Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Parabolic subgroup of a reflection group

Would someone who understands group theory and more specifically understands reflection groups please look at this article and offer an opinion as to whether it meets the good article criteria? This is the longest-pending Good 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 review Good Article Nominations are not mathematicians. Neither am I. But a chemist and computer scientist should know where to look for mathematicians. The instructions say that any 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)

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 page Wikipedia: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)

I hope someone doesn't mind comparing, but we do have three GAs of Mobius strip, Free abelian group, and Dehn invariant, which is technical and somewhat less conceivably understandable yet visually structured. Unlike algebra, to me, they probably require the notations consisted of weird symbols and variables as the way of shorthand, like abstract algebra; you might want to read History of algebra, thought there is another one. I think the same reason for higher fields of mathematics as in mathematical analysis and topology. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@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 a group (mathematics) of linear 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 quoting WP:MTAU at me does not help with that. --JBL (talk) 17:47, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

Yes; this is addressed in the section Parabolic_subgroup_of_a_reflection_group#Connection_with_the_theory_of_algebraic_groups (including footnote [h]), and also on the talk-page; the best available information on the nomenclature that I'm aware of is this MO thread, but the fact of the matter is that there's not a really good explanation for the name, and reliable sources don't have much to say about it. --JBL (talk) 20:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

@Jacobolus: I have attempted to address the naming issue more explicitly in the lead of the article. --JBL (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Two of the three GAs linked above, Dehn invariant and free 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)

On the other hand, I do realize we still have other GAs like Dirac delta function, e (mathematical constant), Pell's equation, Representation theory of the Lorentz group, and Field (mathematics)? Speaking of quoting "an appropriately audience", it is basically trying to say for the readers who understand the basic concept of mathematics, thereby not for the non-mathematics audience in general; in those examples, they are targeted for students who are studying mathematical analysis, calculus, number theory, and abstract algebra, respectively. Maybe the same reason for Affine symmetric group as FA. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

WP:ONEDOWN is a good first cut at what level to target for these articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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 of W" and ' a parabolic subgroup of W', 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

@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, see MOS: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)

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 in making use of parabolic subgroups in various ways, but in saying almost nothing about what 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)

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 the WP: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)

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)

Do forgive me for adding the tags then, I added them out of caution. Gramix13 (talk) 23:18, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Draft:Ampersand curve

Hi all. Do we think this kind of topic is notable? Certainly not a research topic so it's hard to find any serious academic papers about it. On the other hand, the article itself looks resonable. Quartic plane curve already rightly mentions it. So the question is if it is notable as a separate article. (I'm tempeted to redirect it but want to know what others think.) -- Taku (talk) 15:05, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Inclusion seems fairly harmless; it seems like a relatively rare but unambiguously named and occasionally attested example curve. Here's an apparently reliable source, a paper in the journal journal Annales de l'Institut Fourier https://staff.math.su.se/shapiro/Articles/ReturnAIF.pdf, and another in Documenta Mathematica https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/50286 and it would be worth linking Plücker's book (here's the figure https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_y-XnP4ghQoIC/page/n276/mode/1up but I didn't hunt for the corresponding text page) and also Frost 1872 (here's the figure there https://archive.org/details/elementarytreat00fros/page/n239/mode/1up) – or the content could plausibly be merged into some article about more general curves, with Ampersand curve left as a section redirect. –jacobolus (t) 18:44, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

It seems like it could be a useful illustration of the bitangent. - CRGreathouse (t | c) 22:34, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

It could either be mentioned at bitangents of a quartic or, if deemed non-notable, merged there. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:40, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you all for the inputs. Especially to jacobolus who has found some sources. I will just add those sources and then let the nature (AfC) take its course. Taku (talk) 03:54, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Matrix addition

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Matrix addition. Gramix13 (talk) 00:39, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

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:

• Top priority math articles
• High priority math articles
• Level-5 vital math articles

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)

Pardon, but it looks like the link for Level-5 does not appear to be working due to the URL of the category. Gramix13 (talk) 02:09, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Apparently you have to go to the page and copy-paste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_level-5_vital_articles_in_Mathematics into it. Linking to it is broken. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:12, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

I think I messed the URL up somehow. Did my updated link fix it? –jacobolus (t) 03:28, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like it did, thanks! Gramix13 (talk) 04:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

draft:M._Lawrence_Glasser

Opinions of this one? Clearly it needs to get reorganized so that it conforms to Wikipedia conventions. But the question is whether one can cite something showing notability. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:06, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

The World Destubathon

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. Blofeld 10:44, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld Destub? Business-related articles? No math, linguistics, and any other WikiProjects? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:06, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

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. Blofeld 11:11, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

Who said anything about LLMs? jlwoodwa (talk) 02:54, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Summation

At first glance, I have assumed that the article Summation talks about the adding of number in a sequence, especially the notation with capital letter sigma ${\textstyle \sum }$. But then I realized the rest is focus on the notations and its manipulation algebraically, instead of defining what the summation mathematically speaking. Can someone clarify what is this article discuss anyway? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

White appearance on STL

Does anyone know what causes the white appearance in an STL polyhedron? This complaint originates from the Talk: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)

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)

Draft:Sebastián Hurtado-Salazar

Hi everyone! Anyone willing to opine on the notability of this mathematician? I think he is notable (full professor at Yale University, co-proved Zimmer's conjecture, shared the 2022 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, and his work received in-depth coverage from Quanta Magazine). Best wishes, Esevoke (talk) 19:47, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

(please comment on the draft itself) Esevoke (talk) 19:48, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Sure he's notable; for what reason should anyone need to add comments to the draft about this? --JBL (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! It's because it seems that most pages at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Submissions are declined/rejected. Esevoke (talk) 22:34, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

I have accepted the draft at Sebastián Hurtado-Salazar. GTrang (talk) 05:04, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Klein's Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert

Hi everyone! Any German-speaking math editor willing to help me on starting a page about the book Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert? It's cited more than 940 times according to Google 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)

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)

@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)

Thank you! I have some sources. I'll list them here later! Thank you very much! Esevoke (talk) 08:14, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

Sources

Some sources I've found:

In-depth (in English):

• 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

In-depth (in German):

• H. Wieleitner. "Vorlesungen uber die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert. Felix Klein , R. Courant , O. Neugebauer " https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/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.00014948 https://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
• 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: https://doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9904-1928-04589-5
• 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 bet there are many more, just I couldn't find them. Esevoke (talk) 10:38, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

@Esevoke: These are helpful to get started. I have begun working on it in my sandbox User:Kusma/sandbox/FK. —Kusma (talk) 20:36, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I love that book! Esevoke (talk) 20:57, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Question about Zimmer's conjecture page history

I noticed that the French 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)

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 could ask them. --JBL (talk) 19:06, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Draft:Charles Livingston (mathematician)

I've recently read a Quanta Magazine article about his conjecture on Seifert 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 received many citations. Could someone tell me if he is notable enough for the encyclopedia? (I think his citations he received, the Quanta Magazine article about his work and the Lester R. Ford Award could be enough, but I am not sure). Thank you very much. Best, Esevoke (talk) 13:36, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

(Link to the draft) Esevoke (talk) 13:50, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

It was declined. The reviewer claimed the sources I used are not reliable. And this I don't understand, I used very good sources: Quanta Magazine, Mathematical Association of America, Mathematics Genealogy Project, The American Mathematical Monthly, and The Mathematical Gazette . Esevoke (talk) 07:51, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

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. See User:A2soup/Don't use draftspace and User:Paul_012/Drafts are broken. –jacobolus (t) 08:20, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, thank you! I'll try to format the citations and see what happens! Esevoke (talk) 09:04, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I discourage inexperienced editors from creating articles, directly or via drafts. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:51, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

Boundary parallel

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)

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). Both Homotopy and Manifold 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)

I'm having trouble making sense of it. The article has links to boundary (topology) and component, the second of which was probably intended to be connected 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 $M=I\times S^{1},$ but also to the manifold $S^{1},$ the projection $\pi \colon I\times S^{1}\rightarrow S^{1},\quad (x,z)\mapsto z$ and a homeomorphism identifying $S$ with $S^{1}.$ Also, $I$ conventionally refers to the closed interval [0,1], but that is a manifold 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)

@Chatul: User:David Eppstein created a WP article about that book, so he probably still have access to it. Maybe ask him! Esevoke (talk) 16:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

@Chatul: You could check the largest library in humankind history, the New Library of Alexandria. I think that for this purpose it's not illegal, just check the definition and then delete the file (3 Mb .djvu file). :) Esevoke (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Here are a few definitions(ish): 1, 2, 3, 4. –jacobolus (t) 19:04, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Aside: Judging from a quick search "boundary parallel" is also routinely used to mean the same as limiting parallel in hyperbolic geometry. –jacobolus (t) 18:57, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Citing Terence Tao's blog

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 for Terence Tao's blog? Esevoke (talk) 18:55, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

See WP: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)

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 a 2010 blog post is being used as support for the claim that Vladimir 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 at Euler–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 redirect Euler–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)

True but all this would apply to all uses of sources; it is not specific to the source being a blog by an expert. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

Thank you for the feedback! I've made some changes there. Please take a look at Mikhael Gromov (mathematician) infobox too, same problem. Esevoke (talk) 21:04, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Btw, another solution would be linking to List of things named after Vladimir Arnold, it's not the same as "known for" (famous for?), but then it's easier to know if concept/theorem/etc belongs there or not. Esevoke (talk) 21:07, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, see John 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)

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)

MathML, display=block

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 these recent edits at Natural density. Also pining DerSpezialist with whom I exchanged reverts. Thanks, JBL (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

I think that's a no-brainer. : works in all rendering modes, display=block doesn't, hence we should use :.

In an ideal world WMF would fix display=block, but in reality they're spending their money on AI idiocy instead. Tercer (talk) 18:41, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

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 as display="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 a display: 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)

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 and MOS:FORMULA. As I said above, I do not fully 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)

Colon-indentation supposedly has problems with MOS:ACCESSIBILITY.

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)

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)

I think you mean bi (block indent), not bl. Here is one in a nested context:

$e^{i\pi }=-1$.

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)

According to MOS: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)

Mathematician specialist in PDEs is needed to check

I've started this 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)

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)

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 with Jimbo 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)

I'm gonna limit myself to editing articles I know something about (basic calculus, linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, abstract algebra, high-school math, and so on...). Thank you for the advice, PatrickR2. Best, Esevoke (talk) 05:08, 14 June 2025 (UTC)