User talk:David Eppstein

Hi, and welcome to my User Talk page! For new discussions, I prefer you add your comments at the very bottom and use a section heading (e.g., by using the "New section" tab at the top of this page). I will respond on this page unless specifically requested otherwise. For discussions concerning specific Wikipedia articles, please include a link to the article, and also a link to any specific edits you wish to discuss. (You can find links for edits by using the "compare selected revisions" button on the history tab for any article.)

Your GA nomination of Small set expansion hypothesis

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Small set expansion hypothesis you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Sohom Datta -- Sohom Datta (talk) 19:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Simple polygon

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Simple polygon you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Dedhert.Jr -- Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:42, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Sohom Datta and User:Dedhert.Jr: thanks to both of you for taking this on! I'm traveling for the next few days and after that I may be busy preparing for the start of the term, so please don't worry if I'm a little slow to respond. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Good luck! Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:05, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Good luck, no issues :) Sohom (talk) 07:15, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Disruptive edit and edit war at Power set

Could you act as an administrator against the behavior of a WP:SPA who is edit warring for including his Python program in Power set: 8 additions (without any summary) of their out-of-scope Python program, which were reverted by three different editors (including myself). They got three warnings on their talk page, to which they answered three times by blanking their talk page. No answer at Talk:Power set#Python implementation. This is not only a case of WP:edit warring, but the refusal of any discussion shows that this is also a case of WP:NOTHERE.

By the way, I which a happy new year to you. D.Lazard (talk) 12:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Talk page stalker here. You might have quicker response from WP:3RRN, especially based on time zones. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 13:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I have posted a report on WP:3RRN. D.Lazard (talk) 16:13, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I was mostly offline today so even a favorable timezone wouldn't have helped. Looks like you got it resolved there, anyway. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Simple polygon

The article Simple polygon you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Simple polygon for comments about the article, and Talk:Simple polygon/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has never appeared on the Main Page as a "Did you know" item, and has not appeared within the last year either as "Today's featured article", or as a bold link under "In the news" or in the "On this day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear at DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On this day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Dedhert.Jr -- Dedhert.Jr (talk) 15:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Tips

Sorry. But are there any tips from you for writing GA Mathematics? I'm currently thinking of another GA potential, but it seems that I'm stuck while trying to improve them. The last time was because of broad coverage in the article Square pyramid, and I could not repeat the same mistake. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 15:43, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

The main one is to self-review the article at least as thoroughly as if you were a GA reviewer, and fix up everything that as a reviewer you would think should be fixed up. The main parts that usually need improvement are:

• Referencing. Everything needs a reference. Most non-GA articles are missing sources for a lot of their material.
• Using clear non-technical language instead of formulas and jargon whenever possible.
• Covering all the main aspects of the topic without getting lost in details and related but off-topic material.
• Arranging the article into a clear and logical overall structure, that also puts the less-technical material earlier and the more-technical material later.

—David Eppstein (talk) 16:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Thanks for the tips. I have learn that GA must require references and not using some technical languages. However, the only thing that I confused is the coverage. For example, if I'm writing about any polyhedron, I'm thinking about the property and construction (if it's possible) are the obvious things that need to be explained in detail. However, there are some articles on polyhedra that do not have applications, related polyhedra, or graph theory. I have looked up the difference of both articles Triaugmented triangular prism (mentioning about the graphs more specifically) and Jessen icosahedron (it doesn't mention the applications and graph, but the related polyhedra instead).

So, in conclusion, does all of those three things particularly important and must be written, or there are some kind of optional? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 09:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Whether different articles have the same organization into sections is much less important than whether they each have an organization that makes sense and that covers all of the important research into their topics. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the tips. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 08:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh. One more thing. You said that GA should using clear non-technical language instead of formulas and jargons. But what about the article with unavoidable technical? It reminds me about three articles of yours: Dehn invariant, Free abelian group, and Mobius strip (which is failed on the first review and passed on the next one)? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 14:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's why I said to use non-technical language only "whenever possible". Often some parts of the article are technical, because it is not possible to cover the necessary material in a non-technical way. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Thank you so much. By the way, I'm planning to improve a polyhedra article, but this also involves graph theory as well, and I have no knowledge of graph theory. In that case, can you help me? I will expand the article, and before that, I'm waiting for your answer. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 09:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

line breaks before footnotes

Trying to put {{nobr}} around every sentence followed by a footnote to prevent the footnote from ever splitting onto a new line by itself, the way you are (I thinK?) trying to do at prime number seems hopeless, and somewhat clutters markup. I wonder if it would make more sense to petition the mediawiki developers to automatically force footnotes to stick to the preceding character, to solve this at a higher level. –jacobolus (t) 07:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not just footnotes. Mediawiki also does not force mathematics formulas to stick to the following punctuation. The cases I just added to prime number also concern a different line break style issue: if a sentence or clause ends in a variable or other very short mathematics formula, the space between that formula and the previous word should not be broken. In LaTeX, one handles this with a no-break space: a sentence ending in a variable~$x$. In mediawiki, it's better to use {{nowrap}} because a no-break space would not prevent the other problems with punctuation and footnotes. The issue with short formulas at the ends of sentences is not something that can be handled well automatically. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding {{nobr}} around every short sentence-ending word also seems like overkill here, adding substantial source markup clutter. If this can't be handled automatically (or at worst with explicit  ), does it really need to be done?

In any event, line breaks before footnote links seem like a universal mediawiki problem, which should probably still be addressed. It is possible to accomplish in CSS, using: sup.reference::before { content: '\FEFF'; }, where FEFF is an (invisible) 'zero width no-break space' or alternately \200D 'zero width joiner' character inside the ''. The first of those unicode characters is deprecated and we're supposed to use the 'word joiner' character to replace it, but that one doesn't actually suppress line breaks in my browser; the second is an abuse since zero-width joiner is supposed to be for something else; not sure if there's a "right" character to use that actually works. Unfortunately this isn't a trick we can generically do to combine math tags with following punctuation, because we sometimes want to split between math tags and other elements (e.g. two math tags back-to-back, explicitly split up to allow line breaks). –jacobolus (t) 08:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh actually, just an empty "content" also works to prevent a line break in my browser. Not sure if that is intended behavior, but easier than putting extra characters. So it can just be: sup.reference::before { content: ''; }. –jacobolus (t) 09:25, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Small set expansion hypothesis

The article Small set expansion hypothesis you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Small set expansion hypothesis and Talk:Small set expansion hypothesis/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Sohom Datta -- Sohom Datta (talk) 11:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Small set expansion hypothesis

The article Small set expansion hypothesis you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Small set expansion hypothesis for comments about the article, and Talk:Small set expansion hypothesis/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has never appeared on the Main Page as a "Did you know" item, and has not appeared within the last year either as "Today's featured article", or as a bold link under "In the news" or in the "On this day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear at DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On this day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Sohom Datta -- Sohom Datta (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Graph of triangular bipyramid

Hi, @David Eppstein. I recently found the source about the application of the graph of triangular bipyramid in this https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2023.128313. But I cannot access this source, can you help me with what it mentions about that graph?

If you wonder why I asked too much in this day, I deeply apologize. All I propose for these questions is regarding the potential GA, as I discussed above. This is about the article Triangular bipyramid that I prepared before nomination, and the only problem is the graph, as that section is somewhat short and it could probably need to be expanded. Thank you so much for your help Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok, sent. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't expect to sent me that journal to my Gmail. Thanks anyway. I owe so much on you :( Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Sorry. One more thing. I have expand the graph section, but I'm not sure whether this could be violate WP:PRIMARY. So, here:

The graph of a triangular bipyramid can used in the electrical network theory. This field includes a graph's relationship to the electrical network; the concept is resistance distance, which measures two vertices of a graph using the electrical network. The Kirchoff index is calculated by summing all resistance distance between all pairs of vertices in a graph as the structure descriptor. Sajjad, Sardar & Pan (2024) shows that multiple graphs of triangular bipyramid can be used to construct a chain by arranging them linearly, as in the following illustration. The resistance distance of such construction can be computed by applying the series and parallel principles, star-mesh transformation, and Y-Δ transformation. Its structure can be applied in the study of synthesis and properties of metal-organic frameworks.

I'm aware that this could be quickfail GA. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

References

I'm not convinced this is really an application, nor particularly interesting. It seems to be merely an example. Any graph can have multiple copies arranged into a chain and the resisted calculated as a series network. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll be honest. I'm confused about the statement that is an example, rather than application. Is there an alternative way to write the chain of triangular bipyramid graphs? I have no clue again about this field. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 12:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Undue warning of a block

Hi. On 01:29, 10 January 2024, you gave me a warning that I could "likely get blocked" for a legitimate reply I made to another editor, reply that you even seemed to have misunderstood. I have to remind you that you were an involved party in the discussion thread and you also had a topic dispute with me, and therefore I consider it highly inappropriate that you gave me such a warning.

Per WP:INVOLVED,

In general, editors should not act as administrators in disputes in which they have been involved. This is because involved administrators may be, or appear to be, incapable of making objective decisions in disputes to which they have been a party or about which they have strong feelings. Involvement is construed broadly by the community to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute.

Per Misuse of administrative tools,

Common situations where avoiding tool use is often required: [...] Conflict of interest or non-neutrality – Administrators should not normally use their tools in matters in which they are personally involved (for example, in a content dispute in which they are a party).

I have to add that it is demoralizing that even though I try to take care of properly analyzing my replies in threads and I spend hours trying my best to make quality edits, I get such an undue warning from an administrator for a legitimate reply. I have expanded on my explanation of what I actually intended to say in the relevant discussion thread. Thanks for your attention. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say that I would be the one to block you, if you insisted on putting your theories about inserting OR into the leads of BLPs into practice. And I also haven't seen you putting it into practice. But thank you for playing. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:30, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

"if you insisted on putting your theories about inserting OR into the leads of BLPs into practice". Can you quote the relevant text where I reportedly supported inserting OR into leads? Because it seems again that you are misconstruing what I wrote. Or you can strikethrough your comment. Thanks. Thinker78 (talk) 06:42, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

"instead of taking it out I would say it should be considered how evident its pronunciation is" ... "Not all cases need a citation" ... "I find it helpful to at least provide the pronunciation according to certain general common usage rather than none." ... [Re: is an OR kind of idea we couldn't employ]: "We could, ceteris paribus" —David Eppstein (talk) 06:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

• instead of taking it out I would say it should be considered how evident its pronunciation is. It is unclear to me why you construe this as original research. Did you notice the context? Because literally it is based on the WP:MOSPRON guideline, which I quoted there before writing this sentence, in the same comment.

If a common English rendering of the foreign name exists (Venice, Nikita Khrushchev), its pronunciation, if necessary, should be indicated before the foreign one. For English words and names, pronunciation should normally be omitted for common words or when obvious from the spelling; use it only for foreign loanwords (coup d'etat), names with counterintuitive pronunciation (Leicester, Ralph Fiennes), or very unusual words (synecdoche).

Notice in the guideline: "common English rendering", "if necessary", "common words", "pronunciation [...] obvious from the spelling", "counterintuitive pronunciation". From there I then wrote "it should be considered how evident its pronunciation is". I mean it is right there in the guideline. How in the world you reach the conclusion that what I wrote is original research then? Can you please explain? Thinker78 (talk) 07:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Not all cases need a citation. This is literally what the verifiability policy indicates.

All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports.

If you notice, it states only 2 or 3 cases in which citations are required. Namely, for all quotations, any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged. It doesn't state that there needs to be a citation in all other cases.

Furthermore, the explanatory footnote of said policy states,

A source "directly supports" a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source so that using this source to support the material is not a violation of Wikipedia:No original research. The location of any citation—including whether one is present in the article at all—is unrelated to whether a source directly supports the material. For questions about where and how to place citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section § Citations, etc.

I encourage you to properly analyze Wikipedia guidance in order not to be misconstruing editors comments. Thinker78 (talk) 07:28, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

There is a limit to how many times I will provide an actual response when repeatedly asked "Can you please explain?" with a wall of text that provides no indication that you have digested the previous explanations. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:36, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

It seems you have explained nothing as to how you reached your conclusions that what I wrote are "theories about inserting OR into the leads of BLPs", for which you even stated I could "likely get blocked".

Per Wikipedia:Casting aspersions,

On Wikipedia, casting aspersions refers to a situation where an editor or group of editors is accused of misbehavior without evidence, especially when the accusations are repeated or particularly severe. Because a persistent pattern of false or unsupported allegations can be highly damaging to a collaborative editing environment, such accusations are collectively considered a personal attack.

Thinker78 (talk) 07:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Please stop wasting the time of both of us. I'm sure you have more constructive things to do than haranguing me, and I certainly have better things to do than to read and respond to your walls of text and your endless green blocks of undigested copy-paste. I don't think I have wronged you by informing you that your opinion runs on the wrong side of BLP, but if you disagree, you are not getting anywhere here. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:02, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

A positive element!

Happy new year, and I wonder what you make of this. Drmies (talk) 15:17, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

$*$-algebras are not something I know much about. I suspect that the phrase "positive element" is used in lots of areas of mathematics to mean different things, and that multiple of these things may be notable, so we may eventually need a dab on that phrase. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks OK from what I know about *-algebras. (Bit list-heavy and all that, but I've seen worse from new editors.) I agree that we might eventually need a dab page here. XOR'easter (talk) 18:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Gale–Shapley algorithm

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Gale–Shapley algorithm you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Femke -- Femke (talk) 20:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Hyperbolic spiral

On 14 January 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Hyperbolic spiral, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the spirals in photographs of spiral staircases (example pictured) are hyperbolic? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Hyperbolic spiral. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Hyperbolic spiral), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Schwede66 00:02, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Gale–Shapley algorithm

The article Gale–Shapley algorithm you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Gale–Shapley algorithm for comments about the article, and Talk:Gale–Shapley algorithm/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has never appeared on the Main Page as a "Did you know" item, and has not appeared within the last year either as "Today's featured article", or as a bold link under "In the news" or in the "On this day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear at DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On this day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Femke -- Femke (talk) 20:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Perfect graph

The article Perfect graph you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Perfect graph and Talk:Perfect graph/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Brachy0008 -- Brachy0008 (talk) 03:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Your article (17- animal)

Hello Mr.Eppste.
Your article in fawiki is going to be a good article , can explain a little more lines about Generalizations? about Paul stakmayer theory? Thanks Arbanoos (talk) 16:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Everything I know about it is already in the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

ok.thanks Arbanoos (talk) 19:08, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Basel problem problem

Yes, that's why I made the odd-looking edit that I made. You appeared to want the symbol to appear unitalicized, so that's what I did to it. Your way works too, although the citation metadata and error-checking are no longer available, for what that's worth. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I wanted the symbol italicized and the rest of the formula not. The problem is that {{math}} is a hacky workaround for <math> that only sort of works, and in particular doesn't work in italicized contexts, but that <math> is bad in linked text because Wikimedia's insistence on using rendered images of mathematics formulas instead of Mathjax causes the formula to show up as black-and-white instead of colored blue. This example has linked italic text so neither will work. But putting direct text styling commands inside the math markup as you did is somehow even worse than either of those two things because then both the markup and the formatting are broken. If you ever find yourself trying to do the same thing again, take a step back and find a different way that at least preserves the validity of the mathematics markup. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:30, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

When I fix syntax errors like the one I fixed in that article, I try to preserve the editor's intent and leave the display unchanged (unless it is clearly broken). That is what I did in this case. Since the {{math}} template uses span tags, there did not seem to be any harm in nesting another span tag inside it; that is valid HTML and routinely done.
In case you didn't know: the reason that {{math}} does not accept italics in its value when it is already wrapped in italic markup is that you end up with misnested tags: the parser reads it as "open italic, then open span, then close italic, then open italic, then close span, then close italic":

''<span style="foo">Foo''bar''baz</span>''

even if that was not the editor's intent. That usage comes up on a report, and we gnomes show up to fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:23, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with the style of fix you chose, putting explicit style markup spans into the formula, is that it completely obscures the mathematical meaning of the formula. The semantics becomes lost in the syntax. It would be like writing English words with spans describing whether each individual letter is a vowel or a consonant. You could do that, and the rendered appearance might be as intended, but it makes the markup impossible to use or edit. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:33, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Peckham Rock

On 26 January 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Peckham Rock, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Peckham Rock. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Peckham Rock), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

—Kusma (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

		Hook update
		Your hook reached 8,831 views (735.9 per hour), making it one of the most viewed hooks of January 2024 – nice work!

GalliumBot (talk • contribs) (he/it) 03:28, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Kirsten Morris

Hi David, The updates I made to Kirsten's page are based on this https://uwaterloo.ca/applied-mathematics/people-profiles/kirsten-morris I am new to wiki edits and didn't realize the etiquette. Sorry about this. Please let me know the best practice for proceeding with my updates. thanks. Amchow (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

See WP:Citing sources. As well as not including the sources for the information you added, you added some low-level details that I think are better omitted from an encyclopedia article such as visiting positions (see WP:NOTCV — unlike a curriculum vitae, an encyclopedia article should not list the details of every academic activity of the subject) and removed some properly-sourced and relevant material, such as Morris's motivation for beginning to work in mathematics. On the other hand, the Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award and IFAC Pavel J. Nowacki Distinguished Lecturer are definitely worth including, with sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red February 2024

Women in Red | February 2024, Volume 10, Issue 2, Numbers 293, 294, 297, 298 Online events: New: Alphabet run O & P | Black women Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcement Please let other wikiprojects know about our February Black women event. Tip of the month: AllAfrica can now be searched on the ProQuest tab at the WP Library. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk 20:08, 28 January 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

CS1 error on Kepler conjecture

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Kepler conjecture, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL and missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 03:14, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Gale–Shapley algorithm

On 30 January 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Gale–Shapley algorithm, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the Gale–Shapley algorithm was used to assign medical students to residencies long before its publication by Gale and Shapley? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Gale–Shapley algorithm. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Gale–Shapley algorithm), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:03, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

2 to 6 million professors are currently alive

Generally, an h-index of 7 is barely enough to get hired. And an article on a professor need to explain why they are important. No evidence exists on any significant contribution for this person. The citations in the article are no better than a product listing on Home Depot. Abductive (reasoning) 06:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Generally, hiring is based on subject-specific knowledge and recommendation letters, not on numerology. And one could quote similar numbers and say the same thing about evidence of significant contributions for, say, Eugenia axillaris or Searsia rosmarinifolia, to name two. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:08, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Mina Ossiander has 94 Google results. Eugenia axillaris has 11,700. And the fact that you don't italicize scientific names says a lot, as does your wikistalking, uncivil response. As can be expected when someone is defending a stub on a non-notable topic—one of two to six million profesors. Abductive (reasoning) 08:11, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Start a hostile and barely civilly worded thread on my talk page, expect a prickly response. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:18, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I note that you have not given a counterargument as to why the topic is notable. Abductive (reasoning) 09:54, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Maybe you should try coming in again? Whether or not you agree with it, uour PROD was reverted for a perfectly sensible reason, and no amount of berating here is going to bring it back. --JBL (talk) 17:23, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but the bit about not italicizing was devastating, don't you think? EEng 17:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Graph of gyroelongated square pyramid

I have looked up the source [1], mentioning the graph of gyroelongated square pyramid, and I took this source from the article Fritsch graph. I'm not expert in graph theory; can you tell me what is the property of such graph? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 15:20, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it should be expected to have interesting properties. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

How to upload in WikiCommons

Ah. Sorry for asking this. I have made some net polyhedron supported with the source, but how do I upload an image in WikiCommons? It seems I could not comprehend the system of the image license: does redrawn image may be considered as "own work", despite being that the image is not our creation but someone's else from their source? I take an example of yours: File:Triaugmented triangular prism (symmetric net).svg.

Note: I have asked this before, but it seems that I could not understand either. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

How I upload to commons is to follow the instructions at Commons:Special:UploadWizard. But I think that doesn't answer your real question, which is how to describe its license and derivation. In the case of an image redrawn from something else on commons, the answer is fairly simple: You say that it's your own work, and that it's derived from some other image. The way I have sometimes done it is to set the "source" to be something like "Own work, derived from (url of other file)." You can see that in, for instance, my images File:4-hex_octahedron.svg and File:Buneman graph.svg. There's a more complicated formatting of the attribution in File:Polyhedral Delta-Y.svg, using the commons "AttribSVG" template, but the basic idea is the same. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:21, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll try my best in this case. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:31, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Okay. I have done uploading the image. It's basically the drawing net of an elongated square bipyramid: File:Elongated square bipyramid (symmetric net).svg. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Looks ok to me. I don't think there's any problem with copyright because it's a mathematical construction using simple geometric forms rather than anything with creative choices (see Commons:Commons:Threshold of originality) but it's still good to give credit in that way. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I always wondered that is it fine to use those colors? I researched that teal and gray are suitable colors, but I'm not sure whether color-blinded readers may look at this. Any recommendation colors, the same way for the triangular bipyramid as well? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I got most of the set of colors I usually use from a Wikipedia discussion about palettes that would still be contrasty enough for color-blind people, but if I had a link to that discussion I don't remember where I put it. If you search you can find other palettes designed with that property; for instance there's one at https://jfly.uni-koeln.de/color/ (search for heading "Set of colors that is unambiguous both to colorblinds and non-colorblinds") and you can test your color choices at https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/ —David Eppstein (talk) 08:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Octahedron, square dihedron, and other degenerate construction

Hi. I'm planning to improve an article Octahedron as well. However, I do remember your comments during the review:

If an octahedron is formed by attaching pyramids to every side of a smaller shape, then that smaller shape is the degenerate one that you get by gluing two squares back-to-back.

I don't get it: what are you referring to as the "smaller shape" here? What does the degenerate mean here? I have seen the article Degeneracy (mathematics), but it is not helpful to me to understand in the case of a regular octahedron. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a square dihedron. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:03, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh... Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:04, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. Sorry for off-topic question written here. I saw that you were editing the article Regular icosahedron. In general, are you planning for GA nominating someday? I once planned for improving this article, but I was surprised that you have taken over it, and I do not want to interrupt your work. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:21, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Probably not that one. I was mostly just cleaning up some reference issues (and then made some other edits while I was looking at it). But I'm done again for now. The one I'm actually working on improving currently rather than just making drive-by cleanups is random binary tree. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:03, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah... okay. I'll take that as well. But what about Snub disphenoid? I'm sorry if I ask too much for the articles you have edited before. I'm recently for planning on a project in which all the articles are included. It is WP:GT, bunches of (pre)-GA articles that can be listed into a single topic. I do not want to copy one big template in yours. You may prefer to see it here. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:28, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

The only polyhedron articles on my own current list of eventual (I hope) GA candidates are Schönhardt polyhedron, Bricard octahedron, and Parallelohedron. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah... I see, then. Well, if these articles are nommed, I could probably review them. By the way, I have done some expansion in the article Regular icosahedron (I'll do the octahedron later). However, the article may have some changes in the reference style, images, and some section structures. Is it fine? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:59, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't mind if you change those things. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:25, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Schönhardt polyhedron

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Schönhardt polyhedron you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Dedhert.Jr -- Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments are provided in the reviewing article. If there are some questions, you can ask me, and I will respond to them swiftly. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Deletion review for Reşit Inceoğlu

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Reşit Inceoğlu. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Styyx (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Help at AIV

Hi David Eppstein, I can't stay up all night dealing with at least four socks, reported at AIV. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks! 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Not clearly vandals, so AIV wasn't really the right board, but obvious enough as socks and as making bad edits. Blocked and tagged. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:38, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Another pop up, Kristine3303 (talk · contribs). I suppose they'll be doing this till their parents get home. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 06:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't have the tools to find and block their IP; you'll have to find a checkuser for that. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

March 2024 GAN backlog drive

Good article nominations | March 2024 Backlog Drive
March 2024 Backlog Drive: On 1 March, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded. Interested in taking part? You can sign up here or ask questions here.
You're receiving this message because you have reviewed or nominated a good article in the last year.

(t · c) buidhe 02:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Schönhardt polyhedron

The article Schönhardt polyhedron you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Schönhardt polyhedron for comments about the article, and Talk:Schönhardt polyhedron/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Dedhert.Jr -- Dedhert.Jr (talk) 10:41, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Felicitations to your article. Hopefully there will be more polyhedral articles into the entry of GAN. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:55, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red March 2024

Women in Red | March 2024, Volume 10, Issue 3, Numbers 293, 294, 299, 300, 301 Online events: New: Alphabet run Q & R | Art+Feminism | Find Her Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcements Celebrate Women – All content gender gap events, in every language Wikipedia, in March 2024 Francophone Women★ Writers Fortnight 2024 Feminism and Folklore 2024 Writing Contest Tip of the month: When creating a new article, check various spellings, including birth name, married names and pseudonyms, to be sure an article doesn't already exist. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk 20:21, 25 February 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

The references to 'Heath' and 'Proclus' in the pons asinorum article

Back in October of 2014, you made an extensive edit of the Pons asinorum article in which you introduce two references to 'Heath', in the following form:

the proofs of later propositions where Euclid does not cover every case.<ref>Heath pp. 251–255</ref>

and

In particular angle B = angle C.<ref>Heath p. 254 for section</ref>

However, the actual reference 'Heath' was never provided. Presumably it is Heath's A History of Greek Mathematics, but in my copies of it, I wasn't able to find anything relevant on pages 251-254 of either volume.

Could you check and complete these references?

Similarly, you provided the following references:

Proclus' variation of Euclid's proof proceeds as follows:<ref>Following Proclus p. 53</ref>

and

The proof is as follows:<ref>Following Proclus p. 54</ref>

Once again, the actual reference 'Proclus' was never provided, and it is not clear what it refers to. Could you add this reference, too? Reuqr (talk) 21:10, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it is Heath's edition of Euclid. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

And the 'Proclus' reference? Reuqr (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, you made me look at the actual diff you linked. You should look harder at that diff yourself. None of that content was written by me at that time. It all came from a merge from another article, isosceles triangle theorem, whose history can be found here. You should find who added that material to isosceles triangle theorem and ask them. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

They are in this version of isosceles triangle theorem. --JBL (talk) 23:39, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, thank you both! Reuqr (talk) 23:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Perfect graph

The article Perfect graph you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Perfect graph for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Brachy0008 -- Brachy0008 (talk) 04:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Lateral edge and lateral face

Just notice nowadays that the terms of lateral edge and lateral face may be used in prisms as well, instead of pyramids. In this case, can you help me to delete these redirects, or alternatively, putting on the articles as in Edge (geometry) and Face (geometry). I'm kind of confused. Any ideas? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:05, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with that terminology, so I don't have much of an informed opinion on what its correct scope should be. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Your reversal of edits to Sergei Mirkin

Thank you for your revision of edits to Sergei Mirkin biography page. I apologize for not realizing that biography pages are not supposed to use as references the subject's scientific publications. That you for pointing that out. I understand this was the reason you reversed all of the edits I made to the page yesterday. Today I checked and removed all other references to Dr Mirkin's publications. However, you also deleted my edits that added references to independent sources: news and review articles about Dr Mirkin's discoveries. As a full-time scientific journal editor I am confident these references are appropriate and accurately reflect Sergei’s contribution to the field. I hope that you’ll find these edits satisfactorily address the concerns outlined in your template message. If you have further suggestions, don’t hesitate to let me know. Thank you again for your time. DoubleHelix23 (talk) 22:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Katalin Farkas

Unfinished category name:

[[Category:Academic staff of the

- Altenmann >talk 01:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed. In general I find this recently-renamed "Academic staff of ..." incredibly annoying to use because even in cases where the category actually uses the same spelling as the main article on the university one then needs to figure out whether to use "the" or not. I think this is a case where I started to write "the", went to check whether that was correct (it wasn't) and got distracted before finishing the category. But my complaints about this naming system have fallen on deaf ears. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Dedekind number

I went to the article Dedekind number to learn what Dedekind numbers are. I read the lead, and to check if I'd understood it I tried to figure out for myself what the six monotone Boolean functions of two variables are. Then I came across the "Example" secion, and thought "oh dear, I must have missed something, they're much more complicated than I'd realised." On looking harder, I realised that I'd actually got them right, but the examples were given in a verbose way. I removed all the (in my view) unnecessary words.

You reverted. Your the edit summary "previous version much more clearly expressed the fact that these were all bivariate functions" is true. But there was no need to express it, six times, for a list titled "six monotonic Boolean functions ... of the two-element set {x,y}".

It's up to you. I shan't say any more about this. Maproom (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

When you say that the functions are x, y, etc, you obscure that the function you call "x" is really a function of two variables that ignores its first argument and returns its second. When you write that the always-false function is "F", you obscure that there are different always-false functions for different numbers of variables.

To put it another way: the number of ways of forming monotone Boolean combinations of things, if you do not consider them as bivariate functions, is strictly smaller than the Dedekind numbers. You can take zero things and return true or false. You can take one thing and return it. And you can take two things and and them or or them. That's five combinations. But the number of bivariate functions is six, because there are two different "take one thing and return it" functions when there are two things to take from.

I presume you already understand this. But the version of the article you wrote, that I reverted, did not convey this understanding. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:24, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Sylvester's sequence

Ah. Sorry for disturbing your article Sylvester's sequence. It seems that it is already listed in WP:SWEEPS2023, which includes the potential of GAR. I have no clue why, but one reason is that it does have unsourced paragraphs. I have added some, but the rest of the paragraphs I could not find it. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:05, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Tesseract in Interstellar

The tesseract in Interstellar is clearly a multidimensional object. Kip Thorne explains in this video that it is a four-dimensional object, but only one side of the tesseract is connected to Murphy's bedroom, with Cooper is on the other side. In a normal cube, Cooper would just be looking at an ordinary wall, but because it has an extra dimension, he is looking at his daughter's bedroom from six different locations at once: Hipporoo (talk) 22:05, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

That does not make it a convex polyhedron in a four-dimensional Euclidean space with eight three-dimensional cubes as its faces. For one thing, Einsteinian time-space is not a Euclidean space. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

We don't actually see the tesseract in the movie from the outside, except from a narrow entrance point which doesn't tell us anything about its outward appearance. And the only part of the inside we see is where Cooper is brought. It's what we do see that is supposed to tell us this is a cube with four spatial dimensions, as explained by Thorne. Hipporoo (talk) 06:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Hipporoo Would anything at all change if he explained that it was actually a Clifford torus in a space of two complex dimensions? or other technical phrases that provide the appropriate sense of wonder and incomprehensibility but had even less connection to actual use of mathematics? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:19, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

References

Ezra Finzi

Hope you're great, You recently undid the deletion tag I had placed on Ezra Finzi article, stating as being top-billed in a movie. Based on the available sources, could you identify any reliable source from the article proving that please?....I did a research on the topic before that (because I wished to expand it but nothing was there to add).

NOTE

• Three of the sources are from IMDb which isn't reliable.
• Three are the actor profiles with less/no information about the topic. They cant be main.
• One is an interview about the topic's father named Samuel Finzi.

ANU^writes 10:42, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

That's not the point. A7 speedy deletion is not about reliable sources. It is only about whether the article makes a credible statement of significance for the subject. Problems with sourcing can be handled in other ways. A7 is not the way. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:28, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Holding a grudge

Seriously, I cannot understand where you have got this idea from. I did not need to be told that maths editors are willing to clean up; I have nominated three maths articles at GAR and all three have been saved, which is a success rate unmatched by editors of any other topic. Yes, there has been grumpiness and a good deal of sniping at each other, but in the end all the articles have been improved, which is something no other project, not even MILHIST, can say.

I started a discussion on maths articles trying to see if if we could carve out an exemption from the WP:GACR for them, not in some targeted harassment campaign, and I genuinely find it quite hurtful that you should twist my motives to such an extent, while levelling accusations of battlegrounding and insulting an entire project. I don't think anyone ever wants to go to AN, so can we please sort this out? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

As evidence for holding a grudge, let's look at your comment Special:Diff/1212693194, referring to an incident months ago that I would have long ago forgotten if you didn't keep bringing it up. As for the battlegrounding and insulting an entire project, the thread itself stands in monument to that. Your battlegrounding has already driven two good mathematics editors away from the GA process. Your battlegrounding is evident in this very comment in your repeated threats to drag this to AN if I don't stop complaining about your behavior. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I have brought it up precisely once, as have you in a discussion not even tangentially related to me. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:16, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Descartes' theorem

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Descartes' theorem you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 21:22, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

article about Maura Biava

Hey there! I would like to create an article about the artist Maura Biava but I see a similar article was previously deleted by you. I'll try and write it according to the guidelines of wikipedia, but if you have any advice, please share! Ariaserg (talk) 13:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember deleting such an article and Wikipedia has never had nor deleted an article under the title "Maura Biava". Anyway, my general advice would be to choose a pool of subjects you might want to create articles on and then only create the ones that are unquestionably notable, rather than settling from the start on someone who might not be notable. In the case of fine artists, choose artists in the collections of multiple major museums; Biava is in at least one [2] but we need more than one. Don't puff up the article with minor accomplishments like shows at commercial galleries or permanent collection at some random office building; only keep the major ones like collection in the Stedelijk. Use a small number of the references in the article, focused on independent neutral publications that go in depth about the subject (for instance, newspaper reviews of solo shows) rather than interviews, lightly-edited press releases, or exhibit announcements. Only write what can be sourced in the references. And avoid using International Art English to describe the artist's work; write in plain English. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:43, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Woflram Research

We have discussed about MathWorld whether they are reliable or not in WP:WPM, but what about Wolfram Research. I have took the article Snub disphenoid to improve it, but the Wolfram Research reference seems have a doubt relation with MathWorld beside of its error technical template. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

In the past, there have been both good-faith efforts to add lots of Wolfram links to Wikipedia articles by independent editors, and COI efforts to add lots of Wolfram links to Wikipedia articles by Wolfram employees. My general approach is to avoid when unnecessary, and always avoid for terminology issues or issues relating to Wolfram himself, but sometimes they are the only source to say explicitly something obvious, and in that case they may be the best source to use. Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand, is essentially a search engine, and should be avoided for the same reason that links to search pages from other search engines are to be avoided (they fail WP:ELNO #9). The one in snub disphenoid appears to be trying to wriggle out of that prohibition by telling you the search string to use rather than giving a direct link, but it's no better. It's not a good source. If you can't find a better published replacement, you should just omit that claim. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Noted it. But what about the sources such as journals and books contains the calculation or facts that is cited from Wolfram Alpha or MathWorld? Would it remain as dubious fact, or it seems they are checked its accuracy again until it is published officially? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If a source is reliable, but gives a valid calculation that it in turn cites to a source that we would consider unreliable, and we have reason to believe that the source actually checked the calculation and vouches for its accuracy, then it's probably ok. Lots of claims in scientific papers are cited to "personal communication", a type of source that we would avoid as unverifiable, but we can still cite the claim to the paper it appears in. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:03, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Descartes' theorem

The article Descartes' theorem you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Descartes' theorem and Talk:Descartes' theorem/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 10:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Perfect graph

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Perfect graph you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Jakob.scholbach -- Jakob.scholbach (talk) 13:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Schönhardt polyhedron

On 18 March 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Schönhardt polyhedron, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Latvian-Soviet artist Karlis Johansons exhibited a skeletal tensegrity form of the Schönhardt polyhedron seven years before Erich Schönhardt's 1928 paper on its mathematics? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Schönhardt polyhedron. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Schönhardt polyhedron), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

—Ganesha811 (talk) 00:02, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

AMS Photos from JMM

Hi David. At the Joint Math Meetings a professional photographer takes photos of AMS members and sends the photos to them with full permission to use them as they like. Can someone upload that photo to Wikimedia Commons? What do they give for permissions? Mvitulli (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe they choose what license they like and then forward the permission email to [email protected] ? That's what I'd try, anyway, but commons enforcement of copyright tends to be bureaucratic and capricious, so no idea if that would stick. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll tell her to try that. Mvitulli (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Descartes' theorem

The article Descartes' theorem you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Descartes' theorem for comments about the article, and Talk:Descartes' theorem/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I fully intend to put the whole poem into a sidebar once it becomes PD, in a few years. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Random binary tree

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Random binary tree you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Czarking0 -- Czarking0 (talk) 02:43, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Random binary tree

The article Random binary tree you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Random binary tree for comments about the article, and Talk:Random binary tree/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Czarking0 -- Czarking0 (talk) 03:22, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Earth–Moon problem

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Earth–Moon problem you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 08:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess this WikiCup stage runs through the end of April? I was worried it was only until the end of March and I wouldn't have time to pay attention to this until it was too late for this to count for you. I should be less swamped in a week or so. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:12, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. The WikiCup round runs for another month (and if my FAC passes I won't have any problems getting through). I have no idea what the cutoff for the GA Backlog drive is, but the worst thing that can happen is that I get the wrong barnstar :) I sometimes need something like the Cup or the backlog drive to remind me, but I actually enjoy reviewing. —Kusma (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Earth–Moon problem

The article Earth–Moon problem you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Earth–Moon problem and Talk:Earth–Moon problem/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 12:21, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red April 2024

Women in Red | April 2024, Volume 10, Issue 4, Numbers 293, 294, 302, 303, 304 Online events: New: Alphabet run S & T | Gender studies | Health Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcements The second round of "One biography a week" begins in April as part of #1day1woman. Tip of the month: If you run into technical problems, you might find help on our Tools and technical support page Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk 19:41, 30 March 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Are Mobius strip and Borromean rings geometrical or topological objects?

I'm trying to find an alternative solution after having different opinions. What I mentioned about these different opinions is that you mentioned the solution of breaking into "Geometry" (and another user added "Geometry and topology"). My different solution is by adding "Mathematical object" because subcategorizing by the fields could lead to the potential of unmatchable fields in mathematics articles (see the discussion of me and Bilorv lately), and we do have articles of curves, polygons, polyhedrons, and other objects such as Mobius strip and Borromean rings. However, the phrase "Mathematical object" may be ambiguous based on the fields as well, as our article says. So I prefer to find the alternative name of the subsection "Geometrical object", hopefully listing those objects. However, I am worried that the Mobius strip and Borromean rings may not be included and they are relevant to the topological topics. To put it plainly, are they both geometrical or topological objects, as they are unspecifically mentioned as mathematical objects? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:45, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

If they have to be only one, it is topological. But there is a lot of geometry in both articles. Also, the distinction between mathematical objects, mathematical theories, mathematical theorems, and mathematical problems is less clear than you may think; many of our articles cover both. For instance, is Euclid–Euler theorem about a theorem, or is it about even perfect numbers, as mathematical objects? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

I would probably say that Euclid–Euler theorem describes a theorem, explaining that a perfect even number has a form of prime number $2^{p-1}(2^{p}-1)$, where $p$ is a prime number; so maybe they could be included as concepts and topics, or theorems specifically. The mathematical object, as I mentioned earlier, is ambiguous because of the phrase usage in different areas of mathematics. That's why I prefer to split up into "Mathematical concepts and topics" (including theorem, lemma, conjecture, and others) and "Geometrical and topological objects"??? (including points, lines, curves, polygons, tesselations, polyhedrons, honeycombs, and polytopes).

Maybe we could take more examples from our GA list. Squaring the circle, from my perspective, is talking about the problems in geometry that challenge the construction of a square with an area of a given circle; so this could be included in concepts and topics. Prince Rupert's cube mostly focuses on its object itself and less on its generalization including the problem of the Rupert property that exists in all polyhedra. Maybe you could share your perspective on these articles by their categorization? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

If the article were moved to the title even perfect number (displacing the current redirect), would it suddenly become an article about an object rather than an article about a theorem?

Prince Rupert's cube is less about a specific object and more about the counterintuitive fact that one can pass objects through holes in themselves.

Also, your proposed classification makes no room for objects that are not geometrical and topological, such as for instance prime number, to pick an obvious example. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

So, in conclusion, are you saying that we should break them into more categories by its field, as in "Geometry and topology"? If that's the case, then I have no other arguments against this. However, if we break them into "Geometry and topology", should we also have to break all of the concepts and topics into different areas by fields, as in "Algebra", "Arithmetic and number theory", "Graph theory", and others? That is what I'm illustrating about this scenario. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:02, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

No matter what categories we choose, we're going to need an "everything else" subcategory. See for instance the subdivision of sports into some specific sports and everything else, and the subdivision of music into albums, songs, classical compositions, and everything else. So what's wrong with geometry+topology / everything else? Why does it demand that we further subdivide? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh. I see. I was trying to think about providing subcategories in the future. I think I will give a support to break into "Geometry and topology". Sorry. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:08, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Perfect graphs

Hello David, I've responded to your GA comments, and I aim to read the rest of the article this next week. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

America, a suburb of newyork

It is quite depressing to realise that only 99.99% of contributors and 99.963% of readers believe that we (including the encyclopedia) exist on planet Earth, Solar System, etc. I take the chance that almost everyone is aware of this. However it is even more astonishing to find that those who can read, and many who can write, the English language do not intimately know the names of every state of the United States of America - and that if you refer to, say, North Carolina you are not referring to a mix of a track released by the recording artist Shaggy sometime before the creation of Amazon (afterwhich some river is Southern USA is named). I find it incredible that very few Americans (those living between Mexico/Canada and Canada/Russia) know where Ghent is, or why it is a significant aspect in their history. It is for that reason that I put the name of the nation after the State, as I do counties in England, regions of Scotland, and states of Australia, India and Pakistan (I have to check in other nations...). I do not assume that every reader, or a significant percentage of them, actually would know which nation Maryland, Avon, Udder Pradesh, and Tasmania belong to. I add in that detail, which in no way diminishes the encyclopedia. That said, your subsequent edits cleared up the nationality issue nicely. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:25, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

What I know about Ghent is "that city with the nice canalside cellar restaurant that we stopped at once on our way back from Bruges". But I suspect that's not the significant aspect of history you were referring to. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Treaty of Ghent. However, if there is a good source* for your meal and notability can be established, then it could be worked into the article about the city. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC) *not sauce!

Well, I know more about Ghent than Dayton, at least. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:28, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Polyhedra and three other reverted talk pages

I thought that Pappus's centroid theorem, Dandelin sphere, and Napkin ring problem are part of the polyhedron. The Pappus's centroid theorem is about theorems involves the solid of revolution with the measurement properties such as surface area and volume, which might be included in calculus. On the other hand, Dandelin sphere talks about two spheres tangent to a plane inside of a cone, and Napkin ring problem is about finding the volume of a band of a sphere with given height of a hole.

I have no idea what was the reason they were reverted. Some clarification needed if I impertubably would like to know your answer, avoiding this misunderstanding. Thank you. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

A polyhedron is a thing with flat sides. Surfaces of revolution, spheres, and the spheres with holes of the napkin ring do not have flat sides. They are solid geometry, but not polyhedra. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:00, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Template:Regular convex 4-polytopes annotation

Please see my previously written reply here "Good idea!" which explains why I did this, to address @Beland's issue (an error on my part which I acknowledged), why my note is referenced, not WP:NOR or junk, and how I took care to ensure what I did does not break any of the articles which transclude this template. If you agree my fix is correct, please undo your undo, as I do not wish to be at all argumentative, and I cannot do that myself without appearing to engage in an edit war. Thank you @David Eppstein. Dc.samizdat (talk) 23:37, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

No. It is junk. It is a discursive essay on an ordering scheme that you appear to have made up. We should not be putting paragraphs of text into templates that are included in multiple articles at all. Articles should have their own text, not copies of boilerplate text from who knows where. And we should not be adding paragraphs of unsourced text to anything. The fact that your addition necessitates adding new sections of explanatory notes separate from the reference sections to multiple other articles is also problematic, but much less problematic than adding paragraphs of text to articles through templates and writing content not based on published sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:43, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Please reconsider. I didn't make up the ordering scheme of the regular 4-polytopes by number of vertices, the SO(4) symmetry group of nature which generates these polytopes did. The text of my note is not "boilerplate from who knows where" but sourced by dozens of citations from Coxeter 1973 who orders his entire book, and his presentation of the regular 4-polytopes in particular, in this order, their natural order of increasing complexity. My discursive essay is to note that crucial geometric fact which Coxeter documented so fully, which is of fundamental importance to understanding the sequence of this series of increasingly complex Wikipedia articles. I moved my note into the template article which is the compendium of Coxeter's most important tables from Regular Polytopes, the essential table which every article on Euclidean geometry or the regular polytopes must have, collapsed but ready to hand, if it is to be understood. @Beland correctly pointed out that the text of my note should not be duplicated in multiple articles; I fully agree and moreover believe it is rightly an annotation to the table, not to every article that needs the table. That is what template transclusion is for. I respectfully submit that your rule that "we should not be putting paragraphs of text into templates that are included in multiple articles" is correct and reasonable, but too absolutely stated; it is a good rule, but every rule has its exception. I would add "except where the template article is the proper home for this information among many related Wikipedia articles, which need to be annotated by this information to be well understood, but should not duplicate the annotation". Dc.samizdat (talk) 01:09, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dc.samizdat tldr. stop adding long off topic notes to articles. stop adding unsourced content. stop making excuses for these problems. it is disruptive and it makes the encyclopedia worse. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:18, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Earth–Moon problem

The article Earth–Moon problem you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Earth–Moon problem for comments about the article, and Talk:Earth–Moon problem/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 09:41, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

IP attacking a user?

[3] Dedhert.Jr (talk) 12:13, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

...and undoing everything by that user, even when "everything" includes obvious vandalism-reversion. Blocked 3 days for personal attacks and harassment. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Ordered Bell number

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Ordered Bell number you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Bilorv -- Bilorv (talk) 21:03, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Combinatory logic - undecidability editing confusion

I'm puzzled about recent edits on the combinatory logic page in relation to the omission of CL's undecidability proof. Isn't removing the previous proof akin to denying the Church-Turing thesis? The thesis implies the equivalence of formalisms that capture "effective calculability/computability" with a formalism's respective undecidability typically then entailing a corresponding proof of the unsolvability of its version of the Halting problem - exactly what was originally provided (not by myself FWIW). That decidability is more commonly sheeted back to Turing machines seems to me to be more a quirk of history.

Consider the thought experiment whereby CL became the first computational model with all subsequent formalisms/languages then proven to be CL-complete (an interesting possibility given its earlier emergence). Would we really now dismiss all the familiar proofs of the unsolvability of the Halting problem as  "nonsensical" or "essentially a trivial statement that has nothing to do with actual undecidability"?

Showing undecidability with just a self-referential, general diagonalization argument (or even potentially something more exotic) also seems perfectly rigorous as discussed here

IMO it seems a bit of a shame to remove the original, more direct proof given how insightful it was in terms of:

1) being much more concrete (no encoding is needed! unlike the implicit coding of TM's in the traditional proofs)

2) giving a more immediate sense of its Godelian nature with the final flipping of perspectives.

I agree it's worthwhile to note CL's "intensionality" and that undecidability doesn't follow when the property under consideration is not the halting problem (while pointing out that CL's Turing-completeness is not then violated because of encoding). Ronald Monson (talk) 08:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Gauss

Hello,

on 6 March, you took this article from the GA-nomination list, and put some "citation needed" tags in the article. These tags are now replaced by references, and some were added in addition, so their complete number has raised from then 216 to 278 now. Would you please take a look on the present state of the article, whether the quotations are sufficient? Thank you. Dioskorides (talk) 10:12, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not perfect, but much better. In "Analysis", two paragraphs end in unsourced sentences. Some notes (especially note [u]) still need a reference for their content. I didn't check carefully that any of the sources actually support the content they appear to support. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:27, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Example of a Partition

I see one of the examples you have for reverting my example of a partition is that it is unsourced. However, the examples in the article are unsourced too. Why would it be important? PicoMath (talk) 10:25, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Not to speak for David, but: the more important reasons for reverting are (1) that your addition was very poorly written, and (2) that there is already a section (immediately below the "Examples" section) specifically about the phenomenon of set partitions induced by equivalence relations. --JBL (talk) 21:01, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I see why. Thanks! PicoMath (talk) 00:47, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Constant-recursive sequence

Ummm... do you think the article Constant-recursive sequence is already quickfailed? I have taken the review, but after I read it, there are many problems, some of which I have to write down. I have never quickfailed the article before, so maybe you could add more comments for the second opinion? I think I will write them down right now. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 10:11, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

With entire sections with no source, I think you could quickfail it per WP:QF#1 (very far from criterion 2) or #3 (needs cleanup banners). For that matter, why is it a separate article from Linear recurrence with constant coefficients? Aren't they on more or less the same topic? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Lambda calculus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Nondeterminism.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:10, 18 April 2024 (UTC)