Orders) as deacon, priest, and bishop. The rule of celibacy was created by the Church and therefore it can be dispensed from in the case of an individual, a class of persons, or in entirety.

The rules that person be male, baptized, and profess the faith could not be dispensed from as the Church holds that these rules have divine authorship. patsw 21:11, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually the claim that a person's gender is non-dispensable is disputed by many theologians and religious experts including many at senior level in the Church privately. Baptism and a profession of state is however unabiguously mandatory. The methodology of both however has evolved within the Church over millennia. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 22:38, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I've Tons

I've tons of pics of the "University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus." You an alumus, or -i?--Gephart 03:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

United States federal judge

If Federal judge (United States) is how people are likely to search, it can be accomplished with a redirect, yes? Cheers! BDAbramson T 00:15, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

• Well, it is kind of like a title... BDAbramson T 01:48, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales

Would you be interested in joining my proposed WikiProject, WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales? —Keenan Pepper 18:43, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I really don't know the topic, so if I look at those pages, it would be to learn something about it. (Of course, that doesn't mean I would not edit such pages.) Michael Hardy 23:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Objectivism

I liked very much your changes. I wonder if you'd like "advocacy" though, instead of "advocation" - a rare word. Also I am not sure what "along with her allegedly cult-like actions and other sources" means - perhaps we should change "sources" to "oddities." Also no one notices or objects to the "philosophy"'s depending on absolute causality, while we know there's QM uncertainty and also chaos in many classical systems. I am dueling in the area of intelligent design, and would prefer not to generate changes that almost overlap with yours in "Objectivism". So for now I leave it to you. Carrionluggage 05:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Smallville Opinion

Hi Michael, thanx for the advice, I'll try to correct the pages anyway, can I have your opinion about that deletion mark that was on Smallville opening credits history? please tell me that Extraordinary Machine girl is crazy The OC article also has a history of opening credits...

Smallville Opinion

Hi Michael, thanx for the advice, I'll try to correct the pages anyway, can I have your opinion about that deletion mark that was on Opening credits history of Smallville? please tell me that Extraordinary Machine girl is crazy please add anythin you can do to support me in this cause to that article's discussion The OC article also has a history of opening credits...

--Charlie144 07:14, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Proof of additative property og Normal distributions

I've started the sum of normal distributions article. Could you please assist me in my attemt to prove that the sum of independent Gaussian distributions also i Gaussian? Thanks in advance. --Fredrik Orderud 20:00, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation notice in constructivism (mathematics)

Normally an unambiguous article name, such as Constructivism (mathematics), should not need to be disambiguated. You are overreacting about such a notice being crucial for this article, as two anonymous editors contributing two learning theory-related edits over a span of eight months is barely significant. Especially considering one of those two edits was made when the disambiguation notice was present, so it evidently isn't effective. In any case the current notice is clearer and more useful than the one I removed. Sorry for the trouble.—jiy (talk) 21:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not just that two anonymous editors have made that mistake; it's that one would expect that mistake; whereas mistaking this for the various other meanings of constructivism would not really be expected. Michael Hardy 20:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Noahide Laws in Category:Jewish Christian topics ?

There is a dispute over whether Noahide Laws should be included in this category, anyone with an opinion is asked to express it here: Talk:Noahide_Laws#Jewish_Christian_topics

disambig

Greetings. You fixed a couple of group links recently so they didn't go through disambiguation pages. (Thanks.) It made me wonder how many of these might be out there, and if there is a bot to flag them. No automatic bookkeeping can prevent them nor remove them, but some help spotting them would be nice. Do you know of anything, or should we tempt Oleg? --KSmrq^T 20:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Somewhere there is a page that lists links to disambiguation pages. I'll see if I can find it. Michael Hardy 20:33, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The "What links here" feature will give you that from any page. Here it is for group. For the list of all disambiguation page with links, see WP:DPL. Lots of people are working on this issue and there's so much to do there's always room for more. Tedernst | talk 00:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for these tips. I was also hoping for two automatic checks: one, when an edit is made, to notify of a link to a disambig page (if that can be detected automatically); the other, when a page is converted to a disambig page, to notify of any existing links to it that need fixing. Am I overly optimistic? --KSmrq^T 01:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Astrogation

Thanks for your message on Astrogation.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so articles that appear to be dictionary entries (one- or two-line articles) are not generally eligible to be on the site. If you are knowledgable about the subject of Astrogation, might I suggest that you add to it and remove the dicdef tag? Stifle 20:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

As I said, even in its currect stubby state, it contains more information than would be appropriate in a dictionary definition. Moreover, you are wrong to think that an article that is only a dictionary definition should be labeled as something to be moved to Wiktionary, when it blatantly obviously has the potential to become a long factual encyclopedia article, as in the present case. Michael Hardy 20:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry that we disagree. I don't see it the way you do, but I do think that even two more sentences on the topic would settle the issue. Do you think you could add those two sentences? Stifle 20:53, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Done. --KSmrq^T 22:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Proof that 0.999... equals 1

My guess is that our anonymous visitor is a student, possibly in high school or early undergrad, probably male, who has had lots of sets thrown at him but never wondered how many more fanciful ones he could create himself. I suspect that he labors under the impression that the real numbers are somehow the maximal ordered extension of the rationals. Possibly someone has told him that the reals "fill in all the gaps", and that there is no more room to do so. Of course, this is nonsense, since you can take any ordered set X and insert at least a bunch of successors by taking the order product of X with 2. This construction would appear in the first week of an undergraduate class on order theory, if there were such a thing. A wonder what you think about that, as an educator: a class not on set theory, not on topology, but on less-than?

Anyway, I think if he can be made to understand that his vision of the real numbers makes no sense, and our definition does, he might accept our definition. Melchoir 00:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

On second thought, maybe not the first week. Melchoir 00:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been watching that page; I don't think the anon is seriously interested in contributing to Wikipedia. Anon has made no real attempt to state and defend any definitions or claims. Frankly, I'm dumbfounded that so many different people have tried to reason with someone who shows no interest in reason. Your attempt, Melchoir, stands out as a best effort against a sea of handwaving. But I think anyone who responds is being played for a fool. Any sequence of steps that culminates in the theorem purportedly being discussed (ha!) will be rejected. --KSmrq^T 00:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that anon does not intend to contribute to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a poor forum for the current discussion (ha!); conversely, the current discussion is definitely inappropriate for an article's talk page, since it is not concerned with improving the article, and I must apologize for propagating that. I have somewhat selfish reasons. As soon as it all ends (one way or another) I intend to archive it and leave the talk page all but blank. However, in the archive I think it might serve a purpose for Wikipedia. At the very least, it will be a warning of some sort to future generations. By highlighting common misconceptions about the real numbers, it might even help us write better articles. Melchoir 01:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Correlation

Hi Michael. I replied at talk:discrete random variable. But now I want to ask about something else. Can you please look at Talk:Correlation and the the diff of this revert? Somebody claims in there that a random variable cannot be correlated to another random variable. I think that this is obviously wrong, but you are the expert in that kind of stuff. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The material that got wiped out by the reversion was nonsense; the person who reverted was right to do so. Michael Hardy 02:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

List of house types

On the talk page, I've made a comment about your merger suggestion. If you would like to reply when you get time, I'd appreciate it. If not, I'll remove the tag in a week or so if there aren't any more comments. --W.marsh 01:02, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Merger

Thanks for merging Method of differences with Telescoping series. I feel very guilty about putting the merge tag up, as I always hate it when people just slap a tag on an article while they can do the work themselves, but it is good to see that somebody has taken care of it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:03, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Cookies vs medical test example in Bayes' theorem

Hello. You have edited Bayes' theorem in the past. There is at present an edit conflict in Bayes' theorem concerning examples. Shall we have an example about cookies or an example about a medical test? I wonder if you care to weigh in on this question. If not, no problem. Please respond, if you choose to do so, at talk:Bayes' theorem. Regards, Wile E. Heresiarch 18:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Laplace transform

Why did you remove the references to physics and engineering from the first line of Laplace transform? -- Metacomet 04:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Stats question

You're good at stats, right? Inquiring minds need you help at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics#Statistics_Question linas 17:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

If you give the right answer, Linas will pay you money. The amount will be random, but guaranteed to have mean 1$ and dispersion $0.02. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

an unfortunate edit

You will see in my talk (the section above your edit) that this was already brought to my attention. I can see that linking to continuous probability distribution is a better choice, but (and my reasoning for my edit) is that the continuous probability distribution is a continuous function. I have created a talk section about this at Talk:Continuity to avoid mistakes like this in the future. I think you will agreee that the final outcome is a better wikilink in the article = a better Wikipedia. I have no idea what "knee-jerk" meant in your comment. Who's knee was jerking?--Commander Keane 20:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Question about Riesz–Fischer theorem

Recently, an anonymous user changed "converges uniformly" to just plain "converges" on Riesz–Fischer theorem [1]. I think that it should be uniformly continuous, but I don't have my reference text with me. Do you know which is correct? Thanks. NatusRoma 04:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Was watching; thought I might be able to help. See Talk:Riesz–Fischer theorem. --KSmrq^T 07:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The anonymous editor is right; "converges uniformly" is completely wrong in this case. And the anonymous editor did NOT change "converges uniformly" to just plain "converges". Rather, he or she changed it to "converges in L², which is different not only from uniform convergence, but also from pointwise convergence and from almost-everywhere convergence. Michael Hardy 19:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Telescoping series

Just a quick question: if I wanted to reword method of differences into the verb of telescoping series, would it be called telescoping? I would like to know before I attempt to rewrite the article slightly. Thanks in advance. x42bn6 Talk 13:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

reword method of differences into the verb of telescoping series

I have no idea what that means. Michael Hardy 19:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Because the article title is Telescoping series, should I use a verb version of it in the article (i.e. telescoping), rather than a term related to method of differences (i.e. differencing)? x42bn6 Talk 03:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I think I see what you mean. Certainly telescope is used as a verb in this context. One may say, "This sum can be evaluated quickly because it telescopes", or the like. Michael Hardy 19:34, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I will be rewriting the article at User:x42bn6/Working On/Telescoping series, by the way. x42bn6 Talk 02:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Your renaming suggestion

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Proposed renaming and vote. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Seigenthaler contact information

Unfortunately, I do not have an email address for Mr. Seigenthaler. The only contact I have had from him, as far as I can recall, was by telephone in early October, and then of course we appeared in a couple of interviews together during the height of media interest in his story. --Jimbo Wales 12:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

stacked fractions in superscripts

please see my comment and Steve's question --Bob K 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

John Seigenthaler's email

I noticed (on Jimbo's talk page) that you were looking for Siegenthaler's email address. I was looking for it too (I wanted to give him a piece of my mind). I couldn't find it, but I did find the email address for his project, the First Amendment Center. I wrote my message to the following address: bbuchanan@freedomforum.org This is the address of the Managing Editor of the Center. I must tell you, I received a very rude response to my reasonably polite email. --Mb1000 01:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, after reading this comment from you, I wrote to the very same email address, and got this reply:

Thanks for your message. Forwarding to John Seigenthaler's office.

Michael Hardy 01:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Seigenthaler's Email

No, unfortunatly. It was by the managing editor. But at least I got it off my chest! --Mb1000 01:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Euler

The section on Euler's proof mentions at the end that the "equation" seems odd to modern eyes, et cetera. I've seen this kind of statement in regards to Euler and other less rigorous mathematicians before, and it always annoys me. The meaning of the "equation" is perfectly evident to me; of course we'll never know for sure exactly what he meant, but how could he have meant anything other than our modern day, rigorous equivalent? The article then says that the proof can be slightly altered to conform to modern standards of rigor. Wouldn't that just amount to replacing all the infinites with Xs and taking the limit as X approaches infinity? This is almost the only useful interpretation of the infinity symbol, and the presence of the unqualified symbol naturally suggests replacing it with a limit. Why are proofs like this considered so drastically different than our modern ones? --Monguin61 22:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't that just amount to replacing all the infinites with Xs and taking the limit as X approaches infinity?

Not in this, involving "ln(ln(+∞))". The limit would merely be ∞, but what the paragraph says Euler almost certainly meant is something other than that.

This is almost the only useful interpretation of the infinity symbol

That is nonsense. There are many interpretations that are useful. You've just mentioned one of them, and what the article says Euler almost certainly meant is another one.

Why are proofs like this considered so drastically different than our modern ones?

Did you sleep through the whole 19th century? Notice, for example, the reasons why we distingish between pointwise convergence and uniform convergence, etc. Michael Hardy 00:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I wanted to move this off the discussion page for the article, it never belonged there in the first place, but I'd like to continue the discussion. I'm not trying to troll, this is something I've been curious about for a while, and I'd like to gain some insight. First of all, you're right, the "ln(ln(+∞))" is a different use of the infinity symbol, but our modern rigor would replace that with asymptotic notation, wouldn't it? Does that really count as a current use of the infinity symbol? Also, the line containing the ln(ln(+∞)) doesn't seem to be a part of the progression of steps that make up the proof, but just an additional observation made after the fact. So what I'm wondering is, when his proof is altered to conform to modern standards (ignoring that last statement, for the time being), what needs to be done to it, other than replacing those infinities with limits? As for the pointwise/uniform convergence, maybe I'm up too late, but I'm not seeing how that relates to this particular proof. --Monguin61 08:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Numbers not numerals...

Please describe your edit to List of numbers. Georgia guy 00:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd describe them as;

• orthography (punctuation and capitalization), a minor edit;
• conforming to the style manual in section headings, a minor edit;
• bypassing a redirect page, a minor edit;
• clarifying that this is not about numerals, not a minor edit. Some confusion about this was suggested by the fact that someone had posted an absurd merger proposal at English-language numerals.

Michael Hardy 00:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales article...

... you removed both your own comment and my own. Could I ask why? - Ta bu shi da yu 03:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry -- I had no idea I was deleting anything but my own comments. I deleted those because I realized that that page is not where I should have put them; I then pasted them at User talk:Jimbo Wales. Michael Hardy 03:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I thought it was something like that :) - Ta bu shi da yu 03:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Derivative edit

Please explain why your edit to Derivative (which I reverted) makes sense. I thought a template is a simplified version. Georgia guy 23:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The "alternateuses" and "otheruses" templates are horribly obnoxious because they are (as I said in the edit summary) strictly one-size-fits-all. They forbid the user to choose judiciously between capital and lower-case in the name of the disambiguation page to which they link or to rephrase in a way that best suits the subject matter. "Uses" is not a good word to use for this purpose. The context of the article--in this case, derivatives, as that term is understood in calculus--could cause a reasonable reader to think it means other uses of the thing the article is about, i.e., in this case, other uses of derivatives, rather than other senses of the same word. A template is indeed a simplified version, and simpler is better when the simpler version is equivalent to the the more complicated one, but in this case they are obviously not equivalent. And I think that's actually true of most cases, with this particular template. Michael Hardy 00:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyone can edit

Or any registered user can edit Briaboru 00:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)BriaboruBriaboru 00:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not true. Only a registered user can create a NEW article (under new rules), but non-registered users are still editing existing articles. Michael Hardy 00:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Wait ... for some reason I thought I'd seen the word "only". Yes, it's true that any registered user can edit; it's also true that anonymous users can edit. Michael Hardy 22:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Michael. Thank you for this edit at List of mathematics articles (A-C). I had totally forgotten about doing the replacements in there after I did the move. Fixed now everywhere. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Howdy, Thanks for your correction in Rankit, well spotted. --Hansnesse 01:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Otheruses hatnote templates

It seems that hatnotes like the {{otheruses}} should not be subst'd (or otherwise changed to text) to keep uniformity of appearance. If you need to change the text, you should probably use {{dablink}} so at least the formatting is preserved. --AySz88^-^ 00:04, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I read this in a hurry, and misread it as "hatenote template". Gosh, I thought. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:01, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

thoughts on multiple comparisons/testing

Hello Michael Hardy, as you know there is some uncertainty about the distinction between the terms multiple testing and multiple comparisons [2]. I thought you might know of some other mathematics or statistics contributors who could weigh in with their opinions on the matter. Thanks Debivort 05:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Chaux

Why did you remove the merge template? --Dystopos 04:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't. What makes you think I did? Michael Hardy 23:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

This. --Dystopos 05:35, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

If I'd suspected you meant that merge template, I would have explained that I removed it because the page it proposed to merge with that one already redirected to it. Michael Hardy 22:26, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Golden spiral

I'm clueless about math, but if the golden spiral is not the same as the golden ratio, then it should not redirect to golden ratio. --Anittas 00:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. If there's an account of the golden spiral in the article on the golden ratio and there's no article on the golden spiral, then the redirect is appropriate. That is really quite commonplace. Michael Hardy 02:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Hanging sentences, votes, and apostrophes: a lethal combination

Hi, Michael; thank you for scouring my user page. I was aware that I had left that sentence hanging; sadly, I have the tendancy to, oftentimes, stop thinking of words in the middle of a monologue; a sort of super-linguistic music takes their place. Such was the reason why I paused my writing of my criticism of pornography; dozens of ideas entered my mind, and my words chimed together, to make a sort of campanic drone. I have written something there as a stopgap, although it expresses my glut of ideals badly.

When it comes to Wikipedia, I would define unilateralism as unreasonably acting on personal vindiction, when consensus-led discussion is what is desirable. An example of such a thing was the frankly logic-defying and sophmorically-justified deletion of people's self-identifying userboxes. Unilateralism is vigilante justice, where people do not get to voice opposition because someone higher up on this supposedly egalitarian realm felt it justified. (Naturally, it is fine to delete vandalism on sight, for the sake of this encyclopædia. Not many of us can argue against that. But, sadly, it seems that the goalposts of what constitutes sabotage have been moved wide and far, on the back of personal whimsies and half-baked ideals. For the main part, I liked your fellow; I thought that he was suave but rational when it came to the presentation of much of his case. On top of this, I have enjoyed leisurely reading his mathematical contributions to the encyclopædia, as sad as that may sound. (I am of the Erdös school of thought when it comes to the beauty of math.) However, there are, at the minute, far too many lacunæ in his appeal for me to support it. Although I have voted against those who do not have a considerable enough track record to compare their ideals with, experience should not make people beyond reproach. I found curious that, in his responses, M. Matthews both rejected centralism and communitarianism, but did not propose any intemediary between the two. The opposite of group review, naturally, is individual review. Also, M. Matthews essentially agreed with the broad and rather dangerous concept of 'Ignore All Rules;' he said that it was all well and good for one to 'stick [one's] neck out,' which is rather vague, giving little idea as to how unilateral he thinks is acceptable.

Do not mistake me, though; this was not my primary reason for posing opposition. I think that, if we can say that Wikipedia has any pretence of equality, there have to be checks and balances on those who, in quite a sense, 'rule;' otherwise, we are doing nothing but building a stagnant elected dictatorship. I also disliked the harsh deflection of a reasonable question; to me, how Charles reacted to that user was assuming bad faith, an ad hominem attack, and I don't believe in what appeared to be demeaning a fellow Wikipedian rather than discussing their concerns. I agree with his decision to keep stumm over his own ideologies; that is his own darnèd business. However, his opinion on checks and balances on arbiters is severely relevant. I don't appreciate ochlocracy; I cannot support slamming people down as a way to win an argument.

Now, onto more pleasurable things: amateur linguistics and the word, one's, and why that is grammatically correct, whereas 'it's' as a genitive is not. In a perfect world, perhaps we would all be speaking a totally analytical language with no quirks whatsoever. But, we have English, the hotel bedsheet that bears the musks and stains of those who have slept on it; and 'one's', like so many other bizarre counter-rules in English, can be blamed on French, which is not as illogical as mooted, but does pass off some weirdnesses as rules. You probably know many of the composites of this explanation, but I am a completist: in Anglo-Saxon, the word 'man' referred not only to a human being, but it served as the indefinite subject pronoun, a space, (sadly, in my own opinion,) you takes up to-day. (Those who say that words such as mankind are sexist should go learn something.) The use of 'man' as 'human' and as an indefinite lasted long into Middle English: if you look at Chaucer, where we would use one and no one, man and no man are used every time that I can recall it. For example, (excuse me if I misquote:)

The millere[...] nolde avalen neither hood ne hat, Ne abyde no man for his courtesy.

The genitive of man, since it is a defective pronoun and is actually a noun, is 'man's'. (The gen. in those days would have been mannes.) After Guillaume le Bâtard took the throne, French influence onto English increased considerably, and 'man' started to be replaced by 'on,' the corresponding French indefinite subject pronoun that was a clipping of the word 'homme'. 'On' soon enough became 'one.' So, when we say one's, we are still saying man's. The genitive is correct because, although we don't realise it, we're referring to a noun employed as a pronoun, not as a pure pronoun. Conversely, 'it' is rarely a noun, and follows pronoun apostrophe rules.

I apologise if my ruminations are the mental equivalent of asphyxiation. The combination of a hermit-like existence and my reddish temperament often make me 'get into' discussions like this, to use a horrible phrasal verb, with considerable animation. --It's-is-not-a-genitive 00:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

OK ... it becomes clear that there was some particular exchange of views in which you and Charles Matthews participated and you found his behavior objectionable. And it's probably impossible to say who's right or wrong without looking at that. Is that on some Wikipedia discussion page? If so, which one?

"Equality" can mean any of various things, which I'm not prepared to enumerate just now. Which of those, if any, Wikipedia purports to be, I don't know. I don't actually recall ever having heard that "equality" is one of Wikipedia's claims to virtue.

On this other matter, I didn't mean to suggest that there's anything wrong with saying "one's" should have an apostrophe (and so should "anyones's" and "someone's" and "everyone's" and "no one's") and "its" should not, but rather that it is an exaggeration to say possesive pronouns in English never have apostrophes.

BTW, some people object to calling the possessive in English a genitive, since we don't say, for example "John's and Mary's house", but "John and Mary's house". Notice also that "the blacksmith's shop" can mean "the shop of the blacksmith" or "the shop of a blacksmith" or "a shop of the blacksmith" or "a shop of a blacksmith", so we can't include a genitive "the" as part of the noun phrase with a possessive form of a noun (as is done in Greek, I think). So maybe that could also be a reason to consider the English possessive not to be a true genitive. Michael Hardy 02:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about the longer-than-usual delay in responding. I needed some time in the hills to deal with something in my 'real' life that was angering me. You make some good points about the possessive: my use of 'genitive' was general, but also, I have never, in quite some years of language learning, heard anyone English describing 's as not being the genitive, strangely. Also, I had stated that the no 's rule did not apply to one. I said: when there is a genitive pronoun which relates to a specific person or thing, there is Never an 's: one does not relate to a specific person or thing, as it has all but lost the connotation of 'they and I.'

A userbox is one of these:

¡Socorro!This userbox is officially lost.

It is a small way of expressing a personal belief or characteristic, such as 'I am Jewish', or 'I am for gay rights'. However, a few admins have wasps in the rectum and tried to remove these, without discussion, later citing 'NPOV'. They are on user-pages. Anyone who looks for a neutral point of view on a user page is as stupid as someone looking for a hedgehog in a kumquat. (And if NPOV is suddenly necessary on user pages, who's going to moderate all the comments that they contain? -- agh, hypocrisy tries!)

Í never said that equality were ever paraded around as one of the tenets of Wikipedia. By its nature, though, Wikipedia is egalitarian: a common font of knowledge to which anyone can add. I firmly believe that standards must be maintained, and vandalism quickly dealt with; however, admins should be there to serve the general volition; otherwise, we get ridiculously hierarchical and overly bureaucratic, with certain administrators acting unilaterally on petty personal things that have little to do with the encyclopædia or its original spirit.

There was no exchange between us; indeed, every exchange that I can remember with him, either under this name, before that, or in my IP contribution days, has been amiable and informed. I hold it as a personal policy to not slate anyone who has been personally against me in some respect, when I think that, otherwise, they would do a decent job. I respect Charles Matthews as a contributor, and, to the best of my knowledge, he seems like a nice fellow. A good administrator? Probably. However, my idea of a mediator is someone who will look at a situation carefully, in an unbiased fashion. The way that he automatically condemned a well-meaning user as a 'troll' rather worried me. It might have just been a slip, but I dislike the idea of trial by instinct. I would have liked to support him, certes. But I dissented due to considered evaluation. There is no right or wrong to that. Iinag 03:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

pythagorean theorem

thanks for deleting my work and illustration. you said it was the same as the other proof. as a graduate in mathematics, i studied the other proof. while it was similar, i thought my presentation was much easier to follow (especially for a young reader). the labeling of the outside of the square with 'a' and 'b', for me was a revelation in simplicity. can you please tell me if there is a place i can place my illustration and explanation without you deleting it and calling it silly?

I never called your illustration silly. I deleted it only because essentially the same illustration was already there in the article. What I called "silly" was the assertion about the mathematical formula for the area of a square. I moved your material to a different and earlier part of the article and attributed it to you in my edit summary. Have you looked at the version of it that is now there? Michael Hardy 23:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Formula (disambiguation)

I have removed your {{attention}} tag from Formula (disambiguation), since that tag is for articles, not disambiguation pages. Considering Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), tell me what needs to be done to this dab page.--Commander Keane 00:21, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I've done some work on it. The different meanings of the word "formula" are related, and the page should make that clear.

Cleanup on my edits

I appreciate the fixes you made on some of recent articles I have edited. I have been concentrating on text and not paying enough attention to the section headers. Hope to talk to you again soon. :) -- SusanLarson ^{(User Talk, New talk, Contribs)} 00:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

Could you assist at Talk:Supermatrix? Charles Matthews 07:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if you followed the discussion on the talk page at all, but User:Cruise wrote much of article and then deleted it after accusing me of wanting to take over the page (I went ahead and restored the material). It is true that I want to write an article on supermatrices as used in super linear algebra (see supervector space, supertrace, and superdeterminant). However if the material that is presently on the page is useful then it should be preserved. I suggested that some of the material could be merged in with block matrix as there is considerable overlap, but I don't know what to do about the statistics material. You seem to know some statistics. Do you have any suggestions? Is the statistics material worthy of its own article? Should it be merged in somewhere else? -- Fropuff 18:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Format standardization

Thanks for standardizing headers on all those biographies I started! Jokestress 00:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Radio controlled => radio-controlled

Does it need that hyphen? I never thought it did! --Phatmonkey 13:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The traditional way of using hyphens is hardly taught anymore, it seems, although newspapers, magazines, and most publishing companies still adhere to it. But I think it should be kept for reasons I may expand on further here at some point. In the mean time, please see hyphen. Michael Hardy 19:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Oops

The best I can say is that I was in a hurry at the time, and thus didn't track down every page that linked to the one I deleted. Sorry. DS 22:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Three cards revisions

Did you intended to change $P$ to $Pr$. If so, it needs to be done in the entire article. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I missed one (and it's $\Pr$, not $Pr$). Michael Hardy 00:02, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Insert smiley here. Is $\Pr$ a Wikipedia standard? Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not actually sure, but I think it's become more frequent lately, and I find certain advantages in that usage. Michael Hardy 01:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Contemporary philosophers

Please vote here. — goethean ॐ 22:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

"lens" on Uses of trigonometry

I removed the link to Lens because that is a disambiguation page. I did find a new place to link to, though: Sunglasses#Lens.--Srleffler 05:00, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

This is an automated message

The Edit Summary edit summary usage for user:Michael Hardy is 26% for major edits and 31% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and 150 minor edits in the article, category, and template namespace. Standard deviation is .02. Mathbot 05:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics

In deference to civility I am biting my tongue in my response here; "brain researchers who write things like this have at best a very childish understanding of what mathematics is, and what you wrote on that page tends to confirm my suspicion". Do you have any idea how arrogant and uninformed this sounds; in the future, meta:Don't be a dick? Here is what "brain researchers" do; some of it requires an understanding of, like, numbers and stuff:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16430966&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15006095&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15483139&query_hl=12&itool=pubmed_docsum

I'll respond to your actual point on the talk page. Semiconscious • talk 23:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The article in the form in which you you wrote it does encourage the impression that the conclusion is bassed on a very simple-minded notion of what mathematics is. Why don't you change that, if the impression is wrong? That they use sophisticated mathematics in some cases doesn't change that impression. And every popular account I've seen encourages the same impression. Michael Hardy 23:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

See my comments on the talk page. For clarification, I'm not in any way upset, you just... came across less well than you could have and your comment sounded very disrespectful and pedantic. Hopefully my comments on the talk page and my changes to the article strike a nice balance between your position and cited sources. I meant no ill will. Semiconscious • talk 00:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

• Mr. Hardy: I can ensure you I understand the words you are communicating. My point is that when you say something such as, "It is not easy to define 'mathematics', and any definition would be subject to endless debate among informed people" immediately followed by, "what actual mathematicians and other actual humans actually do, when doing things that everyone would agree is mathematics, is mostly not algorithmic processing" is contradictory. You cannot state that "mathematics" is not easy to define followed by making an argument for what "everyone would agree is mathematics" to support your view. You are manipulating definitions to fit each of your arguments and are making contradictory statements. You made a good point by highlighting potential discrepancies in my language use. Because this is such a silly issue I decided to avoid it all together in the article itself by rewording the statement based upon the Science article. Semiconscious • talk 02:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

You're mistaken. There are certainly many things that everyone would agree is mathematics. But what is the right definition of "mathematics" is something on which there is not general agreement. Michael Hardy 03:04, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

obnoxious?

Obnoxious "otheruses" template deleted.

Why?

Because it's a one-size-fits-all straightjacket. The phrasing cannot be adapted to the article. In particluar, it refuses even to let the user choose judiciously between a capital and a lower-case initial letter in the name of the article being linked to. Michael Hardy 03:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Category for binomial topics

Hi, I'm thinking of creating a category for binomial topics, that would contain everything in the List of factorial and binomial topics. Any suggestions for a good name for that category? e.g Category:Binomials or Category:Factorials and binomials ?? linas 00:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I've never been a big fan of categories; to me they seem like a distinctly inferior alternative to topics lists. But maybe I'll address this at some point. Michael Hardy 03:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

It is easier to categorize things than to list them. Lists are top-down, while categories are bottom-up, and they work better.

Besides, categories allow a better level of refinement. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

"Allow a better level of refinement"?? That seems absurd. Lists are obviously more flexible. Michael Hardy 20:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Truce

Mr. Hardy: We've gotten off on the completely wrong foot, and it's put me ill at ease. I freely admit the stresses of real life have perhaps affected how I perceive online communication: with expression, intonation, and nonverbal communication removed I've forgotten to assume good faith and instead immediately adopted a defensive stance on an issue that truly isn't that important to me. With those excuses said, I'd like to apologize. I've not had much time for WP lately, and I'm going to have less in the near future; the thought of leaving this unsaid sits ill at ease with me. You're clearly a very intelligent person who is trying to prevent the propagation of poorly understood ideas. Cheers! Semiconscious • talk 01:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the intention to communicate; I'll try to write less hastily on this in the future. Michael Hardy 20:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Cantor's theorem proof

Could you comment this? TIA. CiaPan 21:30, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Affine

Hello. Please consider also adding your changes at Affine to Affine combination, Affine transformation, and Affine representation. Ewlyahoocom 06:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Correction on the article "Regression"

Thanks for the correction: I incorrectly thought that the Gauss-Markov assumptions included normality, but after checking I realize you are write. Sorry for the mistake, I'll correct the article.

Techncial d[sic]efinitions!

D'Oh! I always mess up doing that sort of thing. Unfortunately it's a habit. I'll try my best to do better next time, but often I just forget. --One Salient Oversight 01:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

otheruses

Hello. Thank you for your notice on my talk page. Sorry if you'd had a bad day. I wasn't aware of the template dablink, which I agree is a more appropriate one to have on the honey article. Now may I answer your accusations? I didn't place the otheruses template on the honey article. My edit to the otheruses template left it so that it would not say for other uses of honey, but for other uses of "Honey", and "honey" is not just used to describe sweet bee spit. I thought I was making an improvement to the template. Sorry you thought otherwise, but I don't think such a minor disagreement calls for dismissals of other contributors' efforts as "abominations", or imputations of barbarism. Good day to you. --RobertG ♬ talk 09:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I seem to recall that it was not your edit that I called an abomination, but rather it was the otheruses template in general. Michael Hardy 23:47, 9 February 2006 (UTC)