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Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Are Wikipedia's mathematics articles targeted at professional mathematicians?
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BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. Why is it so difficult to learn mathematics from Wikipedia articles?
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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. Wikipedia's sister projects
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Wikiversity which hosts collaborative learning projects, may be additional resources to consider. See also: Using Wikipedia for mathematics self-study Why are Wikipedia mathematics articles so abstract?
Abstraction is a fundamental part of mathematics. Even the concept of a number is an abstraction. Comprehensive articles may be forced to use abstract language because that language is the only language available to give a correct and thorough description of their topic. Because of this, some parts of some articles may not be accessible to readers without a lot of mathematical background. If you believe that an article is overly abstract, then please leave a detailed comment on the talk page. If you can provide a more down-to-earth exposition, then you are welcome to add that to the article. Why don't Wikipedia's mathematics articles define or link all of the terms they use?
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We try to make mathematics articles as accessible to the largest likely audience as possible. In order to achieve this, often an intuitive explanation of something precedes a rigorous definition. The first few paragraphs of an article (called the
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A well-written article should establish its context well enough that it does not need a separate list of prerequisites. Furthermore, directly addressing the reader breaks Wikipedia's encyclopedic tone. If you are unable to determine an article's context and prerequisites, please ask for help on the talk page. Why are Wikipedia's mathematics articles so hard to read?
We strive to make our articles comprehensive, technically correct and easy to read. Sometimes it is difficult to achieve all three. If you have trouble understanding an article, please post a specific question on the article's talk page. Why don't math pages rely more on helpful YouTube videos and media coverage of mathematical issues?
Mathematical content of YouTube videos is often unreliable (though some may be useful for pedagogical purposes rather than as references). Media reports are typically sensationalistic. This is why they are generally avoided. |
Hello all, I would like to invite you to attend in Articles for deletion/Similarity-based-TOPSIS and submit your opinion. I know that this article is in the field of operations research but there is no project related to operations research. Thank you in advance. Scholartop ( talk) 06:28, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
I would gladly include {{ maths rating}} in some other articles that almost contain mathematical topics. However, is it still allowed to include this template in articles that contain fewer mathematical subjects? I was considering that it could be possible to add it in Quasicrystal since it has fewer mathematical subjects, but most of this describes chemistry. I am not sure whether it would be appropriate for this project. Dedhert.Jr ( talk) 12:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
- I went ahead and added it to
Quasicrystal. In general there doesn't seem to be any problem with putting partially mathematical topics into the math wikiproject. –
jacobolus
(t) 16:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
- I see. Thank you. Dedhert.Jr ( talk) 02:25, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
The IP accounts Special:Contributions/103.21.125.84 and Special:Contributions/103.21.127.79 keep adding links to academia.edu and arXiv articles by Harish Chandra Rajpoot to the external links sections, e.g. to Trapezohedron, Great-circle distance, Solid angle, Descartes' theorem, Circle packing. My speculation is that these IPs are being used by Mr. Rajpoot himself (apparently a graduate student at IIT Bombay) to promote his papers here. I removed several of these links because, while relevant, the content raises some other red flags: Rajpoot's papers don't cite any prior sources and name known results after himself. I left a comment on his talk page suggesting he may want to try publishing his work in a peer-reviewed journal; in response he put back a new link, this time to the paper "HCR’S THEORY OF POLYGON 'Solid Angle Subtended By Any Polygonal Plane at Any Point in the Space'" "published" in the journal International Journal of Mathematics and Physical Sciences Research by "Research Publish Journals", which does not seem to be peer reviewed. Does someone else want to try to talk to this IP user and try to get them to engage in conversation? – jacobolus (t) 16:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Over on BIT predicate, we have an IP editor who seems intent on cramming as much off-topic notation-heavy WP:TECHNICAL detail as possible into the history section. More eyes on this would be helpful. — David Eppstein ( talk) 21:50, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
- @ David Eppstein: The Ackermann coding is already discussed in the history section. It is clearly not off-topic. Where else would such content go?
- That aside, your combative behavior over this constructive edit (calling it an "attack" and talking about "hurting my feelings") has been disturbing. One expects more maturity from a professor. See
WP:AGF and
WP:PA.
2601:547:501:8F90:6D91:586F:CC4B:73D2 (
talk) 21:59, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
- Your edit has been reverted by multiple people now. If you think there are good reasons for it, please open a discussion on the talk page of
BIT predicate first so a consensus can be reached on whether this belongs in the history section, or in another section, or should not be in the article at all.
PatrickR2 (
talk) 16:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
- @
PatrickR2: What do you mean by "multiple people"? Also, see
WP:OWNERSHIP.
2601:547:501:8F90:75EF:C82F:5D9:1C9 (
talk) 23:20, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
- Multiple, as in more than one: David Eppstein and Russ Woodroofe have both reverted you. 128.164.177.55 ( talk) 16:12, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
-
WP:OWNERSHIP doesn't mean that editors who care about specific pages can't make arguments for their preferred versions or ask other editors to go to the talk page and establish some consensus before making significant changes. To quote that page,
"Even though editors can never 'own' an article, it is important to respect the work and ideas of your fellow contributors. Therefore, be cautious when removing or rewriting large amounts of content, particularly if this content was written by one editor; it is more effective to try to work with the editor than against them—even if you think they are acting as if they "own" the article. [...] In many cases, a core group of editors will have worked to build the article up to its present state and will revert edits that they find detrimental in order, they believe, to preserve the quality of the encyclopedia. Such reversion does not indicate an "ownership" problem [...] Where disagreement persists after such a reversion, the editor proposing the change should first take the matter to the talk page, without personal comments or accusations of ownership. In this way, the specifics of any change can be discussed with the editors who are familiar with the article, who are likewise expected to discuss the content civilly."
– jacobolus (t) 02:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
- @
PatrickR2: What do you mean by "multiple people"? Also, see
WP:OWNERSHIP.
2601:547:501:8F90:75EF:C82F:5D9:1C9 (
talk) 23:20, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
- Your edit has been reverted by multiple people now. If you think there are good reasons for it, please open a discussion on the talk page of
BIT predicate first so a consensus can be reached on whether this belongs in the history section, or in another section, or should not be in the article at all.
PatrickR2 (
talk) 16:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Standardizing Mathematical Notation.
CactiStaccingCrane 13:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
about Delta invariant
I suggest moving this article to the drafts space. I think the subject of this article meets
WP:GNG, but I don't think this article meets the criteria for a stub. I thought about moving this article to the draft space, but
WP:DRAFTIFY said articles older than 90 days should not be draftified without prior consensus at AfD
, so it seems necessary to discuss it first. If someone extends this article, I will withdraw this suggestion. thanks !
SilverMatsu (
talk) 11:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
- No need to draftify. The content of this article is essentially reduced to an implicit link to the definition given in another article. So, I'll redirect this article to the anchor that I have already added in that article.
D.Lazard (
talk) 12:06, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Done
D.Lazard (
talk) 12:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
- I agree. Thank you ! -- SilverMatsu ( talk) 13:30, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
- Just popping in to say that there is another notion of delta invariant in
K-stability of Fano varieties (see
K-stability_of_Fano_varieties#Delta_invariant) which is probably mildly more esoteric than the notion for curves. I'm not suggesting anyone do anything with this information but if the article
Delta invariant was to return it could even be a disambiguation page.
Tazerenix (
talk) 01:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for letting me know. I added Template:Redirect to the top of the section. If someone adds an explanation about another notion of delta invariant to wikipedia, I think that they will create separate articles for each notion, or add explanations to existing separate articles for each notion, so create a Dab page at that time I agree that there is a need.-- SilverMatsu ( talk) 03:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure that this article is not ready to have its own. It has lack context and many things. Most of the texts, as I glanced at, especially in this part, use many second-person pronouns; however, MOS:YOU mentions that one should avoid such words. Because of these problems, would it be possible to merge it into Roots of unity? Dedhert.Jr ( talk) 15:14, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
- I have cleaned the lead up to understand the real content of the article. IMO, Root of unity modulo n, Primitive root modulo n and Carmichael function must be merged in a single article, which could be called Root of unity modulo n. D.Lazard ( talk) 17:10, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
would it be possible to merge it into Roots of unity?
No. -- JBL ( talk) 22:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Help talk:Citation Style 1§ Proposal: Add parameter |eudml=. Need advice on whether the
European Digital Mathematics Library (Parameter |eudml=) meets
WP:GNG. thanks !
SilverMatsu (
talk) 07:06, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Ya got yer
- great icosahedron (regular)
- truncated great icosahedron
- great icosidodecahedron (rectified)
- truncated great stellated dodecahedron (degenerate)
- great stellated dodecahedron (regular)
But where are the cantellate ( great rhombicosidodecahedron is something else) and the omnitruncate? Are they also degenerate? It would be good to note that somewhere. — Tamfang ( talk) 05:39, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- This type of thread is better reserved for Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. Partofthemachine ( talk) 05:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Project-independent quality assessments. This proposes support for quality assessment at the article level, recorded in {{ WikiProject banner shell}}, and inherited by the wikiproject banners. However, wikiprojects that prefer to use custom approaches to quality assessment can continue to do so. Aymatth2 ( talk) 20:23, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Input is requested at the RfD concerning the target of the redirect page Free term. 66.44.62.177 ( talk) 01:13, 8 February 2023 (UTC)