User talk:MathMartin/Archive2

Matrix vs. Matrix theory

The discussion now moved to Talk:Matrix theory#Should we merge Matrix theory into Matrix (mathematics)?. There is another user who is interested in these matters. I pasted on that page what you wrote to me. Let's see if we can arrive at any reasonable solution. Oleg Alexandrov 19:11, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi there. Back to the discussion above. I wonder if you could look what I wrote at Talk:Matrix theory#Should we merge Matrix theory into Matrix (mathematics)?. What would you suggest. I ask this because you have been around here much longer than me. Oleg Alexandrov 12:17, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Redirecting

Hi MathMartin, When you turn a page into a redirect (graph (mathematics)), remember to check "what links here" and fix double-redirects! There were lots of redirect pages pointing at graph (mathematics) that had to be fixed. Dbenbenn 01:04, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Usually I do check for double redirects but this time I forgot. Thanks for fixing. MathMartin 09:52, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry!

Sorry if I offended you with my poor choice of word ("gibberish"). I didn't mean it that way; I just meant that to someone who doesn't know any German, it would appear that way. Indeed, to someone who only knows English, the German title is "unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing". But I should have explained that better. Dbenbenn 18:40, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Apology accepted. MathMartin 16:49, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Bypassing redirects

A saw you changed [Newtons difference method|Newton's difference method] to [Newton polynomial|Newton's difference method] to bypass a redirect on polynomial. I do not consider this a good change. A redirect is inexpensive and provides more information than a direct link. Before your change I could have used the what links here function in the toolbar to show me all links to Newton polynomial and the redirect Newtons difference method would give my a hint as to what sort of information the user is looking for when he visits the page from polynomial. Now this information is lost. MathMartin 15:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You have a good point. In the case above, and in other similar cases, redirects are not only for backward compatibility. I will pay more attention in the future. I put back the link at polynomialOleg Alexandrov | talk 20:02, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BEST theorem

Hi, couple of issues: (1) there is confusion over whether a "minor" is a certain submatrix or the determinant of it. Your usage is the opposite to that of the minor (linear algebra) page; (2) in any case you want the cofactor, not the minor, so that the sign is right; (3) admittance matrix only defines it for undirected graphs. I thought you might like to fix these problems yourself, but feel free to flick them to me. --Zero 10:08, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for proof reading the article. I think I fixed BEST theorem now. I wanted to use the determinant notation (instead of just referring to the cofactor) in order to not hide the complexity of the calculation. But I found no suitable way to do this.

Concerning the admittance matrix, if you are interested in expanding the article go ahead. I am not really sure about my notation and I think it would be good to get another person to edit the article. Do you think the article should be moved to Laplacian matrix ? It would also be nice to give a connection to the discrete Laplace operator. MathMartin 11:58, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Project Participants List

Hi Martin.

In case you didn't follow the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Reformat of Participants list, I'm writing to you to let you know that I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". Since your name is on the list, I thought you might want to update your entry.

Regards, Paul August ☎ 22:55, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

DMFA

Hi, Martin! I've answered about the DMFA at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Društvo Matematikov Fizikov in Astronomov Slovenije. You should first decide whether the article should stay, and after that I might redirect to proper name, which is mentioned there (in lower cases, ...). Thanks for your notice. --XJamRastafire 13:08, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cauchy sequence

Hi,

I don't like some details in your change in Cauchy sequence

... where the distance between terms of the sequence becomes arbitrarily close as the sequence progresses.

1. "distance becomes close" - I'm not sure if this is correct English

That's true, I fixed the sentence.

1. It's essential that we don't talk about the distance of consecutive elements, but of any two of all "remaining" elements. In some sense, the former formulation, though a bit heavy, was more precise about this.

If you want, please make the appropriate modifications. — MFH: Talk 19:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In my edit I did not talk about consecutive elements and it is my understanding that distance between elements of the sequence includes distance between any two elements. You are correct in thinking that I wanted to make the dense formulation a bit more understandable. I think the first sentence should provide an introduction. The precise definition can be made in the Definition section. The all remaining part is especially hard to understand because remaining from what is not clear.

Anyhow I fixed my edit and I do not feel very strongly about it. So if you prefer your version feel free to revert. The main point of my edit was insert a reference to metric and cauchy filter. MathMartin 20:04, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I did a second edit and tried to clarify the all remaining elements part. What do you think ? MathMartin 20:36, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No big deal; about mathematician biographies :)

I've noticed that when you write biographies (or biostubs) you tend to introduce people as e.g. "a [[Norwegians|Norwegian]] [[mathematician]]" or "a [[German people|German]] [[mathematician]]". In all fairness this actually makes a lot of sense, in that it links the "nationality" adjective to the "nationality" page rather than to the "nation-state" page. However, you are the only person I've ever seen do it! Normally people write those previous examples as [[Norway|Norwegian]] or [[Germany|German]]. I think everybody picks the latter because the style guide recommends it, or just for the "principle of least surprise for wiki links" (and by a vicious circle it's become de facto standard). Sometimes when I come across a link of yours like that I change it to the normal style, sometimes I don't bother, I don't really see it as a "correction" or a big improvement or that you're making a mistake. But I just wondered if you realised that 99% of biographies link from the nationality adjective to the country not the people? I was very surprised when I clicked on one of the links you provided once, but after about 5 seconds I saw where you were coming from! Anyway, I see you're doing a lot of good work so please keep it up :)VivaEmilyDavies 17:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Side note: I was wondering about introducing a "MacTutor" template? Both of us seem to link to the MacTutor archive. My idea is that by typing something along the lines of typing {{subst:MacTutor|ore}} the template would produce automatically: *[http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ore.html Biography] in the [[MacTutor History of Mathematics archive]] which then appears as:

• Biography in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

I think the template would just have to read:
*[http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/{{{1}}}.html Biography] in the [[MacTutor History of Mathematics archive]]

Would this be useful and/or time-saving do you think? If you have an opinion, please reply on my talk page. Thanks! :) VivaEmilyDavies 18:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the Template:MacTutor Biography

See also the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Template:MacTutor_Biography_.26mdash.3B_what_about_Template:MathGenealogy_like_it.3F. BACbKA 18:55, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, but the idea is from User:VivaEmilyDavies. MathMartin 19:21, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for giving credit :) We may as well delete whichever is the least used template at WP:TFD - and I certainly have no objection to giving the field a proper label. I guess it's one of those templates that may as well always be used with subst: to save on the servers - I think I almost always used subst: with mine, so if that's the one with least usage then there probably won't be much work involved converting all its uses over. (Of course, the one bad thing about using subst: all the time is that people might not notice that the template exists, which is why I suspect yours got noticed before mine!) Thanks for the good work! VivaEmilyDavies 07:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bot needed ?

If needed, I could run my bot to convert things to the new template. The pattern is quite simple, as one takes the family name of the mathematician from the page at MacTutor, so the URL http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Birkhoff.html obviously refers to Birkhoff. Then we could both check after the bot if it did a good job. Oleg Alexandrov 19:38, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ok, good idea. After converting ~40 pages per hand I got tired and started editing real math articles again. MathMartin 19:43, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are 66 more. :) There is a problem though. Some articles show up as

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Adams_Frank.html

then your template could be in trouble. What to do? Oleg Alexandrov 19:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually not. Since your template has just a link, and the name does not show up. Oleg Alexandrov 19:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great. The bot is now happily running, see User:Mathbot (no pun intended). Oleg Alexandrov 19:54, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can you modify your bot to guess missing MacTutor links using the mathematicians last name and then check if the link works ? MathMartin 19:57, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can you give me an example illustrating what you mean? Now I read the mathematician's last name from the link, as described above. Oleg Alexandrov 20:06, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You get all mathematicians from Category:mathematician (or some other list or category). Then you parse the article name for the last name of the mathemician. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl -> Weyl. You use the name to construct a link http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Weyl.html. If the link exists you add the MacTutor template (with the name) to the article (If it does not exist already). MacTutor archive is quite large and not all our biographies have a link to MacTutor. MathMartin 20:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I do have a list of all mathematicians from Category:mathematicians and all its subcategories. What you want is quite easy to implement. But then the grunt work comes, which is checking every single link, and then going to the the articles and inserting the thing in. The latter part cannot be trusted to a bot, at least not completely.

I would be willing to do the first part, make an editable list. Then, if you feel full of enthusiasm, gradually, over several weeks, we could establish if the links are valid, and if yes, if they are correct. Then the part about inserting the links in will come (also taking a lot of time). What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov 20:25, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am not really enthusiastic about it doing it manually. So I think we should scrap my idea. Anyway good work on the MacTutor template. MathMartin 20:42, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am not enthusiastic either. I just don't see a way to automate those things. Or to at least automate it to a significant degree. I will think more about it. Oleg Alexandrov 21:03, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Norm (mathematics)

Hi, I posted a suggestion at talk:Norm (mathematics). Cheers, AxelBoldt 20:00, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bounded set

I merged your mention of "copying a PlanetMath theorem to bounded set (topological vector space)" on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/PlanetMath Exchange/46-XX Functional analysis. I figured it out that you put that remark on my page, because the link was coming from there. But my page is an outdated mirror of the real thing, which I keep for testing purposes (and will use in the future to update our index of PlanetMath articles).

And thanks for splitting things from bounded set. I think it is nice that we have an elementary article about that. Oleg Alexandrov 15:15, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey Martin, thanks for your vote in support of my admin nomination. Paul August ☎ 16:57, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Ideal numbers

I noticed that the page on ideal numbers mentions that they were introduced by Kummer "while trying to prove Fermat's last theorem", a phrase that originates when you modified the redirect into a stub.

Harold Edwards and others argue, I think persuasively, that Kummer came up with the notion while investigating higher reciprocity laws rather than Fermat's last theorem directly. Would it be appropriate to change the text perhaps to include both rather than just FLT? Arturo Magidin, July 2 2005, 3:30 (MDT)

I think I copied the history info from [1]. If you have better information feel free to change/add to the article. Additionally It would be nice if you could provide some reference for your information at the bottom of the article.

S-m-n theorem

I'd like you to take another look, because I don't see how your description agrees with mine. What's r? What's R⁽¹⁾? Why does φ get redefined (should it be r)? Your version says that for every f there's a φ such that..., while mine says that there's a s_mn such that for every p.... And how are these statements related, anyway? Gazpacho 02:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I corrected the error you spotted and added a short explanation. I am a bit busy at the moment but I will try to extend the material and make it more accessible in the next few days. MathMartin 17:46, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Continuous function (topology)

I don't understand the second paragraph.

The idea of topologies being stronger or weaker does not apply to two different spaces, the domain and codomain. Presumably you mean that if f:X->Y is continuous, the topology induced on X is weaker than that of X. But then I don't understand why it is relevant that f is surjective. If you are trying to get at topological invariance, the open set definition is already evidently so. I would suggest giving the open set definition first, and then stating that it is equivalent to the epsilon-delta definition for metric spaces. 165.230.90.57 15:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I tried to clarify the second paragraph. The point of the introduction (at least from my perspective) and the reference to the epsilon-delta definition is to provide some sort of intuitive explanation of continuous functions in arbitrary topological spaces. If you think you can improve the introduction then go ahead. But I do not think it is a good idea to give the open set definition of continuity in the opening paragraphs. MathMartin 19:15, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 11:01, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

User:MathMartin/Newton polynomial

A page you created, MathMartin\Newton polynomial, was nominated for deletion. As it looks like you were attempting to create a user subpage, I've moved the page to User:MathMartin/Newton polynomial. Good luck with your work on the article. —Ilmari Karonen 01:22, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Hugo Steinhaus - his full name

Hi, could you tell me from where do you know Hugo Steinhaus full name. I'm curious about "Wladyslaw". Is http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=7383 your only source? Thanks in advance.

I copied the name from http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=7383. But perhaps a different source for his name can be found in one of the articles in http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/index.html. MathMartin 10:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)