Would someone who understands group theory and more specifically understandsreflection groups please look at this article and offer an opinion as to whether it meets thegood article criteria? This is the longest-pendingGood Article Nomination, having been nominated about eight months ago. My assumption is that it has not been reviewed for the obvious reason that most of the editors who reviewGood Article Nominations are not mathematicians. Neither am I. But a chemist and computer scientist should know where to look for mathematicians. The instructions say thatany uninvolved and registered user with sufficient knowledge and experience with Wikipedia may review the nominated article against the good article criteria. I am sure that some of you all have "sufficient knowledge and experience".Robert McClenon (talk)22:27, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not someone with "sufficient knowledge or experience with Wikipedia" so I'm not qualified to review this article, but I am a human who tried to read the thing and here is my ignorant & uninformed take. This is a super dense and technical read. My head started spinning after the first few sentences. There is a pageWikipedia:Make technical articles understandable that I think you, or anyone else who is editing this page, should really take a look at. It offers advice like "Does the article make sense if the reader gets to it as a random page" and "Imagine yourself as a layperson ... Can you figure out what or who the article is about?" I think the answer to both of these questions is clearly "No".
There is also this quote: "When the principle of least astonishment is successfully employed, information is understood by the reader without struggle." For me, everything was a struggle and I think I know a fair bit about math. I imagine that writing a review takes a lot of time & energy, and if the reviewer has to expend even more effort to understand what they're reading, that might be why this article hasn't been reviewed yet. I can't comment on the definitions and equations, but having maybe some explainers for the non-specialist readers would probably be useful. Adding more illustrations could help. Maybe some context for why the reader should care about reflection groups or subgroups.
The page I linked to above says:
"Most Wikipedia articles can be written to be fully understandable by the general reader with average reading ability and motivation. Some articles are themselves technical in nature and some articles have technical sections or aspects. Many of these can still be written to be understandable to a wide audience. Some topics are intrinsically complex or require much prior knowledge gained through specialized education or training. It is unreasonable to expect a comprehensive article on such subjects to be understandable to all readers. The effort should still be made to make the article as understandable to as many as possible, with particular emphasis on the lead section."
Yet you wrote on the talk page that the "appropriately broad audience" should be "advanced undergraduate mathematics majors and beginning PhD students in mathematics" which I take to mean that it was written with upper division math & PhD students in mind, rather than "make the article as understandable to as many as possible."Basilelp (talk)01:31, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Basilelp: You are directing your comment to the wrong person:Robert McClenon is not an author of the article, he is just doing a good deed by trying to get it un-stuck from the bottom of a queue. I am the main author of the article; I am fully familiar with the advice you linked. You even quoted the relevant sentences:Some topics are intrinsically complex or require much prior knowledge gained through specialized education or training. It is unreasonable to expect a comprehensive article on such subjects to be understandable to all readers. The effort should still be made to make the article as understandable to as many as possible, with particular emphasis on the lead section. I would like to promise you that there is absolutely no way that parabolic subgroups of reflection groups can be made understandable to readers who have not completed (at a minimum) an introductory course in abstract algebra and a course in theoretical linear algebra, because grasping even a high-level description requires an understanding of what agroup (mathematics) oflinear transformations is. If the article never makes it through GA review because of that, that's fine with me; this is a generalist encyclopedia, and I've written an article about a very specialized topic. It is possible that the lead section could be made gentler -- lead sections of technical articles are very challenging because they are supposed to summarize the entire article, including the most technical parts -- but simply quotingWP:MTAU at me does not help with that. --JBL (talk)17:47, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also think this article would benefit from some gentler context and motivation, especially in the early part. The explanation in the lead, "the collection of parabolic subgroups exhibits important good behaviors", is too vague to be useful in my opinion. As one example, it's not clear anywhere in the article why the name "parabolic" is used (is this a contrast with "elliptic" or "hyperbolic" subgroups?). –jacobolus(t) –jacobolus(t)18:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the nomenclature is somewhat second-hand from Lie theory, where one has "parabolic groups", as distinct from compact subgroups (parabolic are cocompact). These are generated by the parabolic subgroups of the Weyl group.Tito Omburo (talk)18:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article should give the best one sentence summary (even if it's "the name doesn't have a very good explanation") and then give whatever detail is known in a footnote, even if the sourcing is somewhat weak and the proposals are speculative. –jacobolus(t)21:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are of course entitled to your opinion on this point; I chose to stick with what could be reliably sourced (which is to say, not very much). --JBL (talk)18:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that if nothing is said, readers end up a bit puzzled, because the meaning of the name is the kind of thing people expect to find. But anyway, you should do as you prefer. –jacobolus(t)22:16, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Two of the three GAs linked above,Dehn invariant andfree abelian group, were ones where (as nominator) I felt I was pushing the limit in how technical an article could be and still get through the GA process. The parabolic subgroup article feels, if anything, even more technical. (I have another current unreviewed nominee that I think is also pushing the same limit:Yao's principle. But if someone here is interested in reviewing for GA, the parabolic nomination is much older and should take precedence.) —David Eppstein (talk)18:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking for why nomination takes too long a time to be reviewed, I guess nobody can review the article of the parabolic subgroup since it is for the PhD thesis audience. Personal reviewing is not enough to pass, especially for those who do not take a course in higher-level abstract algebra.Dedhert.Jr (talk)03:49, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All the reliable sources on the topic are written for a research audience (PhD students or above); my aspiration (per the guideline David linked) is that significant portions of this article might be understandable to an advanced undergraduate student. I am not terribly worried about GA in particular (it would not be the first good technical article to fail to be Good). --JBL (talk)20:35, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article has good content, and I think is 90% of the way there, but I have a few suggestions:
-First, it is very difficult to clearly pick out what a parabolic subgroup actually is. I think it would be easier to read if you had one 'Definition' section and included the three sections after the background into it. Also, I think 'concordance of the definitions', while precise, is an unfortunate phrase here, as 'concordance' has a meaning in related fields (like link concordance'). I think 'compatibility of the definitions' or 'equivalence of the definitions in special cases' would be a more clear section heading. The fact that it's in finite real reflection groups that they coincide could be kept out of the section heading, as I'm sure people are more interested that they coincide at all rather than wondering if they coincide in that specific instance.
-Second, I strongly prefer bold over italic for definitions, and looking at other articles for complex topics (like the Schemes article), they do the same. If you bolded the phrases 'standard parabolic subgroups ofW" and ' aparabolic subgroup ofW', I think it would help immensely.
-Third, it would be nice to have a 'properties' section. All we're told is that parabolic subgroups are 'nice', but the only niceness we see is the lattice property. Is that the only reason these are studied? Actually, looking back, it looks like the properties are mingled up in the definition sections. I think having clearly-defined 'Definition' and 'Property' sections could help a lot, so either:
'Definition in case 1
properties in case 1
definition in case 2
properties in case 2
equivalence of two definitions in special cases'
or:
'Definitions:
-two definitions
compatibility of definitions
properties
-two sets of properties'
This is all just minor fluff and the vast majority of the article would stay the same, but I think it would make it a lot easier to read. So I suggest those cosmetic changes. I haven't been bold and edited because I'm suggesting out of a place of interest rather than confidence.Brirush (talk)22:30, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps "90% of the way there" is being generous. If the target audience level is PhD students then writing one level down would try to make it intelligible for Master's students. It reads like a research paper, rather than an encyclopedia article. Along with the defintion fixes, including plain English descriptions following the jargony text would also help. Having history, motivation, context, and the other suggestions provided here are very much needed. The only changes to the article in the past few days has been modifying a reference, I get the impression that there isn't a huge rush to improve the writing. Possibly the only options for moving this article along the nomination process would be for a reviewer to copy/paste everyone's comments from this Talk and work to get it in form (or the authors could continue to throw their hands in the air saying "it is just too advanced for you") or for the nominator to retract it from the queue.Basilelp (talk)16:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you expect this article to have been changing recently, and what business do you have declaring what options other editors have? Your attitude (supported so far by lots of bold declarations and condescention but zero concrete suggestions) would not be endearing even if it were coming from someone whose account had existed for more than a month, had contributed to more than one article.JBL (talk)18:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What happened to being welcoming to newcomers?
I would love to give you concrete suggestions. Hell, I would make the edits myself, but I would first have to understand the article in order to translate it into plain English.
I'm sure you think it is a good article. It would probably even win Best Paper at a SIAM conference and boost your h-index. But as far as being accessible, keeping things one level down, not needing to have a dissertation in this area, etc. in my admittedly unqualifed opinion, it is that I don't get it.Basilelp (talk)04:11, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Remarkably several other people who don't get some part of the article have contributed to this conversation without being assholes. Please never interact with me again unless mandated by policy to do so. --JBL (talk)19:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Brirush: thanks for your constructive feedback! I will think about the issues you've raised. In my professional writing, I also prefer bold over italics for definitions, but regrettably this is proscribed by the MOS, seeMOS:NOBOLD. Part of the issue is that the phrase "parabolic subgroup" does not have a single uniform definition that covers all the cases in which it appears; this causes some inherent issues in choosing how to structure things. --JBL (talk)18:47, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A note to/request of those who have commented here or have interest in this: I have spent quite a lot of time with several well written textbooks that address reflection groups in detail, from different perspectives (as represented in the references of the article). They are all consistent inmaking use of parabolic subgroups in various ways, but in saying almost nothing aboutwhat makes parabolic subgroups useful. This is obviously somewhat frustrating, as I would love to be able to write two more sentences in the lead explicitly addressing this, but I lack appropriate source material. (My personal impression is that for many purposes they are the "right" substructure to consider, rather than the family of all subgroups or the family of reflection subgroups, in terms of being compatible with what you would want---the lattice property is part of this---and because of the connection with algebraic groups.) If you happen to know any RS that say anything that would allow for a non-OR discussion, please let me know! --JBL (talk)20:05, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I won't take up the review as having to merely find all the sources listed to spot-check is something I do not have the time to take up (not to mention I do not have too much experience in editing Wikipedia), but I did want to comment that there are a couple of paragraphs and footnotes without proper citations per theWP:GACR. I'll tag some of the parts of the article I feel a citation would be warranted so that this aspect of the article is at least covered.Gramix13 (talk)03:58, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nearly every place you added a cn tag was already cited (often immediately following the place you added the tag). --JBL (talk)18:38, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The list of vital mathematics articles is a mess. If anyone cares, it would be worth doing a careful comparison of our top and high priority article lists, sorted by yearly page views, vs. the list of vital articles, and then proposing a large number of articles to promote or demote at varying levels of "vital", rather than discussing them piecemeal. For convenience:
The latter list, especially toward the bottom, has quite a lot of chaff in it, and the former two lists, especially toward the top, have a lot of articles which should be considered essential. –jacobolus(t)01:24, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree w/Jacobolus. When I last looked at the list of "vital" articles, it seemed a bit random. There were plenty of top and high-priority articles that weren't listed as "vital", and many medium and low priority articles that were "vital". I assumed that the list of vital articles was cruft left over from 2005 that no one had bothered to maintain or update. Is it actually maintained? Who maintains it? Is it still needed, or is it a left-over from the 2005-era projects? Perhaps "vital" should be replaced by some weighted average of priority and yearly page-views?67.198.37.16 (talk)22:10, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They do seem mostly like cruft left over from 2005, but some people are still actively maintaining the lists and they are widely linked from around Wikipedia, so if anyone has a moment with nothing better to do, it's maybe worth trying to update. The mathematics lists still only get about 10–15 views per day, so it's not a super high priority though. –jacobolus(t)00:44, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone know what causes the white appearance in an STL polyhedron? This complaint originates from theTalk:Regular icosahedron where a user asks about the missing edges on STL, possibly because of the same reason as mine. For some reason, this problem also applies to many STL polyhedra.Dedhert.Jr (talk)01:27, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you zoom out significantly on the white icosahedron, it gains proper shading. There's either (a) some kind of problem with the STL file itself (either the shape or the lighting), or (b) some kind of bug in Wikipedia's STL viewer. I get the same behavior in multiple browsers, so I don't think it's a browser problem. –jacobolus(t)20:30, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that's because people write bad articles about non-notable people; your draft is fine and the subject is notable, there will be no problem once a reviewer gets around to it. --JBL (talk)22:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that theFrench Wikipedia has a better article about this topic than ours, but it says "Cet article est partiellement ou en totalité issu de l’article de Wikipédia en anglais intitulé « Zimmer's conjecture", so the page is a translation from something that seems erased from our article. What did happen?Esevoke (talk)16:18, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems likely that the person who wrote the French article took what was in the English article, translated it, expanded it, and then attributed because it was partly translated (as that template says), but if you want to know for sure you couldask them. --JBL (talk)19:06, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Project members are invited to participate in The World Destubathon. We're aiming to destub a lot of articles and also improve longer stale articles. It will be held from Monday June 16 - Sunday July 13. There is $3338 going into it, with $500 the top prize. There is $500 of prizes going into improving STEM, mathematics and business-related articles and we want to see a lot of articles from these fields destubbed and older stale articles improved. If you are interested in winning some vouchers to help you buy books for future content, or just see it as a good editathon opportunity to see a lot of articles improved for science, sign up if interested.♦Dr. Blofeld10:44, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, for expanding stubs into start class articles. Mathematics is included in the STEM $500 of prizes! $300 1st place, $150 second place and $50 3rd place, includes mathematics, though we're not including biographies in the prize. There's $500 going into a geography and places prize, £250 into architecture and $100 into history and nature etc. ♦Dr. Blofeld11:11, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let me get this straight ... we're going to reward the editors who can add the greatest volume of LLM cruft? How is this possibly a good idea? The reason that articles are stubs is because there aren't enough experts to expand those stubs. The chances of finding a person who is an expert qualified to expand five or ten stubs is close to zero; the chances of finding someone who can pilot an LLM to create hundreds of pages of nonsense is quite high. Personally, I think this is a truly terrible idea. What are we doing, here?67.198.37.16 (talk)22:42, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason that articles are stubs is because there aren't enough experts to expand those stubs.
The reason most articles are stubs is because nobody who cared bothered doing some research about the topic and then writing down what they found. It typically doesn't take an expert to write a basic Wikipedia article, just a curious person with some time on their hands (though this is less true for some kinds of technical topics). Usually the materials to write an article are not too hard to find, and often even whole books have been written.
Focusing on doing the most articles of at least ~3 paragraphs in length in a limited amount of time is probably not the ideal incentive, and in some past cases these kinds of contests have led to people making questionable contributions, but that's not inevitable, and sometimes lead to a substantial amount of useful work on tasks that are otherwise neglected. The possibility of a cash prize is obviously a somewhat arbitrary reason to pick stubs to expand, and people could expand any stub at any time for whatever other reason. But it might provide a useful nudge to get someone motivated. If there's any evidence of bullshit entries, including those generated by LLMs, the contributions of those contributors should be reverted. –jacobolus(t)22:25, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've recently read aQuanta Magazine article about his conjecture onSeifert surfaces, which was recently solved. I am trying to write an article about him, but I am having a hard time (again!) in finding sources... Anyways, he receivedmany citations. Could someone tell me if he is notable enough for the encyclopedia? (I think his citations he received, theQuanta Magazine article about his work and theLester R. Ford Award could be enough, but I am not sure). Thank you very much. Best,Esevoke (talk)13:36, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the "declining" editor was objecting to the formatting of the citations, not to the sources themselves. But it's hard to tell because the feedback they gave was only a few vague words. The variable delay, poor feedback (ranging from non-existent to terse and unhelpful), confusing steps, and possibility that your work will be summarily deleted if you stop working on it for a while are among the reasons to avoid going through this process, vs. just making an article in main namespace and tagging it with a stub template at the bottom. Personally I'd recommend against ever using the "draft" namespace or the "articles for creation" process. Experienced Wikipedians rarely if ever use either of these, preferring to just write drafts in user namespace (or offline) and then directly put them into main namespace when appropriate. SeeUser:A2soup/Don't use draftspace andUser:Paul_012/Drafts are broken. –jacobolus(t)08:20, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the useful articles on Wikipedia were created by inexperienced editors. So hopefully at least some don't listen to that kind of advice. I think the current draft under discussion here is just fine as a stub about the mathematician in question, who seems clearly notable. Having an article in this current form seems uncontroversially better than not having any article at all. More experienced editors can come clean it up later at their leisure. –jacobolus(t)20:54, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've found a very helpful post in the blog of arguably the strongest living mathematician, but it seems Wikipedia doesn't accept[1] blogs as references... Wouldn't it be the case for an exception forTerence Tao's blog?Esevoke (talk)18:55, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SeeWP:SPS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." I think we can reasonably call Tao an established subject-matter expert in mathematics. Maybe not for other topics he might happen to blog about. So anyway, for mathematics articles, I think his blog posts are ok to use as references. —David Eppstein (talk)19:45, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is going to depend on the context, the claim being made, the way Wikipedia makes the claim, and what specifically the blog post says. Can you be more specific? Edit: I see, specifically a2010 blog post is being used as support for the claim thatVladimir Arnold is "known for" the "Euler–Arnold equations". I think this is an inappropriate source for this claim, since the source doesn't say anything like that. All Tao says is that"In a beautiful paper from 1966, Vladimir Arnold ... observed that many basic equations in physics, including the Euler equations of motion of a rigid body, and also ... the Euler equations of fluid dynamics of an inviscid incompressible fluid, can be viewed ... as geodesic flows on a ... Riemannian manifold.... The right-invariance makes the Hamiltonian mechanics of geodesic flow in this context (where it is sometimes known as the Euler-Arnold equation or the Euler-Poisson equation) quite special; it becomes ... completely integrable, and also indicates ... a way to reformulate these equations in a Lax pair formulation. And indeed, many further completely integrable equations, such as the Korteweg-de Vries equation, have since been reinterpreted as Euler-Arnold flows." This doesn't support the claim that Arnold is especially known for this work, but only that the particular topic is named for him, which is something different. I would recommend removing topics in the infobox, which is meant to be a summary, claiming someone is "known for" some particular thing unless we're going to actually discuss that topic in the article, which currently we do not. There's also no article or redirect atEuler–Arnold equation and it's completely unclear from the Arnold article what this is supposed to mean. If you want to add this to the infobox you should add an appropriate section to the article, either redirectEuler–Arnold equation there or perhaps make a new article at that title, and find a source listing the things Arnold is best known for which includes this topic in the list; otherwise implying that this is one of the things he is best for is, in my opinion, an example of"original synthesis". (The article also currently lists 22 things that Arnold is supposed to be best "known for". In my opinion this is absurdly over-long for an infobox list, and most of these should be trimmed out, leaving only a small handful or maybe 10 items at the absolute most. Ideally the whole list should supported by some secondary source like a biography of Arnold.) –jacobolus(t)20:41, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but blog sources are appropriate for supporting different types of claims than peer-reviewed papers, so I don't think we can make good blanket advice based only on the author's name, without context. –jacobolus(t)20:49, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, seeJohn von Neumann as an example: there are 5 things listed in "known for" and then a "List of things named ...". If an infobox list like this just gets crowded with dozens of miscellaneous entries, it becomes less useful. –jacobolus(t)22:19, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Better than no reference, but I can't think of many cases where it'd be an ideal source. In this particular case, material about the Euler-Arnold equations should be available in plenty of standard sources.Gumshoe2 (talk)03:57, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mathematician specialist in PDEs is needed to check
I've startedthis stub, but I'm just an undergraduate student, and this topic is too advanced for me. Anyone who knows advanced PDE theory would like to check it? Thank you very much! Best,Esevoke (talk)11:41, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to keep creating mathematics articles without seemingly having the proper background for the topic. It would be more appropriate to limit yourself to topics where you do have the proper background. (Even experts in one area would not think of creating an article on a topic in a completely different area that they have no mastery of.)PatrickR2 (talk)04:28, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry. My apologies. I will try to stop doing that. I agree with you that was a bad idea. It's just that I once read an interview withJimbo Wales where he said that Wikipedia is like that (can't find the old interview now, but it was like saying that experts would eventually fix it and that it was better to have an article than nothing).Esevoke (talk)04:39, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did not want to be overly harsh. But there is plenty of improvements that can be done to existing articles for example. Or you learn and understand about something that is incorrectly stated or that can be expanded. As long as you understand it and provide appropriate sources, it's fine to edit it. It's just that throwing things around like Euler Arnold equations without the proper background seemed overly ambitious. Good luck with your future editing.PatrickR2 (talk)05:54, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Even experts in one area would not think of creating an article on a topic in a completely different area that they have no mastery of." – People should not feel required to follow this advice. Anyone who is moderately careful can do basic research and summarize the content of reliable sources without being a subject expert, and those efforts are almost certainly better than nothing. Others can come later to refine and expand those. The vast majority of Wikipedia articles were originally created by non-expects in their subjects. Indeed, for plenty of niche topics there are only a small handful of subject experts in the world, none of whom may have the time or desire to start new Wikipedia articles. –jacobolus(t)08:08, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Addition has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to thereassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.Z1720 (talk)14:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've never cared enough to fully understand the issues around either of the subjects mentioned in the title of this section, so I would appreciate if someone could tell me whether I'm doing the right thing in theserecent edits atNatural density. Also piningDerSpezialist with whom I exchanged reverts. Thanks,JBL (talk)17:44, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a no-brainer. : works in all rendering modes, display=block doesn't, hence we should use :.
You’re reverting edits that you don’t understand, which is something one shouldn’t do (unless the edits are obviously in bad faith, e.g. vandalism). When I read an edit summary that says “fix bla bla issue” and I see no clear worsening (in the article, not the wikitext), I don’t touch it because likely it fixed something for someone. If it introduces an issue on my side, I don’t revert either, but try to find a compromise. You’re simply insisting the article look ugly for MathML users. When a wiki feature (such asdisplay="block") doesn’t work for everyone, don’t use it. I don’t know why it doesn’t work (it should give the<span> element that contains the MathML adisplay: block; style, but it doesn’t. Of course, I can add a custom stylesheet to my wiki CSS or browser that adds.mwe-math-element-block { display: block; }, but that fixes the issue for me, but it’s a general issue, not something specific to my setup.DerSpezialist (talk)12:23, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well that is some grossly inappropriate condescension, especially considering that you seem to be the one whose understanding of the relevant issues is lacking! Here is are the relevant guidelines about colon-indentation:MOS:INDENTGAP andMOS:FORMULA. As I said above, I do notfully understand the issues here, but I understand enough to know that there is a good reason to not use colon-indentation. It would be helpful to know from other editors who have been more involved in the discussions around both display=block and MathML whether the issues here merit any reconsideration of the guidance at MOS. --JBL (talk)17:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When display=block doesn't work, my fallback is the block indentation macro{{bi}}: {{bi|left=1.6|<math>\displaystyle ...</math>}}. That allows mixed wikitext and math formatting in the same line, for instance. —David Eppstein (talk)17:55, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does<MATH>...</MATH> work correctly inside{{bl}} on all platforms. The wiki guidance on Colon is inconsistent: in one place it warns of broken<dl>...</dl> HTML and in another place it tells you to use it. Does nested{{bl}} work well? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk)18:04, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you mean bi (blockindent), not bl. Here is one in a nested context:
.
So yes, another of its advantages compared to colon-indentation is that it works within nested block structures, such as bulleted or numbered item or in this case discussion threads, without interrupting the structure and forcing you to manually indent the next part. —David Eppstein (talk)23:10, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According toMOS:BADINDENT, colon indent creates invalid HTML. The mentioned alternative is{{block indent}}. The context of this suggestion is not math. In the context of math, the recommendation is display block. We should not be recommending counter to the MOS. If there is really a solid case for a different guideline, then we should lobby the MOS to change.Johnjbarton (talk)00:49, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The colon indent creates "invalid" HTML, however it works well on every browser and is unlikely to ever stop working. In theory it's bad for "accessibility" but in practice screen readers seem to have approximately equal amounts of trouble with both versions (generally screen readers do a terrible job with our mathematics output, as well as most other mathematical expressions found around the web). The main reason to prefer the display=block vs. the colon indentation is that there are some HTML purists/zealots who care about the results from some linter somewhere or something. Readers generally don't care either way. For a while the display=block variant was substantially broken, but some of the bugs were fixed and now both work roughly comparably. –jacobolus(t)05:58, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
" now both work roughly comparably " Thanks, I have also noticed that both seem to work. So we should continue to use the MOS guidelines and we should not change existing content in either direction.
The arguments in this thread mostly lack concrete examples of issues for or against any option. (Dismissing the MOS guidelines as due to "purists/zealots" isinappropriate; I encourage you to stick to characterizations of outcomes.)Johnjbarton (talk)15:56, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone! Any German-speaking math editor willing to help me on starting a page about the bookVorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert? It's cited more than 940 times according toGoogle Scholar (counting only the original German version, not translations). There is an English translation, and I suspect one into Russian too. I'll look for English-language sources about this book. (I don't understand German nor Russian)Esevoke (talk)15:01, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having a hard time in finding in-depth English-language sources, but there are plenty in German (unfortunately, I can't read them).Esevoke (talk)16:04, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Esevoke, I am a bit busy with other things at the moment, but I would be happy to help (slowly). I am a native speaker of German and a mathematician. Do you have a collection of sources that need looking at already or would you need someone who starts from scratch? —Kusma (talk)08:12, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, I was right: there is a Russian translation too:Лекции о развитии математики в XIX столетии Феликс Клейн (cited by 350 according to Google Scholar).Esevoke (talk)11:09, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Review inScience:Miller, G. A. "Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert, Teil 1. By Felix Klein. Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin, 1926, pp. XIII+ 385." Science 65.1693 (1927): 574-575.doi:10.1126/science.65.1693.574.b
Review in theBulletin of the AMS:Smith, David Eugene. "Review: Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert von Felix Klein. Erste Band." PDF) 34.4 (1928): 521-522.doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1928-04589-5
In-depth (in German):
Review inIsis:H. Wieleitner (1927). "Vorlesungen uber die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert. Felix Klein , R. Courant , O. Neugebauer "doi:10.1086/358496
Klein, Felix. "Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert: ausgewählte Passagen bezüglich Heidelberger Mathematiker/zusammengestellt von Gabriele Dörflinger." (2013): 1-58. DOI: 10.11588/heidok.00014948https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_D%C3%B6rflinger
Wussing, H. "Klein, F., Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert. Ausgabe in einem Band. Reprint der Erstauflage von Teil 1 und 2, Berlin 1926 und 1927. Berlin‐Heidelberg‐New York, Springer‐Verlag 1979. XV, 385 und IX, 208 S., 55 Abb., DM 36, 00, US $19, 80. ISBN 3‐540‐09235‐8." (1980): 271-271.https://doi.org/10.1002/zamm.19800600511
Lense, J. "Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert. I: F. Klein, Sammlung Courant, Bd. 24. XIV+ 385 S., J. Springer, Berlin 1926. Geh. M 21-, geb. 22· 50." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 35 (1928): A5-A5.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01707492
White, F. P. "Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert. Teil I." (1927): 426-427.https://doi.org/10.2307/3602766
Dugac, Pierre. "Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert." (1982): 78-79. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Dugac I did not find link to this review (???))
Mentions (in English):
Renate Tobies,Felix Klein: Visions for Mathematics, Applications, and Education. (it says it was published posthumously)
I once taught the topic of bijection, but only the bare basics, so I don't really know this topic enough to work on it. It's been unsourced for 15 years. Can somebody please add reliable sources?Bearian (talk)01:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The only significant content of the article is the definition, which corresponds to the usual meaning in 3-dimensional topology at least. Looking for a proper source is a bit annoying, a lot of books use the term without defining it (as it is fairly transparent). I found a clean definition in Schultens, Introduction to 3--manifolds, Definition 3.4.7 which can be added to the article.
However i believe that given the current form of the article it might be better to redirect it to a shorter mention in a larger article (it would be a different matter if there was a discussion of the context and applications of this notion but it would be substantial work which i don't have time for at the moment to do). BothHomotopy andManifold with boundary seem like decent targets to me (though the latter is already included in another page, which is not ideal).jraimbau (talk)12:21, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having trouble making sense of it. The article has links toboundary (topology) andcomponent, the second of which was probably intended to beconnected space#Connected components, but does not define what a boundary component is. The example suggests that the property relates to more machinery than simply a manifold but also to the manifold the projection and a homeomorphism identifying with Also, conventionally refers to the closed interval [0,1], but that is amanifold with boundary rather than a manifold. Does anybody have a copy of the cited reference?. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk)16:01, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do not happen to have a copy of that book. The article about the book was mostly written based on its reviews rather than by referring to the book itself. —David Eppstein (talk)17:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you everyone, but especiallyEsevoke andMichael Hardy for adding sources and expanding this article. I feel overwhelmed - and a bit embarrassed - by my lack of knowledge of advanced mathematics. Much appreciated.Bearian (talk)01:32, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any mathematician specialist in dynamical systems here?Hilbert–Arnold problem article is tagged as too technical, and there is no article aboutPalis' conjectures even though there are plenty of in-depth sources about it (one of them says "Palis' conjectures are precise mathematical statements, and therefore rather technical"[2])... I think people who study dynamical systems are not here on the English WP (this is my conjecture!), I never saw one, hahaha (just kidding! xD) (but it's true!). Cheers!Esevoke (talk)17:11, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does the term "parameter base" as used in that article mean what I am accustomed to calling a "parameter space," i.e. the set of all possible values of a parameter?Michael Hardy (talk)18:37, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've taught this skill to secondary school students. I think this is notable. Can anybody help to add reliable sources?Bearian (talk)13:08, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You have written an article entirely based on you ownWP:original research. This is the exact opposite of the standard Wikipedia procedure: Before to write an article, you must start from reliable sources allowing to verify that the subject is notable, and look if the content is not already present in Wikipedia. Only in this case it could be worth to write a new article. In any case, it isto you to provide reliable sources to what you have written.D.Lazard (talk)15:23, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure this is needed here. The main thing in this article is a table with links, so the whole article seems to serve as a kind of disambiguation/summary page for manifold decompositions. Clicking on each of the links leads one to a detailed article with references for each topic.PatrickR2 (talk)01:43, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I looked up the first entry on your list in Google Scholar, copied the DOI and pasted it intoWikipedia:ProveIt which created a ref tag containing this content:
For those of you who remember the "Gagniuc episode" (where several accounts were spamming a poorly-written error-filled book on Markov chains by Paul A. Gagniuc). Well, a news user had been writing a dithyrambic review of the book... and spamming another book by Gagniuc on Wikipedia: see this contribution list.
(I like the claim that before 2017 Markov chains were not really used in practical applications)
This time the book isn't about mathematics, so this is not directly relevant to this project... And it also means it would be harder for me to know whether the new book in question is a legitimate source or trash. However, I do feel bad knowing that someone is still using Wikipedia as a platform for the mass-promotion of their — or someone else's, let's not make assumptions ;) — book. Should I report this somewhere? I think @MrOllie has already been looking into this.Malparti (talk)13:15, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't get through the first page of the text before wondering, "Was this even copy-edited?" There was an "ie" that should have been an "e.g." And two pages later, "JavaScript" was written as two words. The history in section 1.1 starts with some incredibly garbled claims; either the author didn't understand the sources he cited, or he was not capable of writing correct summaries of them. I gave up by page 5.Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk)14:20, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Citations to Gagniuc's book on Google Scholar: 8 in 2017, 60 in 2018, 126 in 2019, 161 in 2020, 187 in 2021, 167 in 2022, 150 in 2023, 156 in 2024, and 39 so far in 2025.Gagniuc's book was added to the article in October 2017 and removed in June 2024. Over the first half of 2025, it has been accumulating citations at maybe half the rate it did during the last full year it was prominently featured in the Wikipedia article. Some of those 2025 papers were actually written in 2024, too. By "some", I mean 8 out of the first 10 Google Scholar results (after which I stopped checking).Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk)03:26, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, he figured out a "cute hack": list your own mediocre book as the very first reference in a bunch of random Wikipedia pages in contexts where it makes no sense to cite, and watch themoney lazy citations from other (mostly mediocre) sources roll in. –jacobolus(t)06:18, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also looked at those numbers yesterday! :)
Anyway, his "cute hack" worked well for him: I happen to know the Romanian academic system a bit (having spent 6 months there for an academic visit), and with a book cited more than a thousand time, he is probably untouchable there.Malparti (talk)20:30, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been working up a little article about the bookSphere Packings, Lattices and Groups. According to Neil Sloane's website and John Conway's bibliography, there was a Russian translation of what must have been the first edition in 1990[3][4]. Does anyone have more information about this than the article already contains, e.g., some kind of catalogue number?Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk)00:42, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Упаковки шаров, решетки и группы : В 2 т. / Дж. Конвей, Н. Слоэн ; При участии Э. Баннаи и др.; Перевод с англ. С. Н. Лицына и др. - М. : Мир, 1990-. - 22 см. Т. 1. - Москва : Мир, 1990. - 413 с. : ил.; ISBN 5-03-002368-2 (В пер.) : 4 р. 30 к.
You can find a reference to it from Russian Wikipedia's article about Conway,ru:Конвей, Джон Хортон.
If you do a web search for "Упаковки шаров, решетки и группы" you can also find links to pirated copies, from which you can probably find whatever other metadata you need. –jacobolus(t)04:03, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are invited to join the discussion atWikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Matrix addition.Gramix13 (talk)00:39, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Done Alhazen's problem has been promoted byMathKeduor7 toGood Article status.Gramix13 (talk)00:21, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]