User talk:Dmcq/Archive 4

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IP vandalism

Hi Dmcq. Could you please take a look at this? A few editors and IP vandals have totally messed up the numbers. You can check the sources. Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.70.207.74 (talk) 23:58, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Reply

Okay, that is fine. ;) No worries, -- Cirt (talk) 05:19, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Reworking ELNO on Official Links

Hi,

As an editor who was involved with the recent ELNO discussion, "Control of official links," I am inviting you to comment on the proposal to rework the definition of "Official Link".[1]

Regards, ELNO Checking (talk) 18:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

RNS post on podcasts

You dated but didn't sign it. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

My fingers didn't stick in enough twiddles. Dmcq (talk) 13:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

LOL - I used to click on the 'sign your posts' twiddles but at times that would freeze Chrome. Writing a long screed and then losing it is no fun. Dougweller (talk) 14:25, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

In light of your participation in the discussion(s) regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Ghosts of departed quantities

I noticed your edit to Talk:Non-standard calculus‎‎ and just wanted to remind you if you felt that Ghosts of departed quantities and The Analyst should be merged then it might be good to say so in the discussion here. I have that there exists at least one editor disagrees that there is a consensus to merge. Perhaps a Yop will let us who's be heard :). Thenub314 (talk) 06:48, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Word Choice

• gleamed: Simple past tense and past participle of gleam.
  • Gleam: a small or indistinct shaft or stream of light.
• gleaned: Simple past tense and past participle of glean.
  • Glean: To gather information in small amounts, with implied difficulty, bit by bit.

"Gathered" or "learned" would be better word choices in my opinion, but that's somewhat beside the point. Regards,
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:15, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but you'll have your work cut out if you try correcting all my misspellings ;-) Dmcq (talk) 20:24, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

LOL. Sorry, no offense intended, of course. I'm not even sure what made me want to point this out... Oh well. :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:46, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Tired light

Ha ha, loving the spat going on here. I'd suggest you don't get too bogged down feeding the trolls! Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 09:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Numerology

Ha ha ha ha. I'm so glad you rescued that edit to number that included a mention of numerology. That was me. I can only assume that haste made waste. I was editing several wikipedia articles in an extended editing session (that included numerology), and had to close shop rather quickly, but I had no intention or idea at all to say that arithmatic was a numerology. I thought my preview looked OK, but I missed that goof.

Congratulations and thank you for fixing it. Now I have made my amends there. — CpiralCpiral 19:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the language in that article is pitched at too high a level. It is a reasonable subject for a schoolchild to look up and expect to read at least the first half of the article. I'm afraid I think you change has made the lead tend towards grandiloquence. Dmcq (talk) 21:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Your concern appears to be valid, especially for a summary article: WP:NOT#JARGON (See number 7.) However, my original motivation was to improve the WP:lead content.

Concerning my opinion of your word choices in our exchanges: "schoolchild" --> "literate person"; "confused" --> "awkward", "grandiloquence" --> "lofty".  :-) — CpiralCpiral 17:43, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

About the Sanskrit derivations

We in India have been talking in Hindi and Sanskrit for millenia till today. The similarity between geometry and gyamiti is not coincidental. You can yourself search the translation of geometry in Sanskrit or Hindi and check and confirm.. But anyways I know the west is too full to acknowledge non western contribution or influence on anything. So I am not gonna say anything. Change as you like. For now Its a western world.. but not for long... 117.211.90.154 (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Greek has been around just as long as Sanskrit so it seems very unlikely that Greek derived from Sanskrit never mind that what you wrote is something you thought of yourself. What you have done is WP:Original research. Please only put in things that have been written about in reliable sources rather than jumping to conclusions yourself. Dmcq (talk) 17:44, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

1rr vio

Re; this revert, you might want to read the 1rr note at the page top 'cause you just violated it. Vsmith (talk) 11:50, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I forgot it still is under that. I've put a note on the talk page saying why the edit is silly. Dmcq (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I just had a look for the 1rr note and for a description of the current sanctions. Where are they please? Dmcq (talk) 11:57, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation Vsmith (talk) 12:15, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Got a note there these warnings appear atthe top of the page when one does an edit. Unfortunately I skip that bit apractically automatically, probably be better to have one just beside the summary line too. Dmcq (talk) 12:17, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, there isn't a 1RR on that article. The general sanctions resulting from the (first) Climate Change arbcom case also do not include a blanket 1RR. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:53, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagreement at Trigonometry

Hi Dmcq,

I agree that cwm9's contribution is of dubious value, but I also think it was a fairly impressive first edit for a new user of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has been having trouble retaining new editors, and we can help to encourage new editors by showing that we value their efforts, while at the same time offering friendly advice on how to make their contributions more constructive.

The mnemonics in trigonometry article is currently low on sourced content, but it has the potential to improve. We have repeatedly had trouble with the mnemonics section in Trigonometry attracting unwanted attention, and I think it will work better in the long run to deflect these users towards a sub-article than to revert their edits and argue with them on the talk page. There do exist several scholarly articles that discuss the use of mnemonics in math education, so it would be possible for the article to eventually reach reasonable state (e.g. on the level of the FOIL method article). Jim.belk (talk) 16:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I had a look around for any citation myself and I couldn't and the contributor just said they heard it from their father rather than ever reading anything about it. I'm sorry about the new contributors but there is no other real basic requirement for any contribution than verifiability, anything else and one can fix up what a person has written. Dmcq (talk) 17:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Minor Barnstar

		The Minor Barnstar
		Good contribution at Talk:River Shannon. Long may you keep a good head on your shoulders. John (talk) 18:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I like to think I make positive contribution to WIkipedia. Dmcq (talk) 22:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair division

I heard that if two children are going to quarrel over a snack - like a piece of cake - the best thing for the grown-up to do is:

• Tell the two children that one child will cut the cake, and the other gets to choose which piece to eat
• Pick either child to do the cutting (doesn't matter which)

I got a chance to try this with my friend's daughters once in 1990. I was amazed at how carefully and precisely his older daughter (then about 5) was able to cut the cake. And there was not even the slightest hint of a whimper from the younger daughter (around 4).

Fast-forward 11 years, and I stumble on Wikipedia, which strives to "describe fairly" all significant points of view. So I appreciate your attention to my question at Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources#Determining_academic_consensus. --Uncle Ed (talk) 23:20, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Those were good children. Ian Stewart in his book 'How to Cut a Cake' describes where the youngest started screaming about the older one having a larger piece after she carefully divided the cake in two, so she swapped them over. "She's still got a bigger piece" the child wailed :) Dmcq (talk) 07:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you be selective?

Can you be selective?

Mormegil 87.19.76.143 (talk) 11:07, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The level of English in an article should be readable by the lower level of the intended audience anyway. Wikipedia is not a dictionary and the links are not there to act as a word lookup, plus the English level should have been chosen so such dictionary lookup was rare. Only words or phrases which have some specialist meaning in the context or which would be of interest to a person looking up the article should be linked. For instance for 'Theory' if there is an article about the idea behind specific meaning of 'speculation' used then that is a candidate. Articles are about topics and the links are to articles about the topics described by the phrase or word.

For instance I would say of the links you added in the first paragraph that

• word, technical term, derived, meaning, refers, opposed, example, view, literally, English, 1th century, sake, and theological were unnecessarily linked.
• contemplation, speculation, action, and concept were possible reasonable links as they had something to do with the topic of the article and might be of interest and possibly might have domain specific meanings.

Dmcq (talk) 11:36, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, sake link was a typo that remained in the saved editing (and I tried to delete that); English (language) in the footnote was a reference to a lnguistical concept in a linguistical context, often in well linked article I find such links; 16th century is a link to a historical period and I find always these necessary; theological is related to the topic, though.

Do you agree?

I am going to link to the other words. I think also an article to "empirical phenomenon" is needed.

Mormegil 87.18.197.73 (talk) 11:27, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I put again a link to Hippocrates in the footnotes, also, and I find a link to the concept of consistency would be well. Mormegil 87.18.197.73 (talk) 11:36, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what you're saying about English above, I can see no reason to link to English language in the article. I really do not see why anybody would suddenly shoot off on the topic of English language if they wanted to know about theory. It is not a related topic and it isn't a novel idea either for the readership level. As for the rest I only referred to links you'd put into the very first paragraph. You've put in a red link to empirical phenomenon, I'd have though there probably was a suitable article for the concept and it is always worth checking that the target actually does describe what one intends. Dmcq (talk) 14:48, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

English languange is in the footnote regarding the use in English language of the word. As I have written above, often in well linked article I find such links. Do you agree?

Mormegil 87.20.73.254 (talk) 10:40, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find what you mean. I can't see a good reason for ever linking to English language in the article. I've found a link to literature and literary theory, is that what you mean? I would not link English in note 1 to English language. I can't see why you think that would be reasonable. Can you point to one of these other articles you are referring to that link to English language just because they mention English?

Soon I am going to bring you how much links you want (I refer to a linguistical context or simply paragraph). Mormegil 87.18.197.84 (talk) 10:00, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Here some link:

In those every language is linked, included, where that is, English Language: Language, English language, German language, French language, Spanish language;

In those is linked English language: Cashew, Classy (magazine), Initial-stress-derived noun, Plural form of words ending in -us

Of course they are always in linguistical context.

Mormegil 87.18.79.247 (talk) 21:31, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The link from Cashew for instance is quite unnecessary and shouldn't be there. Some of the rest is also overlinking. Do you really not get it? Dmcq (talk) 22:29, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I get they are links to languages in linguistical context. However if you do not agree, I shall not put a link to English language from that etymology. Do not you agree?

Mormegil 87.19.62.127 (talk) 11:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

As I said before if you have any question about it then don't because you tend to grossly overlink. No a link to English when giving etymology would normally be wrong. Why on earth would it be relevant, what use would it be to someone? Is it actually really relevant? It would be a useless irrelevant link and in the context of a person looking at the article for something else even more irrelevant. Dmcq (talk) 11:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

You've left empirical phenomenon as a red link for no good reason. Have you tried searching for an appropriate article? And have you checked that the articles you link to are appropriate? Links are not for the words or phrases, they are for the topic or concept behind them as they are used in the article. Dmcq (talk) 11:05, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is so. I always check the links, but not always I agree with other editors. However an article to empirical phenomenon is needed (and the red link usually points out on that). However I am going to link that to Empiricism or something similar. Mormegil 87.18.197.84 (talk) 10:00, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Already found done. Mormegil 87.18.197.84 (talk) 10:03, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes I went back after a couple of days and found it still red and removed a bit more of the overlinking too. Dmcq (talk) 10:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I pointed out a section of this before but Wikipedia:Manual of Style (linking) really is worth a read especially the bit about overlinking. It says to avoid linking common English words or units of measurement or dates, major geographic features and locations, religions, languages, and common professions. In the lead when you started on the article you linked to a language and a date and some common English words so it must be obvious to you that overlinking is something you tend to do. If in doubt don't do it would therefore be a good rule in your case. Please see the section 'An example article' in that manual of style where they explain their reasons when going through an example. Dmcq (talk) 11:29, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Primitive root of unity

From its definition, primitive roots of unity are the roots of 1 that do not equal to 1, so primitive 4th roots of unity (that have 4-1 =3 numbers) must include -1 as well. Or do I miss something? --Octra Bond (talk) 06:18, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Try reading the definition from there again. "If zⁿ = 1 but z^k ≠ 1 for all natural numbers k such that 0 < k < n, then z is called a primitive nth root of unity." Then think about (−1)²=1. Dmcq (talk) 08:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

So, the primitive 8th roots of unity exclude the primitive 4th roots of unity in the same way, don't they? --Octra Bond (talk) 11:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes the number is given by Euler's totient function Dmcq (talk) 15:43, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The star problem

Maybe you'll agree that the problem of clarifying policy has been confused by the artifical creation of a page that no one wants to develop - hence I have added a notice to the Algol page which covers my thoughts on that. I wonder whether I should make a notice about this in the post I submitted to the NPOV; or do you think that is unnecessary? Looks like the discussion has died there - I understand why; this whole thing's a timesink. Glad you had the willingness to comment Zac Δ talk 15:06, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Oops, you edited my talk page signature

I see you've got 12,000 some edits.... please be more careful. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change&diff=next&oldid=440137325 NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry my keyboard seem to act up sometimes and move the edit point. I'll try disabling the mousepad as I've got a separate mouse. Dmcq (talk) 19:24, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. If it's helpful, FYI one of my machines has a joystick type mouse that gets stuck in a slow drift between keyboard cleanings.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

AN/I

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at the Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have some information. You are invited to comment at the relevant thread. Thank you. CycloneGU (talk) 15:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Read it all and didn't feel like getting involved. I'm happy they're arguing there rather than on talk pages. Dmcq (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Changing fractions

Hmmm… I was changing them because I find the previous style completely unreadable. 178.16.0.184 (talk) 22:12, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry about that but it is a standard style. You'll need to get used to it if you ever write programs or anything like that never mind read textbooks. By the way you really should stick the k and n close to each other when they form a fraction. Dmcq (talk) 22:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

By unreadable about the exponent having a fraction I meant the characters had two levels of making them smaller applied so the individual characters were tiny and indistinct. This is in addition to the multiple changing levels. Dmcq (talk) 22:50, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

IQ variability

What sources suggest that a higher male "variability seems to be disputed and reversed in some cases"?--Victor Chmara (talk) 11:04, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

In the intelligence section of Sex and psychology there is Hyde, J.S.; Metz, J.E. (2009). "Gender, culture, and mathematics performance". PNAS. 106 (22): 8801–7. doi:10.1073/pnas.0901265106. PMC 2689999. PMID 19487665.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). Dmcq (talk) 11:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

We are talking about IQ tests, not mathematics achievement tests. The Hyde paper is about international math achievement tests, and Hyde admits that male variability is higher in most countries on those tests, too. (She claims that the few countries that exhibit a greater female variability or a gender parity do so because they are more gender-equal societies. However, it seems more likely that the tests in question are not suitable for comparing top level abitities, particularly in countries where the average level of cognitive ability is high. See this article[2] for discussion on this.)--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Well in fact I took it out mainly because "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" left it out and there seemed to be a controversy. Is that a reliable source? If so it seems a pretty good rebuttal of the papers. Interesting about the puberty change, i thought there was an obvious difference even before that. Dmcq (talk) 14:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)