User talk:Quantling

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Welcome!

Hello, Quantling, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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Category deletion

Hi! For future reference, categories that have been empty for more than four days can be tagged for speedy deletion using {{db-empty}}. I have gone ahead and deleted Category:Professors of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute per your request. Cheers, –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:01, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Log prior

Hi Quantling,

Thanks for your correction (and explanation) of my mistaken discussion of the logarithmic prior at Jeffreys prior. I've corrected it and discussed the point at Talk:Jeffreys prior#Equivalence to logarithmic prior.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Derivative of Invertible Matrix

You're a dick. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.182.108 (talk) 03:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Not expecting to be called a "dick" I have tried to figure out why 165.123.182.108 would think so. Upon investigation it appears that 165.123.182.108 and 138.89.248.91 are the same user, and that the latter added text about the derivative of an invertible matrix that I had undone. I had submitted the "undo" because part of the change made by 138.89.248.91 looked wrong to me, but I now realize that there was much more to the change and that the bulk of the change was of high quality. Thus, although it was inadvertent, I was a dick. I apologize to 165.123.182.108 / 138.89.248.91 and am thankful that you have resubmitted your quality text. Quantling (talk) 15:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Haha, sorry. I was a little pissed for other reasons and expecting an arrogant wikipedian editor to rant at me for vandalism...my apologies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.182.108 (talk) 06:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Elias omega coding

Curiously, the bit sequence you provided was for one google squared, and therefore roughly twice the length, than for one google. I've fixed it and provided an additional coding length comparison between delta and omega for a google'd google, i.e. a google to the hundredth power. Feel free to look over it when you have the chance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.96.84.75 (talk) 18:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I must have accidentally used $100^{100}$ instead of $10^{100}$. Quantling (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Category:Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology

Hi

I have proposed that Category:Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology, which you created, should be deleted or renamed. Your input would be welcome in the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 23#Category:Fellows_of_the_International_Society_for_Computational_Biology. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:23, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Your edits to generating function

I see you are adding stuff to the generating function article, but I do not agree with (all) the contents, as they seem to be inconsistent with other article or with common sense. Notably

1. Fourier transforms involve functions of a real variable, not sequences
2. Fourier transforms require some convergence properties that formal power series are not guaranteed to satisfy
3. You wrote a complicated statement about radii of convergence, that seems to fail when $B(x)=0$. In fact I cannot see how a statement that entirely ignores the part $A(x)$ could hold. There is of course a much more obvious statemen involving radius of convergence, why not state that one? Please consider providing some explanation and reference.

I'm not saying these edits make no sense at all, but as they are now they can only cause confusion. Unless they are improved, they will have to be reverted, sorry. Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 14:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try to address these issues. If I fail, please do me the favor of attempting the same yourself. Quantling (talk) 14:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've attempted to address items 1 and 2, above. If you find my edits lacking, please let me know (or make edits yourself). For #3, yes, A(x) can be ignored if its radius of convergence $r'$ is larger than $r$. That's because it's contribution to the asymptotics would be $(1/r')^{n}$ which is drowned out by the $(1/r)^{n}$ from the other term. Also, yes the formula fails if $B(r)=0$ (which would occur if $B(x)$ were 0 for all $x$); but that is already noted in the article. If you still find this insufficient, please let me know. What is the "more obvious statement"? Perhaps you could add it. Quantling (talk) 14:57, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Magnetar Capital

nice work Decora (talk) 01:32, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I have marked you as a reviewer

I have added the "reviewers" property to your user account. This property is related to the Pending changes system that is currently being tried. This system loosens page protection by allowing anonymous users to make "pending" changes which don't become "live" until they're "reviewed". However, logged-in users always see the very latest version of each page with no delay. A good explanation of the system is given in this image. The system is only being used for pages that would otherwise be protected from editing.

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Catalan number

Num Ref -- I removed your recent edit to Catalan number because it was a sentence fragment and I couldn't figure out how to fix what you were trying to express. Please accept my apology for not figuring out your intent; please edit the page again, aiming for a little more clarity—so that even I can understand it :-) Quantling (talk) 17:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Look at the numbers in the centers of rows in Pascal's triangle. Look at the sequence of Catalan numbers. Look at Pascal's triangle again. Look at the Catalan numbers again. You'd be very annoyed with me if I didn't let you figure out this very simple fact for yourself. Num Ref (talk) 22:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

The Catalan numbers are ${\binom {2n}{n}}/(n+1)$ and the numbers in the middle of the rows of Pascal's triangle are ${\binom {2n}{n}}$, so they differ by a factor of $n+1$; I get that. Your added text followed immediately after an alternative expression for the nth Catalan number, ${\binom {2n}{n}}-{\binom {2n}{n+1}}$, but your text,

"Or by looking up the nth center number in Pascal's triangle (a central binomial coefficient) and dividing it by n."

appears to be aiming to give (again) the article's original formula for the Catalan number. If you have a different intent, or are trying to get at something subtler than I can recognize, please feel to continue discussing that here ... or to edit the article directly. Best -- Quantling (talk) 15:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

No, you got it exactly right. So I was wrong by one little detail, the whole thing must be deleted!? Is that the Wikipedia way? I have no interest in becoming a Wikipedia warrior. How do I cancel my Wikipedia membership? Num Ref (talk) 20:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I have given you the wrong impression, and I apologize for that. If it were the n vs. (n+1) thing I could have and would have corrected that myself, and I would not have reversed your entire edit. The reason I reversed the edit is that even with the corrected n+1 factor it looked redundant. That is, the article appeared to me to say that one could define the Catalan number as A or B or A, with the second A being the redundant one. Together with the fact that your edit was not a complete sentence, I decided that it should be removed.

However, it was clear to me that you were trying to say something and that it could be important, which is why I went to the extra step of alerting you to my change. Please, if I have erred, don't give up. Either make the edit as you think it should be, or continue to discuss it here with me. I am just another editor, so I have no authority to say that I'm right and you are wrong, and that it must be my way; my power is only that I can have discussions such as these and hope that I am convincing! Thanks Quantling (talk) 10:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Gibbs sampling

You're welcome! Thanks also for your corrections and additions. I've been trying to understand Gibbs sampling better, and I find in general that working on the Wikipedia page about a subject I am trying to understand helps in understanding it. Also, the old page on Gibbs sampling was severely lacking in practical explanations. I did some similar work on the page on the expectation-maximization algorithm and on variational Bayes, and created the page on compound probability distributions; you might want to review them. Benwing (talk) 22:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

HMM edits

These edits are all my own work. I'm very aware of the restrictions on copying text, but thanks for checking up on this. The particular format I'm using for expressing mathematically the various models is fairly standard in the statistical literature, and it's similar to the format used in WinBUGS and related programs, making it fairly easy to use these examples to construct BUGS models. However, I didn't copy anything. These models come out of my attempts to understand exactly how HMM's work and relate HMM's to graphical models, hierarchical Bayesian models, etc. If you look on e.g. the mixture model and Dirichlet process pages, you'll see more similar models that I've inserted. In fact I've done a bunch more work on the modeling section in HMM's that somehow isn't appearing; I assume I didn't save the page on my desktop computer that has those changes. I make direct comparisons between HMM's and mixture models to show how they're similar, I expand the specific examples of Gaussian and categorical HMM's to be full models and lay out both the Bayesian and non-Bayesian versions, and I clean up some of the notation w.r.t. vectors of probabilities vs. the components expressed individually. You can see what the end result will be by looking at the mixture model page. Benwing (talk) 00:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

BTW I'm interested in creating diagrams that show how these models look using graphical model notation, i.e. plate notation; see the diagram on that page for an example. Any idea how to go about creating such diagrams? Benwing (talk) 00:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for all the good work. Unfortunately I don't know how to make those diagrams. Quantling (talk) 13:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for edits to likelihood function

Thanks for the simplifications. Benwing (talk) 09:08, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

And thank you … you did the bulk of it. Quantling (talk) 18:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Fisher Information and Its Relation to Entropy

Because it could be of general interest, I moved this discussion to Talk:Fisher information#Fisher Information and Its Relation to Entropy. Quantling (talk) 19:49, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Heads up about an RfC

Please note that there's a new discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure in which you may wish to comment. It is expected to close in about a week. You have received this message because you participated in a similar discussion (2009 AC2 RfC) last year.  Roger ^talk 05:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Quantling (talk) 13:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

How do I create these templates?

(Never mind — I figured it out eventually. 21:27, 28 October 2010 (UTC))

I have created some templates, but they are not working. Any thoughts on why? They are {{Weekday after Julianday}}, {{Weekday after date}}, and {{Weekday before date}}. The latter two use the first as a subroutine.

The goal is to be able to compute, e.g., Election Day (United States) as either {{Weekday after date|2010|November|1|Tuesday}} or {{Weekday before date|2010|November|9|Tuesday}}. I think we need both the "before" and "after" templates because of leap years; e.g., the Tuesday before March 3, {{CURRENTYEAR}} and the Tuesday after February 23, {{CURRENTYEAR}} are guaranteed to be the same in non-leap years, but in the leap years where February 24 and March 2 are both Tuesdays the two will give different results.

I realize that {{Weekday in month|YEAR|MONTH|N|Q}} does something similar, but it is not quite as powerful in that I do not see how to use it to compute the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as is needed for Election Day (United States), nor do I know how to use that template to compute across year boundaries, as in the Sunday after Christmas, since it does not return a year in some cases.

Also, we may want to have defaults for one or more of Y, M, D, and W. Do you have recommendations for that, or for the order of those parameters in the templates, or any other aspect?

Thanks —Quantling (talk | contribs) 21:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not saying that your question will not be answered through making your request here, but I think with a question such as yours requiring someone with template coding ability to happen by, you might be better off posting this to a help forum where lots of eyes will see your post, such as the help desk. The technical section of the village pump would also work well, though its more a forum for general technical issues across Wikipedia. Though not nearly as high traffic, Wikipedia:Requested templates is a very targeted place as well. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Rollback granted

I have granted rollback rights to your account; the reason for this is that after a review of some of your contributions, I believe you can be trusted to use rollback correctly, and for its intended usage of reverting vandalism, and that you will not abuse it by reverting good-faith edits or to revert-war. For information on rollback, see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback and Wikipedia:Rollback feature. If you do not want rollback, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Good luck and thanks. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

And with regard to your request, yes, we try to warn all editors, including IPs. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 02:51, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Prisoner's Dilemma

You reverted my edit on the Prisoner's Dilemma. I understand the edit had a lot of jargon, but I feel it is a glaring hole for anyone specializing in the Prisoner's Dilemma class of games. If I add some cites will you not erase it? Sorry i have no name just my IP 75.80.104.155 (talk) 00:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Please do try again. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 19:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for catching that mistake I made! I meant William A. Wallace (organizational theorist), not William A. Wallace. The page has been fixed. Danski14^(talk) 18:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Completely new abortion proposal and mediation

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Formal mediation has been requested

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RFAR on Abortion

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tkWWW

Hey, I created the initial creator of this article and thus I searched and checked ALL results given by google... So a short question: how did you find this PDF? Anyway: thanks for improving the article ;) mabdul 13:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

My google for "world-wide web multiuser domains" gives it as the first hit. Thank you for making this article be. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 16:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

my "problem" was that I was searching for tkWWW and this pdf doesn't contain this string... so I counldn't find that paper ;( mabdul 19:13, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

move of World Wide Web Conference 1

Hi Quantling, to inform you that I do support a move but not to this name, so I have reverted the move for now and initiated a requested move process. See Talk:World Wide Web Conference 1. You are welcome to provide your comments there. More info on the process can be found at Wikipedia:Requested moves. Thanks, SchreyP ^(messages) 09:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely if there is anything to be discussed let's go with the requested moves process. Thanks —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Quantling, You are absolutely right with your proposal. I didn't notice the little difference in title earlier. So I have supported your proposal in the requested move section. Sorry for the hassle and thanks for the patience. SchreyP ^(messages) 23:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Magnetar Capital

Thanks for alerting me that the "r" was a direct quotation, I thought it was a typo or vandalism. However, quoting that kind of dialogue seems rather un-encyclopedic. Do you think it would be better to use brackets ([are]) or sic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.70.246 (talk) 03:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I was ambivalent and didn't pursue those possibilities. If you are so motivated, go for it! —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Finally responded on Talk:Bucklin voting

Homunq (talk) 13:28, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

Hi, I've made a number of changes to this article recently (full disclosure: editing as part of the ISCB wikipedia competition) and have just opened a request for peer review, with the objective of getting some advice on areas for improvement and reassessing the rating on the quality scale. As someone who has previously made a number of edits to this page, I'm just letting you know in case you're interested in the outcome, or possibly contributing. Thanks! --Amkilpatrick (talk) 16:10, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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Nomination for deletion of Template:Weekday after Julianday

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Magnetar Capital updates

Hi, Quantling! I see that you've made some edits recently to Magnetar Capital and I wanted to bring to your attention the conversations I have had with another editor on that Talk page, as well as a request I've made there to suggest adding a section covering basic information about the company. Is this something you'd be interested to look at? As disclosure, I do have a financial conflict of interest, as I am working on this on behalf of Magnetar Capital as part of my work at Beutler Ink. Thanks! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 22:21, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

 Done This is has been done. Thanks! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 21:28, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

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Gamma function - Motivation

Yes your wording is better. But for your comment about multiplying Gamma function with a constant function - there is only one constant function f(x)=1 that would preserve functional equation of Gamma function and multiplying by 1 has no effect so it has no sense to mention any constant function when talking about multiplying Gamma function while preserving functional equation.195.3.171.70 (talk) 17:11, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Good observation, thank you. Furthermore, I fear that someone might take my wording, think it would be simpler as "period of 1" and then we'll get back to where we started, where a 1/m period is more precise -- and so on cycling! Perhaps there is a wording that allows all g(x) (even the trivial ones if we can swing it) and doesn't get us stuck in an editing cycle. If you come up with it, please edit! Regardless, the mπx without the 2 was flat out wrong -- thank you for catching that. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 17:23, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

projective geometry vs. non

hi,

sorry for the message, but with your recent addition i couldn't help but engage in a semi-philosophical discussion.

to me, projective geometry seems inferior to 'regular' (euclidean) geometry, is this the wrong way of looking at it?

when i look at the geometry navigation bar, i notice there are tonnes of geometries and it's easy to single one out. but i feel like many of these can fall within euclidean geometry (or affine geometry).

i can't imagine doing riemannian geometry on anything that isn't euclidean. but i'm sure as a physicist you could give me many examples.

my view is that, ideally, we would like to use euclidean geometry for everything (including reality, coughcoughpseudoAnythingisLame).

i understand in practice this is not attainable. but even so, if i was to have an ordering for what i do know i would say

euclidean > hyperbolic > projective

i say this because i find the whole idea of 'adding a point at infinity' as making the geometry weaker than a euclidean one, assuming we have an algebraic graph of a function that we can analytically solve.

• in this way, the idea of a 'point at infinity' is "pushed down" to the algebraic level where taking a limit of the function and that doesn't affect the geometric interpretation.

i use a similar argument for hyperbolic geometry because it dispenses of the parallel postulate, even though Playfair's axiom gives us a logical representation for it.

i don't know though, and this is why i'm posting here.

what's your take on this? is it wrong to believe the purest geometry is the best one, solely because it doesn't allow the introduction of 'hacks' to facilitate an objective?

i am aware the great gauss discovered hyperbolic geometry, but i don't think it was his intention to do so. i could be wrong on this as i haven't consulted the appropriate historical assessments.

maybe you take offence to my stance, given that much of your field uses the alternatives that i am deriding. if so, i apologise in advance.

maybe i'm just too young (comparatively to veterans in any discipline) to appreciate the fact that many of these alternatives were contrived in an era where computation did not exist.

Euclidean geometry has been around for a very long time and is practical for describing many situations. If it catches your interest that's a very good choice. The others are for more special situations. If you find them interesting, that's good too. Have fun! —Quantling (talk | contribs) 00:49, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

well, way to be neutral. i wanted an opinion!! no matter. do you think it's unfair to perceive the non-euclidean geometries as a kind of 'overfitting'?

for example:

in mathematics we could look at spline interpolation as overfitting if we get the Runge phenomenon (fair?).

in statistics it's easy for someone of your calibre to think of trivial examples.

in a possibly more-abstract context, can't we argue that 'creating a geometry to meet some objective' is overfitting?

my view is: if we deviate from established systems to meet an objective, then we're (presumably) compromising/narrowing this system's generalisation. and i dunno, it feels like overfitting.

i would concede there are cases where new systems are proposed to meet objectives that the original system(s) were not designed for. not sure if this applies to geometry though.

if you disagree, why?

Part of what is interesting about non-Euclidean geometries is in the comparison to Euclidean geometry. If something is constant despite the change of the geometry, it is intresting how much staying power that has. If something changes, it gives a new perspective on the feature that is present in Euclidean geometry. All interesting to me. So, maybe it is fairer to not say "neutral" but that I rate them all positively!

For example, projective geometry gives insight into the relationship between ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas. As equations in Euclidean geometry they look somewhat different:

${\begin{aligned}{\frac {x^{2}}{a^{2}}}+{\frac {y^{2}}{b^{2}}}&=1\\y&=x^{2}\\xy&=1\end{aligned}}$

... and yet they all are conic sections. Is it coincidence that they all come from an intersection of a cone with a plane? In projective geometry, a simple transformation of the underlying space can take any one of them to any of them, making their family relationships abundantly clear. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 23:06, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

The_Good_Doctor_(TV_series)

Hi there,

You reverted my edit here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Good_Doctor_(TV_series)&oldid=1032938731

Please have a look at the cited source. It does not contain the awkward parenthetical thing i removed, and you reinserted.

Cheers eddi Doceddi (talk) 19:57, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I screwed up. Thank you for persevering for excellence. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:13, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Volume of an n-ball, Dimensions that are not non-negative integers

Your formula at [[1]] seems to be incorrect. It works for n=-3, -7, -11,... Anyway, would you be interesting in pursuing the research of n-balls in negative, fractal, and imaginary dimensions together? Guswen (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Not interested. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 20:34, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Sure. But fix your formula first (to cover all negative odd numbers as you claim, not only -4k-3 for natural k with 0), and only then try to publish it on Wikipedia. Guswen (talk) 23:41, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I haven't checked that the formula is wrong, but the matter is moot, yes?; the formula in question has already been removed. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 23:55, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. Your formula has been removed, cause it's wrong. Why do you consider this moot? Wrong statements should be removed. Don't you think? 2+2=4 not 5 Guswen (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Where are you getting your information from? The comment associated with the removal is "Dimensions that are not non-negative integers: unsourced and unimportant to volumes of n-balls; remove whole section". —Quantling (talk | contribs) 02:39, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm getting my information from Microsoft Excel. Your formula is then both unimportant and wrong. Guswen (talk) 07:32, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Asymptotics of generating functions

Hello, I think you were the one who added asymptotic section to generating functions. Very nice formulas! Would you mind also adding a reference for these? Thanks. Asympt (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I am responding on the article talk page —Quantling (talk | contribs) 22:54, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

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Doane Stuart School ‎

Regardless of what the cited source said in November, he is no longer listed on the school's website as their headmaster. See https://www.doanestuart.org/about/faculty-and-staff/ Meters (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. It's best to have this discussion on the Talk:Doane Stuart School page so that others can participate if they wish. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 02:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

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half tangent

Hi Quantling. You might be interested to look at the draft I started at User:Jacobolus/HalfTan. Still needs a lot of work (especially tracking down references) to make it as a main namespace page though. –jacobolus (t) 22:38, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

It looks like you have put a lot of work into this! What are you thinking for the name of the page? If I can find some time, I may send some suggestions your way. Thank you for this effort —Quantling (talk | contribs) 13:56, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I was going to call it half-tangent or half tangent. –jacobolus (t) 16:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

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December 2022

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Milky Way. This means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be although other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:30, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: my first edit warring warning in 16 years of editing Wikipedia! Either I am losing it, or the circumstances in the present situation aren't quite the way they seemed when you examined them. I guess the jury is still out. Thank you for your vigilance at keeping Wikipedia the best that it can be. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:09, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Well. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. I do see the attempts to find a compromise, but the dispute has reached a point where that has to happen on the talk page before further edits are made. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:24, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, "... has to happen on the talk page". We did an official RfC and it's all found its way to a conclusion. Yay to us, and thank you for your help! —Quantling (talk | contribs) 21:21, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Imaginary unit

Hi, Quantling. I've been watching your editing of the article Imaginary unit (and, as you have no doubt noticed, made a couple of small edits of my own). I just thought I would let you know that, although there are a few details which I would have done differently, I think the overall effect is that you have made substantial improvements.😀 JBW (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Regarding "... would have done differently ...", please do overhaul any of my edits if you think it will improve the article. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 18:51, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Seconding JBW's comment.
Separately, on the other topic, and your last comment, about the meaningfulness of the indexing of Fibonacci numbers: the indexing of Fibonacci numbers is in some essential way cooked in to who they are. This is quite unlike the indexing of composite numbers or perfect numbers, which stand alone to a much greater extent. Probably no one has ever had anything interesting to say about who the 100th composite number is, and it may not be known in my lifetime if there is a 100th perfect number. To me, this is an indication that (Prime number, Fibonacci numbers) would be a sensible, defensible, consistent pair of article titles. Anyhow, I say this not to try to convince you (as I said, I'm finished participating in that discussion), just out of the neurotic need to feel as if I've communicated my point clearly. Happy editing, JBL (talk) 20:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

‎Savage16 20

This user ‎Savage16 20 is vandalising wikipedia article on quadratic formula please block him David dclork li (talk) 13:40, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

I am not an administrator of any sort and, off the top of my head, I don't know the procedure for requesting user blocks. :frown: —Quantling (talk | contribs) 13:59, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

RS

Hey, Quantling! I'm confused about this edit. Why do you think these aren't reliable sources? Valereee (talk) 21:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I followed the links and was underwhelmed by what I found. For the first one, it appears that the ISBNs are not valid and Amazon and Amazon marketplace haven't heard of it. But based upon your query, I also dove deeper with the second and found that my first evaluation was wrong. I have restored it. If you find that I was overly judgemental on the first as well, please let me know what you find (and go ahead and restore it if you want). Thanks —Quantling (talk | contribs) 21:59, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Those are academic publishers. One is Stanford University. There really is not higher standard for reliability. Presence on Amazon/Amazon Marketplace is not a good way to evaluate sources. Valereee (talk) 17:44, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

It's not an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal, which is among the "not higher standard for reliability" category. Perhaps you would agree that a book that is not available for purchase even at its own publisher is many levels inferior. And, I might add, not very useful to the Wikipedia reader. @Valereee —Quantling (talk | contribs) 17:54, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

The sources in question are .

The first is published by John Wiley & Sons, an academic publisher. The second is from Stanford University. The fact they aren't available from their own publisher in their original edition is not evidence of inferiority. If you believe these are not reliable sources until proven unreliable, and you're using whether or not you can find them at Amazon or their publisher as evidence of unreliability, you're using the wrong standard. Valereee (talk) 18:01, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

The Hughs is okay; I was mistaken when I thought otherwise. It is the Duignin that is at issue. Let's move this discussion to the article talk page: Talk:Political correctness § Hoover. Someone else has already started a discussion about how it is actually Hoover, not Stanford. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 18:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

References

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edit on cancel culture

Hi, just saw your note on the reversion on cancel culture. Thank you for the extensive explanation of why.

I felt something was missing in the introduction, that phenomemon (like many others in popular culture), is related to a vocal subset (minority/majority). I thought it would be nice to make that point in the introduction, however I see you point. Bquast (talk) Bquast (talk) 13:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I made an edit to the article. I'm not sure that it is what you were aiming for, but perhaps it is close. It has the upside of being exceedingly brief! —Quantling (talk | contribs) 22:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

100 prisoners variant

Hello, I am making a project on the 100 prisoners problem and its variants. I made a program to simulate the odd number variant and I found that your probability of winning with the stratagy is correct (no matter the number of prisonners).

I tried to formalize this result in vain. Can you send me your sources or explain me?

Thank you in advance. 194.167.44.43 (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

You might search the web for "Number of permutations with only odd cycles". Or look at Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A000246 (Number of permutations in the symmetric group S_n that have odd order.)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 00:12, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Doctor Who series 14

Hi there, I just wanted to leave you a quick comment to say that I do appreciate the contributions you've made to the above article. I realise I changed some of them relatively quickly (as I was online at the time), but I assure you I did think carefully before doing so and hope my edit notes were sufficient for you to understand my reasons. It feels like you do from the edit history, but I felt it best to explicitly tell you I appreciate your input rather than just leave it implied. Best regards, JustAnotherCompanion (talk) 02:36, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

All good. And thank you for your efforts and good work. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 13:32, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Odds

Hello Quantling,

You reverted edits I recently made to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds. You said my changes were not consistent with following paragraphs. Let's try to fix the following paragraphs to be consistent with the corrected equations instead of using wrong equations. Please point out which parts of the paragraphs following the equations are inconsistent with the corrected equations?

- User:Stanmanish — Preceding undated comment added 13:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

@Stanmanish: Yes, this is a great discussion to have, but let's have it on the article talk page so that others can join in too: Talk:Odds § Odds in favor and odds against —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:03, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

@Quantling, okay, I'll do that. Stanmanish (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Temporal metaphors for logical implication

Inspired by your edit comment ""Since" is better when it changed at some time in the past", I thought about this a bit, and realized that we use temporal and spatial metaphors for logical implication in many cases (cf. Metaphors We Live By):

• If ... then: "I was young then" = at that time; "and then I left" = indicating the action next in order of time
• Hence used for both place and time
• "Consequently/logical consequent" -- originally used for temporal sequence
• French puisque (logical) 'since' < puis (temporal 'then')

So that is not a good reason to avoid "since" in the logical sense, pace some prescriptive grammarians. Of course, you want to avoid it when it could be ambiguous.

In fact, I think the distinction between "since" and "because" has nothing to do with temporality. Interestingly, "since" is found about twice as often at the beginning of sentences than "because". Could that be because it is commonly used to introduce an already known fact (cf. givenness)? (Note that you can't say "since" in that sentence because I'm introducing a novel claim.)

I'm not sure I've have put my finger on the difference, but I don't think they're completely interchangeable:

• We thought that, since we were in the area, we'd stop by and see them. (Implies less of an obligation?)
• Since we have a few minutes to wait for the train, let's have a cup of coffee.
• Are you feeling unwell because you ate too much? (for "since" to have the temporal meeting, the tense would have to be different, and you'd probably say "ever since"; but "since" in the causal meaning sounds wrong)
• It is expensive because it contains truffles. (I am telling you that it contains truffles)
• Since it contains truffles, it's not surprising that it's expensive. (We already knew that it contained truffles.)

Now, as for mathematical use in particular, "since" seems to be widely used:

• [8]
• [9]
• [10]

It is usually used either to pull up an indisputable claim ("since a+1>a"), something that was mentioned or hypothesized ("since P is a ring"). This is consistent with my givenness theory.

Anyway, enough for now. There is surely an article about this in some linguistics journal. --Macrakis (talk) 22:40, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for all the research. Yes, there seems to be quite a history of using temporal relations to indicate logical relations. So, yes, I'd be in the wrong if I said that folks who used the temporal words are in the wrong. But I can still prefer the words that are more clearly logical than temporal, right? I am hopeful that I can still make these edits going forward; but I would need a better comment, which explains that it's a matter of preference rather than correctness. (And if another editor has the opposite preference then I simply give in, because I don't care enough to fight about it.) Thanks again --Lee. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 01:12, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

It's hard to avoid spatial or temporal metaphors! What would we do without "if... then"? cf. also 'Since' vs. 'As' vs. 'Because', although I don't think that writer quite captures the nuance between 'because' and 'since'. Do you agree with my intuitions above? --Macrakis (talk) 15:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Physics tells us that causality can only be forward in time; one cannot cause a change in history. So, I think there is inevitably confusion as to when a "sequence" of statements represent physical or logical causality vs. are ordered temporally from past to future. Although "then" is frequently used for time, in an "if ... then" sentence my mind interprets the "then" as purely logical -- I'd need a second "then" to indicate time: "If back then people were always nice to each other then then was a better time than now". I'm not sure about "since" having a milder degree of causality than "because"; I'll have to think about that some.

Generally, if a more-precise common word can be used, I like to use it. Even easily dismissable ambiguities can distract or slow a reader's understanding by a smidgen, and especially in hard reading material (e.g., a complicated mathematical proof) why do that to the reader? So, yes, a sentence beginning "Since ..." will almost always resolve itself into logical or temporal within a few words, but why work that hard when "Because ..." is clear immediately? —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Because there is no possible ambiguity in mathematics, whose propositions live outside time! I suppose one could imagine some use of "since" in explaining something in physics or in temporal logic, but that seems like a stretch. Anyway, would anyone write "since the ball was released, it accelerated" in the temporal sense? I think they'd say "after the ball was released". On the other hand, "since this ball is made of lead, its rotational inertia is higher than that of the wooden ball" sounds a lot better than "because" to me, because the reader is just being reminded of a fact that has already been introduced. And the present tense "is" reinforces that. One can imagine ambiguous cases, e.g., "since the ball was inflated, it was more visible" -- is that ever since the ball was inflated, or because it was inflated? But they seem marginal. --Macrakis (talk) 16:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Indeed "being reminded of a fact that has already been introduced" is temporal, at least in part. If it helps in understanding to emphasize the reminder rather than the fact then "since" might be the better word. I suppose that could be the case sometimes but, before going with "since", I'd double check myself that the reminder is more relevant than the fact. In particular, I find "Because this ball is made of lead, ..." to be just fine to my ear. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 16:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is temporal in terms of the argument, but not the topic, just as "we have seen/we have now established/we now know that q cannot be prime..." doesn't mean that q used to be prime! I would argue that "since q cannot be prime..." is similar. So what does "since q cannot have been prime..." mean? It doesn't mean it changed; it means that we are talking about an earlier argument. --Macrakis (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

PS I'm particularly sensitive to the nuances of conjunctions like this, because it took me a long time to understand how arguments were made in French. I'm still not sure I understand the nuance between car/puisque/parce que/vu que/.... Although I did finally figure out that "or" is used in rhetoric outside mathematics a lot like "now" in mathematical English. After all, that's it's literal meaning. --Macrakis (talk) 18:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

If you're interested in pursuing this discussion, I think some of my French reference works may do a better job of dissecting these conjunctions. Let me know if you're curious. --Macrakis (talk) 18:18, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

On a different topic, what are your thoughts on "resp.", e.g., "when D is positive (resp. negative), the roots are real (resp. complex)"? To my eye, it seems "German" somehow. Is it used in modern English-language math written by native English speakers? If not, what is? My formal math education ended 47 years ago... (although I do continue to contribute to the Maxima system), so I'm sure I'm not up on math writing style. --Macrakis (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I suspect that "since q is not prime ..." means more or less what we've said it means in the above: "Since the time that we assumed/established that q is not prime, logic indicates that ...". If emphasizing the timing is important then it can be written that way. But if timing isn't so important then I'd stick with logical causality: "because q is not prime ...".

I suppose that the timing could be worth emphasizing in a proof by contradiction: "Proof that q is prime, by contradiction. Assume that q is not prime. Since q is not prime, q is ...". Though, I'm more likely to write that with subjunctive and conditional tenses: "Proof that q is prime, by contradiction. If q were not prime then q would be ...".

I think "resp." as you use it (or "respectively", which is how I usually spell it out) works well in English. I am a native American English speaker and I have no complaints there. My French is nohow good enough to understand these sorts of subtleties in French. My last interactions with Maxima were about 40 years ago; thank you for reminding me of that time. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 13:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the discussion.

BTW, I worked on Macsyma (the original name) starting in 1971, as a high school student. Besides writing new code, I spend a fair amount of time supporting our users (physicists, engineers, mathematicians) using the MIT system via ARPANET (there was no other way to use it). I had nothing to do with the version commercialized by Symbolics (1982- ) or Macsyma, Inc. When it became open source under the name Maxima (2000s), I started contributing to it again.... If I retire one of these days (I'm overdue), I'll probably spend more time on it... and on Wikipedia. --Macrakis (talk) 14:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I think my interaction was with the Symbolics version of Macsyma. Thank you —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

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