User talk:Fropuff/Archive 1

That's a nice write-up at relativistic mass - exactly what I was trying to say at talk:special relativity. I'm glad somebody could do it, because my SR is too rusty (I just remember mass is an invarient being drummed into me - and particularly how icky the concepts of transverse and longitudinal mass are). Would you care to rewrite Special relativity so it's consistent with this definition of mass? It could certainly use it. -- DrBob 22:01, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm attempting to do so now. We'll see how long it lasts :) -- Fropuff 22:10, 2004 Mar 19 (UTC)

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Thanks for your contributions at Comma category; it's looking really nice now, especially the diagrams. How do you make TeX do all that? I always have such headaches trying to get it "just right", and in the desired format. --AlexG 23:13, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No doubt. TeX is an art form :) I really wish Wikipedia had better MathML support though. It's a horrible mess mixing up straight HTML math with wiki's TeX→HTML converter with PNG's. But, until they get on the ball we just have to muddle through. To do all the commutative diagrams I use Paul Taylor's diagrams package along with John Walker's textogif Perl script for converting the TeX to PNG's. I believe the script makes use of the Netpbm library for doing the graphics conversions. -- Fropuff 00:01, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)

Thanks for the textogif link: I didn't know about that and it looks really useful. As for MathML, perhaps there's an issue of browser support as well? I'm using Firefox, which probably has as much support as any recent browser - but then I haven't seen any sites that make serious use of MathML, so it's hard to tell what state things are really at. There's some talk about this at User:Tim Starling/Feature poll - User:Dan Gardner mentions something called LatexWiki. --AlexG 14:49, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I use Firefox as well. Both it and Mozilla have decent MathML support, but, as far as I know they, are the only browsers that do. The real problem is that Wikipedia doesn't convert the TeX to MathML. It either coverts it to HTML, if its very simple, or to a PNG, if it's more complicated. In either case it looks really bad if the text is inline. The fonts/pics are either too small or too big—at least on my system. What I would really like to see is a system where you could input TeX and it would output MathML. But, of course, they probably aren't going to do it anytime soon, as there aren't enough browsers that support it. Sigh.

In the interim I find the thing that looks best is to use straight HTML for everything that's typed inline and to use TeX for displayed equations. But I can also see the argument for using TeX for everything. That way, if the developers ever get on the ball we won't have to rewrite all these pages in proper TeX. -- Fropuff 03:09, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)

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$\int \cos ^{2}(x)\,dx$

$\int \cos ^{2}(x)\,dx\,$

To me these two bits of TeX look identical after they're rendered. Can you explain the advantage of the latter format (since you've made a point of changing from the first to the second form in some articles)? Michael Hardy 20:53, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to the change I made to the trigonometric identity article. There I added the \, to the sin formula to force it to render as a PNG and not as inline HTML (so that it would be consistent with the subsequent formulas). That was the only intended difference. -- Fropuff 21:05, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

OK, I finally figured out what you meant by this: on some browsers, some things in TeX don't get rendered the way TeX does above, but instead look as if they were just html. You didn't mention that. They all look like rendered TeX to me, since I have my preferences set that way. Michael Hardy 21:29, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Hey, thanks for Image:Separation axioms.png! -- Toby Bartels 04:37, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome. Thanks for the orginal; it's very useful. -- Fropuff 04:44, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

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$ijkl$

$ijk\ell$

TeX italicizes variables, and I think the cursive lower-case l in TeX looks better than the non-cursive one, partly because it's less likely to be mistaken for the digit 1. Of course, it won't get mistaken for 1 in this case, but there's something to be said for stylistic consistency (I've been changing lower-case ls in TeX to cursive), and I think it's esthetically better too. Any chance you could make the change in this graphic? (I'd do it myself if I knew how to edit this thing, starting only with the png file.) Michael Hardy 20:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the script l looks better too. I remember I had some trouble getting it to work in the picture. If I get the chance, I'll see if I can play with it some more. -- Fropuff 04:04, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

Spherical distance

Why is spherical distance a better name for this page than great circle distance, which has now been made a redirect page? Is it not standard to speak of "great circle distance"? Michael Hardy 21:27, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Feel free to move it back if you think the old name is more common. I'm more familiar with the new, but perhaps I'm in the minority. -- Fropuff 03:55, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)

That one is older than the other is more than I knew about. Great circle distance seems more accurate since it's the length of an arc of a great circle. And it gets more Google hits. So maybe I will move it back. Where is your information about the ages of the names coming from? Michael Hardy 19:54, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't try to say one name was older than the other. I just hadn't heard the phrase great circle distance before, whereas spherical distance seems common. I must admit I like the name spherical distance better. It is very natural, since it is just the distance function in spherical geometry. One speaks of Euclidean distance not straight line distance. Spherical trigonometry, spherical triangles, spherical area are all common terms. But if great circle distance is indeed more standard/common we should revert. -- Fropuff 04:04, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

I agree, I think the page has been made, while perhaps mathematically correct, harder to understand by introducing the formulas using spherical coordinates instead of latitude and longitude.

I think it's wise to at least break it up into two sections, one for the math principals behind it, and one for a practical use case (latitude and longitude to find distance).

I always intended for it to be easy to understand. -- JeremyCole 17:34, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

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err... Disambig pages usually link to more than one page? ;) Dysprosia 05:09, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, thought someone might notice that. I moved support to support (mathematics) since there were already pages linking to it which didn't mean it in the mathematical sense. I figured it was easier to move it now and avoid having to fix even more links in the future. I guess we could just redirect support until someone else wants to add another link. -- Fropuff 15:32, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do is disambig the articles, rather than moving the page to resolve the issue. Doing that has the advantage of having the other links be red. Dysprosia 09:10, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Image licensing

Unless otherwise noted, all images that I upload are in the public domain. Feel free to tag them accordingly if I have not already done so. -- Fropuff 21:25, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

Hi, could you tell me the license of Image:Fano mnemonic.png ? Thanks in advance. Tipiac 17:29, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I made it myself. It's released under the "do whatever you want with it, no strings attached" license. -- Fropuff 02:12, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Hello, what is the license of Image:Icosahedron-golden-rectangles.png? Would you upload that image to wikicommons? I want to upload it. --Burn 08:55, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

All images that I create are in the public domain. I've altered the image file accordingly. Feel free to upload it. -- Fropuff 16:03, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for uploading Image:CategoricalProduct-01.png (an two others in series). I noticed it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much, [[User:Whosyourjudas|Whosyourjudas\^talk]] 23:42, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As with all other diagrams that I create, this is in the public domain. I usually forget to tag the files though. Sorry. -- Fropuff 02:50, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:

• Image:InverseLimit-01.png

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 22:07, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at User:Yann/Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

• I've just tagged PointedSpace-01.png as public domain, created by you. If this is incorrect, please feel very free to fix this up. Cheers --Pak21 14:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Talk:Möbius strip

Hi Fropuff, I replied to your request from October on Talk:Möbius strip. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. (I might not notice changes to that page for a while; watchlist overload!) dbenbenn | talk 11:56, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've (finally!) uploaded a third picture which might help. dbenbenn | talk 07:26, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Euler angles

You might know this stuff. I am getting remarkably flamed over on the talk there, and would appreciate a third party involved. Charles Matthews 19:50, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Howdy

So, I live in Austin too, care to have a beer some night at Dog-n-Duck or something like that? linas 01:47, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sure, beer is my favorite food group. Send me an email sometime. -- Fropuff 01:32, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

New Mathematics Project Participants List

Hi Fropuff.

In case you didn't follow the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Reformat of Participants list, I'm writing to you to let you know that I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". I took the liberty of creating an "Areas of Interest" entry for you from your comment (I know it says that you are interested in "all areas of mathematics and theoretical physics" but I left some areas out ;-) I thought you might want to check and/or update your entry.

Regards, Paul August ☎ 16:58, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Torus and the fundamental group

Hi! The way you define your group is clearly commutative. However, if you follow the link fundamental group you will see it is defined as the first homotopy group and NOT homology group. It is therefore non-commutative. Tomo 07:08, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I understand the difference between homotopy and homology. The fundamental group is by definition the first homotopy group π₁. In the case of the torus, the first homotopy group is commutative for the simple reason that I have stated. Check any book on algebraic topology. The first homology group is equal to the abelianization of the first homotopy group. If the first homotopy group is already abelian, then they are equal (which is the case here). -- Fropuff 15:04, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. I should have checked some texbook ... Tomo 21:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Can you take a look at Talk:Torus re a minor issue? I want to keep the article accessible to less sophisticated readers.linas 01:24, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Push forward

Hi, can you see Talk:push forward? Your recent edits removed several references, why? They also removed some clarifying text that I'd just finished adding, and replaced it with some imprecise handwaving. I'm not sure why ... if you think there was an error, then please discuss, and correct the error, rather than just chopping out the text whole-sale. linas 19:52, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Never mind. Charles straightened me out. I was being sloppy. I'll add back the few bits that are still arguably interesting. linas 04:35, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No worries. Sorry about the references, those got cut by mistake. I am happy to discuss any other issues you have with the article. -- Fropuff 04:39, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Symplectic vector space

Hi, you and I have been doing some work on Symplectic vector space recently. The article probably doesn't deserve the name "stub" anymore, but isn't finished either. Where do you see it going? It would be nice to finish it off. Sympleko 11:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suppose there is always more to add, although I think the stub message can certainly be dropped. I had wanted to mention something about the orientation of the standard symplectic basis — (x1, y1, x2, y2, ...) vs. (x1, x2, ..., y1, y2, ...) — and also something about the relationship to linear complex structures. Perhaps one could also say something about symplectic vector spaces over fields other than R. -- Fropuff 14:03, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't respond earlier. Was looking at my own talk page, duh! I think adding a section on orientation and and one on complex structure will be good. What about infinite-dimensional examples? The Poisson bracket? (maybe that belongs in Symplectic manifold). I don't know anything about symplectic vector spaces over fields of positive characteristic. Sympleko 18:59, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Infinite-dimensional examples would be good, perhaps with some discussion of where these things appear. The Poisson bracket belongs more properly under symplectic manifold. I'd also like to mention something about the space of all symplectic structures (and its homotopy type) on a 2n-dimensional vector space. I'll pick away at these things as time permits. Feel free make these contributions yourself if I'm too slow. -- Fropuff 17:06, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

Dynkin diagrams

Hey Fropuff, I need to know how to make Dynkin diagrams, and I was wondering if you could tell me how you made the one's on the exceptional Lie groups pages. Did you make them yourself or steal them from somewhere? Latex? xfig? What's the best way? thanks -Lethe | Talk 23:51, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

I did the versions I uploaded in Mathematica. Probably not the best way, but it was the only tool I had. I can send you the notebook if you want it. -- Fropuff 15:23, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Coordinate space and Sequence space

Hi there,

I just noticed your well written new article coordinate space. The last few weeks I have been working on similar topics but with focus on infinite dimensions. In case you have not done so already you might want to have a look at sequence space, FK-space (Frechet Coordinate space), BK-space, beta dual and FK-AK space. There certainly is some value in linking (integrating) those articles. I am a bit busy at the moment but will probably work on this in a few days. MathMartin 17:18, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. I meant to add some stuff to the coordinate space article on sequence spaces. We should certainly link these articles together. We should also add some links to examples of vector spaces (see the Infinite coordinate space section). -- Fropuff 17:24, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

My main aim was to write on FK-spaces, the sequence space article was just created as a stub to talk about the vector space structure of an FK-space and provide some examples of sequence spaces. So feel free to rip the sequence space article apart. Someone also should create Schauder basis. You hint at this concept in examples of vector spaces and I have a concrete red link at FK-AK space. MathMartin 17:42, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

thanks

Hi, thanks for adding the link "algebra (ring theory)". I always forget about this one (and dislike so much the "algebra over a field" thing). Btw, I like your homepage :) PS: you may have noticed that I also like your coordinate space. — MFH: Talk 19:16, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Request for Venn diagram

Well I made those Venn diagrams in a kinda klugey way. I don't really have very good drawing tools available. I'd be willing give it a try, but I can't visualize how to represent the (general) disjoint union with a Venn diagram. If you mean the union of say two disjoint sets, then of course two filled in non-intersecting circles would work. But for the general case of the disjoint union of say two possibly non-disjoint sets, then I don't see how to represent that. By the way thanks for your vote in support of my admin nomination. Paul August ☎ 00:24, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

commutative diagrams

Hi fropuff, I notice you have some discussion about markup of commutative diagrams on your user page and talk page. I'm wondering if you have any idea how long we'll have to wait before we can just type in some TeX code for such a diagram (using the package you've mentioned, or perhaps some other one, I had thought there were a few) and out pops mathML or PNG or whatever. This would be something that would really help make WP a more viable arena for writing more serious mathematical articles. Thanks. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 29 June 2005 15:51 (UTC)

I agree. Unfortunately, I have no idea when that might happen. I have no connection to the developers of wiki software. I suppose it might happen sooner if we made some requests in the appropriate arena (wherever that might be). Let me know if you figure anything out. I would really like to know where we can request the implementation of MathML in wiki. It is long overdue. -- Fropuff 29 June 2005 16:11 (UTC)

Cup product

Hi, are you sure that \smile is the standard. It is not what the book I'm reading uses. Also the name suggests \cup. I find those smiles really ugly, but I guess that is beside the point :) --MarSch 6 July 2005 09:31 (UTC)

I've only ever seen $\smile \,$ (\smile) used (although I agree it's kind of ugly). I do think $\cup \,$ (\cup) should probably be reserved for unions. -- Fropuff 6 July 2005 16:05 (UTC)