Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Emmy Noether FA review

It would be much appreciated if people could read the Emmy Noether article and check for statements that are unclear, under-cited, or otherwise unbecoming the encyclopedia project. XOR'easter (talk) 22:06, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

For those more knowledgeable with the subject matter than I am, the two sections that may need some more citations the most are the ones on ascending and descending chain conditions and algebraic invariant theory. Sgubaldo (talk) 23:29, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

My impression from working on the article previously was that everything discussed in it is addressed in the references already present (and for a math topic, having a clickly blue linky number for each sentence doesn't necessarily go further to satisfying WP:V than having one per subsection). But this would be a good opportunity to point readers at references that are particularly good. Anybody have favorite books about either of those? XOR'easter (talk) 18:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The section on algebraic invariant theory doesn't make enough contact with Noether's work in the area, which was eclipsed by that of Hilbert. Both the Rowe and Dick source describe her dissertation done under Gordan, which was devoted to symbolic computation of invariants, and in fact a later source of some embarrassment. The section would benefit by emphasizing this, and summarizing the sources better (and referring to them). Tito Omburo (talk) 19:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Care to tackle that? I could try, but I'm not sure when I'll have an uninterrupted block of time long enough. XOR'easter (talk) 21:00, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sgubaldo, @Tito Omburo, @XOR'easter. The discussion now is into FARC: one delist and one keep. I have found some of the unsourced sections after looking up at its content. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:55, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

As an update to this, there's now 13 citation needed tags left to take care of. 5 are specifically in the ascending and descending chain conditions section. Sgubaldo (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. XOR'easter (talk) 17:21, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The first epoch of algebraic invariant theory says "an example, if a rigid yardstick is rotated, the coordinates (x₁, y₁, z₁) and (x₂, y₂, z₂) of its endpoints change ...". How is this related to the article but does not explicitly says about that example? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:25, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Continued fraction

Please see Talk:Continued fraction where an editor is suggesting moving the article to a different title so that something else can be moved into its place, and contribute to the discussion there if you have an opinion. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Unwelcoming project

As a new user, I have found this project unwelcoming. I do not intend to contribute further to mathematics articles on Wikipedia again in the short term and I regret my contributions in good faith on the backlog of undergraduate calculus material. RowanElder (talk) 18:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@RowanElder Can you elaborate? From a skim I don't see that you were involved in any particularly heated disputes, edit wars, etc., though there was one (to me minor seeming) talk page miscommunication with another editor recently. It seems like your contributions have been accepted without issue. Is you concern a lack of positive affirmation? Not enough collaboration? I don't understand why you would regret contributing: did it seem like a waste of time? I'm sure readers benefit from improvements, even if they are unlikely to tell you so.

Most subjects in Wikipedia have relatively few active participants, and in mathematics in particular there are many (many) articles relative to the number of people keeping an eye on them, so articles tend to sit for long periods in a relatively stable state until someone takes an active interest in changing one whereupon there can be a flurry of activity. It's pretty common for even significant changes to be passively accepted without anyone commenting about it. (See Wikipedia:Expect no thanks.) It's also relatively common for changes to lead to disagreement, and the medium of pseudonymous public editing between strangers lends itself to misunderstandings, especially if participants argue assertively for their preferred version.

Anyway, this is an entirely volunteer project, and nobody can make you stay. Do what you need to do for yourself. All the best. –jacobolus (t) 19:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I do regret spent time -- not entirely wasted -- but more an uncertain probability that (a) I've created evidence for other future editors that this is not rewarding work for them to do and (b) empowered and probably encouraged apparently entrenched patterns of unwelcoming behavior, people who will feel "gratified that an interloper was run off" whether they would say so or not. I do not regret getting better information to readers. I'm not feeling forced to stay, thanks, and I am only saying this now because otherwise I would be ghosting the project. Ghosting seemed relatively more rude and more likely discouraging to continuing editors who do intend to be welcoming -- it would give them no idea why I chose not to continue to contribute, and thus no easy way to think about what to hope or plan differently for in the future.

Lack of positive affirmation and collaboration did matter to me, but not decisively. Respectful explanations of policies and patterns would have been much more important for welcoming. Assertive argument and respectful argument are two different things and I was not finding the arguments respectful. I had not been aware of Wikipedia:Expect no thanks, but I would say "while we should edit Wikipedia for the love of the project, not primarily with the hope of being thanked, a little more thanks would go a long way" from the "in a nutshell" is on the mark for me. I did try to be respectful and thankful in discussions, but this now seems to have been a mistake (a mistake specifically on the pages of this project, not in general). RowanElder (talk) 21:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

"created evidence for other future editors that this is not rewarding work" – this seems unlikely to me. Realistically, few editors, especially newcomers, read old talk page conversations. "gratified that an interloper was run off" – if you mean yourself as the "interloper", then this doesn't seem like a remotely accurate characterization of any of the people you have engaged with that I have seen (though most Wikipedians do want to "run off" obvious spammers or trolls – which you are not). "encouraged apparently entrenched patterns of unwelcoming behavior" – I think you are misunderstanding people's actions and making inaccurate assumptions about their goals and motivations, as well as exaggerating the impact a couple of conversations will have on editors who are routinely involved in more dramatic conflicts (like anyone who spends much time on Wikipedia). But consider that from an outsider's perspective your own actions (e.g. edit warring) are not obviously friendlier or less friendly than your interlocutors. Would you consider it fair to e.g. call you a "newcomer with an entrenched pattern of mischief-making" or some similar exaggerated mischaracterization? I assume not – at least it wouldn't seem fair to me. As far as I can tell, the folks on both sides of your (to my view quite mild) disagreement were acting in good faith, and this kind of conflict is usually relatively amicably resolved, though sometimes people end up frustrated or resentful (sometimes on both sides if a dispute gets heated). Wiki editing does take a thicker skin than more personal kinds of collaboration though, and isn't for everyone. –jacobolus (t) 22:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

This is among the patterns I meant I have probably helped entrench further: "Wiki editing does take a thicker skin than more personal kinds of collaboration though, and isn't for everyone." It's true as a proposition, I don't argue against that, and yet it can also serve as a form of justification for being unwelcoming, to "get the people who just aren't cut out for this to just move on." In this case here, I now believe that it *is* serving as that form of justification. It's a type of unwelcoming that is common and hardly blamable, which is why I wasn't initially singling anyone out. They wouldn't deserve that. This is the sort of normal level of everyday non-emergency customer dissatisfaction that I'd have put in a comment box on a confidential customer exit survey when cancelling a subscription, if this Wikiproject were a subscription I was cancelling.

That sort of common unwelcoming is especially commonly attributed to the social sides of STEM fields in general by non-STEM outsiders: a sort of "you either get it or you don't, and we can't help you much if you don't" attitude that rubs outsiders as unwelcoming whether or not it's meant to be unwelcoming. So I'm really truly not trying to say something earth-shattering and controversial here, or something that should "force anyone to wake up" or anything like that. When I said "interloper," that means "someone who doesn't belong," and if "someone with thin skin doesn't belong" and "he had thin skin", that's all that's needed for that feeling to be present in the way I had in mind. "Gratified that this guy who didn't belong realized it and moved on already."

Being unwelcoming does not seem to be an exaggeration to me. I am, in fact, actually walking away after feeling unwelcome. Entrenchment also does not seem to be an exaggeration to me because I did read a lot of talk pages and see that the same issues discouraging me now seem to have been discouraging other newcomer editors years, even decades ago (for the pages I've been editing, it doesn't take long to go back decades on the talk pages). This pattern of imputing that I must have made a hasty, mistaken decision here is in fact part of the ordinary, taken for granted entrenched patterns I was talking about.

The pressure of being long-time Wikipedia maintainers and dealing with the drama is clearly real. It is clearly difficult to handle and clearly takes a toll on the capacity to assume the best of others. It also seems to have encouraged and entrenched unwelcoming habits. This doesn't seem exaggerated or implausible or unfair to me: it seems totally sympathetic.

Yes, I would be alarmed if someone "e.g. call[ed] [me] a "newcomer with an entrenched pattern of mischief-making"", first since I don't have any patterns on Wikipedia at all longer than a few months and second since I hadn't been accused of mischief yet that I was aware of. "Entrenched pattern of naive mistakes" would be fair, though. I was accused of and I do have entrenched patterns of making naive mistakes, like not checking Mathematical point was more than a disambiguation page when editing Fixed point (mathematics) or not checking that Monomial included one of the definitions of monomial that I took for granted when editing Power series. I had been asking for help and patience and hoping to dis-entrench them. I was naive! I did find this project unwelcoming. Both seem easy to say without any shock.

I have had no question that the people on the other sides of my disputes were acting in good faith with respect to their stylistic preferences and opinions about content. RowanElder (talk) 23:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

(ec) Is this entirely about Power series? --JBL (talk) 19:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Not entirely and not primarily. Fixed point (mathematics) was just as frustrating much earlier and I continued for several weeks after. RowanElder (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

No single talk page or edit would capture my reasons for deciding I felt unwelcome, it was something I thought about over several weeks, but for "specific low points," this would be the lowest: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ASeries_%28mathematics%29&diff=1253371205&oldid=1253346968

I don't know that much about comment threading on Wikipedia pages. If I made a terrible faux pas there that could be explained to me, I'd have happily apologized and learned how to avoid it in the future. Things weren't getting explained, though. I really had and have very little idea what that reply was trying to say! RowanElder (talk) 13:04, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Your deleted reply -- which I got as a notification, so I saw it and felt the sting of it though I appreciate you deleted the part that you must have realized crossed a line -- is typical of why I feel unwelcome. For others, to understand what I just saw as a notification:

"I got in an edit-war with one person and now I won't edit math articles" ok I mean sure but maybe after you were first reverted you could have opened a talk-page discussion (as per [[WP:BRD]]) and moved to substantive discussion/consensus-building as step 3 instead of edit-warring/hurt feelings?

This sort of jumping to conclusions and psychologizing the other editor is not welcoming behavior. RowanElder (talk) 21:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

To clarify something here: I did feel a sting here but also I don't hate getting stung like this or take it very personally. The habit of jumping to an interpretation like that is very sympathetic to me. I've been an accidentally hasty-to-judge and unwelcoming person myself, in other parts of my life. It's exactly because I know how easy it is to accidentally fall into these habits and start taking the (lonely) consequences for granted that I'm choosing to speak up right now. RowanElder (talk) 01:02, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I can sympathize with this. I'm still relatively new compared to the other users who have been here for 10+ years, and I understand the frustration.

I can't make you stay, but if you're willing to reconsider, just hear me out...

I don't think the community itself is unwelcoming, in fact, in my experience, most the individuals I interact with are very respectful and professional, however (and not mentioning anyone in particular), there are certainly individuals who are quick to WP:bite the newcomers. But they are not the majority.

My only real issue with this community is that, of those individuals who are respectful and welcoming, I have never seen them call out another user for biting newcomers, always leaving the newcomer to fend for themselves.

Anyway, all this to say: yes, there are frustrating individuals here, but as long as stay respectful and keep your hands clean, there are Wikipedia Policies to deal with them. Maybe try getting familiar with WP:Edit warring and particularly WP:3 revert rule. If you're respectful and reasonable, a Wikipedia administrator will be willing to vouch for you and has the power to handle the situation. However, in my experience, it never gets this far.

Though, for what it's worth, I've enjoyed your edits here, especially on Series (mathematics) (which is looking a lot better IMO). I do hope you'll stay, even if you edit here less often, but I understand your decision either way. Farkle Griffen (talk) 02:18, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your sympathy and for appreciating the work on Series. I'm not going to reconsider in less than six weeks, and I'll check how you're being treated on your contributions history before I make a decision. Looking over your history a few days ago was part of how I became confident my experience wasn't just a purely personal issue. I really don't enjoy being treated in ways that seem taken for granted and widely tolerated here; people are welcome to call it a thin skin if they want to continue to be unwelcoming to people like me or they could call it a sensitivity to disrespect if they are interested in retaining people like me as would-be editors.

I appreciate your impulse to defend the community also, and it's part of why I didn't and don't assert that this Wikiproject's community is unwelcoming in itself; afaict I didn't meet a community (and I wasn't invited to that I saw). I assert that I found the project unwelcoming from outside the community and that there are some entrenched habits in the Wikiproject that are unwelcoming, but neither of those would prove that the project's community was itself unwelcoming. Neither is decisive for going further to "the project is unwelcoming as such." However, I also don't need think I need to prove "the project is unwelcoming as such" to justify "leaving because I do not feel welcome." That weaker, more superficial, more personal claim "that I felt unwelcome" is enough to justify a personal action. I didn't volunteer to do a community audit here! I just tried to help out and bounced off and wanted to say why as I bounce. I wanted to say why since the shortage of editors, esp. on the pages I was editing, seemed generally agreed to be a problem, and there I was becoming the problem.

I just don't like to ghost things. Since the normal communication patterns here were never well-explained to me as a newcomer and I hadn't made any personal connections I felt I could talk to individually about the issue, I just went with a message to the project. I do have a pretty thick skin in some ways, so though I anticipated the message would be mistakenly interpreted in ways that it was mistakenly interpreted, I also felt confident I could follow it up. RowanElder (talk) 12:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The issues discussed here are not unique to the Mathematics project or even to Wikipedia. Encouraging newcomers is a challenge in all social arenas, especially when some percentage of newcomers are in fact vandals or only interested self-promotion. We can only try harder. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:20, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, they're certainly not unique and it is always a challenge to be welcoming. Trying harder, smarter, and more wisely are all possible paths forward, and I hope that my speaking up can help those aiming to try harder, smarter, and/or more wisely. RowanElder (talk) 15:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I've now said as much as I intend to here. This was a negative experience for me but I hope that it can be instructive and that things might change. I do not plan to continue replying to future replies unless one is surprisingly insightful. RowanElder (talk) 01:47, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Principal component analysis

Some experienced eyes might be useful here. A professor has been trying to add a reference to a review he has written with five other top-flight authors (including Trevor Hastie), and has been getting quite a bumpy ride. Jheald (talk) 10:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

No kidding that that's a bumpy ride. RowanElder (talk) 01:51, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Sharpness (cutting)

I have just recently created Sharpness (cutting), with the current focus being on sharpness occurring in nature (sharpness of stones, thorns, teeth, claws, horns, etc.). Is there such a thing as a mathematical definition or theory of sharpness that should be included? I would note that one article that I cited says: "an objective, dimensionless blade sharpness index BSI that relates the energy W_CI (Nm) necessary to initiate a cut to the product of cut initiation depth CI (m), thickness x (m) and fracture toughness J (J/m2) of the testing material BSI = W_CI/CI•x•J where BSI = 0 indicates a blade with ideal sharpness, and an increase in BSI can be interpreted as decreasing sharpness". I don't know what that means. BD2412 T 01:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Try the WikiProject for Physics instead. PatrickR2 (talk) 04:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2004.04.297 and the papers that cite it may be useful. –jacobolus (t) 04:59, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Jacobolus: Thanks, I will have a look. BD2412 T 13:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Soft cell (shape)

A new class of shapes has recently been published. They are called soft cells - where I've made brief start at an article. I don't have much time to dedicate to this at the moment, but I think it warrants some attention if anyone is interested. Tayste (edits) 22:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Tayste Well, this leads me to a question: Are there any backgrounds of that tiling discovery? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Dispute in Algebra

The featured article Algebra has taken onto the dispute by two users, with the reason that the article continues to expand even further or personalization things (or whatever it is). More users for giving points of view in Talk:Algebra#Recent changes to subsection "Polynomials". Dedhert.Jr (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Area of a circle

Please see recent edit history at Area of a circle where some new editor insists that Archimedes proof needs to be labeled as "a logic proof" and that a calculation of the areas of some isosceles triangles needs to be replaced by subdividing the triangles into right triangles and summing their areas instead, in not-well-written English. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:35, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree that these edits are not good. However I hope that someone can improve the readability of this section.

I think the 'not greater' argument can be described in a clear way almost entirely without symbols. It has two parts: (1) any inscribed regular polygon has smaller area than the right triangle and (2) there exist inscribed regular polygons with area arbitrarily close to the circle area. So if the circle area is greater than the triangle area, by (2) there is an inscribed regular polygon with area larger than the triangle area, but this contradicts (1).

The argument for (1) is that the polygon perimeter is less than the circle circumference (as follows from the fact that lines minimize distance between two points) and the polygon's inner radius is less than the circle radius. Since polygon area is one half the perimeter times the inner radius and triangle area is one half the circumference times the circle radius, (1) follows immediately. Fact (2) is extremely intuitive, and could even be acceptable here as self-evident. Archimedes' construction of iterated bisection is a good illustration but probably not a proper proof. Is it clear without doing some extra calculation that the 'gap area' eventually becomes arbitrarily small?

I think it's a really marvelous proof (or almost-proof) but I found its wiki-description rather hard to read. For me a description of the above kind is much easier.

(And if nothing else, symbol $c$ is presently referred to multiple times but not defined!) Gumshoe2 (talk) 09:00, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

MathJax for non-signed-in users in the future

Pinging @Salix alba:

If I understand correctly, every non-signed-in user will be forced to see math as rendered by MathML, beginning in December 2024. But since MathML has many disadvantages in comparison with MathJax, it would be illogical to shove MathML down their throat.

The users who are not signed in can change appearance of their Wikipedia. There's a panel on the right that allows them to change the size of the text, width of the text and also color. However, they should be able to change their math renderer as well. Given that they will be able to change the text, width and color, why not change the math renderer as well? I think everyone would benefit from that.

As an aside, why does the MathJax option read "[...] (for browsers with limited MathML support)"? It assumes that the only reason why one wants MathJax is that their browser has limited MathML support, which is false. Many users label MathML as inferior to MathJax, providing an overflowing supply of reasons, regardless of the level of support of MathML in the browser they use. A1E6 (talk) 17:30, 3 November 2024 (UTC)