Talk:List of named matrices/Classifications

Suggestions for section membership

This is intended as a preliminary discussion where sections can be decided, and membership of matrices within sections can be settled before editing the actual article. Or perhaps I'm making too big a deal of this. Dan Pope 00:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

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The sections currently look like this.

• Matrices in mathematics
• Matrices used in statistics
• Matrices used in graph theory
• Matrices used in science and engineering
• Other matrix-related terms and definitions

Possibly "Constant matrices" might be useful, as there are quite a few (Hilbert, Pascal, Lehmer, Zero, Identity, Exchange, Unit etc).

I factored out "constant matrices" from the list, as I think these somehow form their own group. I'll be happy to revert, if someone thinks this is a bad idea. Maybe the important thing here is to have some division instead of no division. This would make the list easier to read (and edit!). This discussion would also be easier, with some division to start with. If all this is OK, what about separating matrices like symmetric, hermitian, anti-symmetric, etc. into another section? These seem to form another group. All of these are defined using symmetries, and all of these form vector spaces. Would these be Matrices in mathematics? Haseldon 19:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added sections "Matrices used in statistics" and "Matrices used in graph theory". I figured that nobody would object to this - there simply isn't any ambiguity. However, there are a few matrices whose membership would be valid in more than one group. I've included Incidence matrix in both the Mathematics section and the Graph theory section, as incidence matrices are used mainly in graph theory but also in more abstract areas. There will probably be other similar cases. Dan Pope 02:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)