Portal talk:Mathematics/Archive2008

Not existing article about Dürer's Conjecture

Hi, sorry for my bad English. There's a conjecture, that's missing from English Wikipedia. There are: an article about the conjecture, a specialized solution from Daniel Bezdek. Other documents are mainly Hungarian, so I won't write them here. I want to congratulate to you, this portal is great! 78.92.67.31 (talk) 17:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Intuitive introductions to articles?

It would be nice if more of the articles had a one- or two-line definition that was devoid of mathematical jargon and notation as possible so that the readers can quickly understand what the concept is in general terms. I fully understand the need to be rigorous, but mathematicians often talk in lectures about generating intuition first and then giving rigorous definitions that map those intuitions onto known principles of proof. It would be useful for wikipedia articles to proceed in the same way, perhaps with an indication that the introductions are for intuition and not to be taken as 100% rigorous.

Then if the reader decides he needs to understand gerbes more he can read on to the more academic characterization. After all, disciplines can have differing notational and naming conventions that may make a highly precise definition unnecessarily obscure.

I'm just talking about the first couple lines of articles, the rest can be kept as is. And I fully understand that wikipedia must not sacrifice precision for intuitiveness. If this is not possible, is there a way to have intuitive versions of the articles coexist with the regular version? SmartPatrol (talk) 18:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

This is actually recommended already, in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Article introduction, though it could be followed more widely. Unfortunately this is one of the hardest parts of writing a maths article, and in many cases it's not clear how it could be achieved, or even if it would be desirable to do so. The first example random clicking has given me is Hilbert's theorem (differential geometry): I'm not sure what could be said without jargon here, though I'm prepared for a more skillful expositor to prove me wrong. In any case, no-one reads this talk page: the place you want is WT:WPM. Algebraist 17:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Related portal icons

I think you're after mixing up the logos for the cryptography and computer science portals at the bottom of the page. 87.33.81.76 (talk) 11:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Good catch, thanks. I've fixed it now. -- Fropuff (talk) 17:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Pythagorean Theorem

Does the Pythagorean theorem really deserve a spot under geometry? Its not a type of geometry, unlike trigonometry, topology, differential geometry etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattsteadman (talk • contribs) 23:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I'd like to thank those of you who edit and write so many great mathematics articles. I'm a third year university student and frequently refer to wikipedia on topics such as manifolds, lie groups, measure theory and analysis for a general overview, to recall things I've forgotten or for another viewpoint when I'm not understanding something. I find it a valuable resource and know many other students who do also. 86.128.129.218 (talk) 13:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC) GJS

Thanks for your comment and contributing also. It's nice to hear something besides the usual complaints and insults. --C S (talk) 07:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Academy

This weekend, Wikimedia Germany held the third Wikipedia Academy in Germany, together with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in their location in Berlin. I would just to mention some points: Bill Casselman from the University of British Columbia gave a talk on history of mathematics in Wikipedia, which was very interesting. Of course, he comes to the conclusion that the german wikipedia is better than the english one ;-) Seriously, you can find his talk on http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/wiki-berlin/. Another point was that a lot of mathematicians suggested being more clear on who an article is for, e.g. Martin Grötschel. Best, --P. Birken (talk) 18:35, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The Hebrew Gallery

Hello everybody. You are wellcome to take a look at the gallery at the math portal in the heb. wikipedia, here and take some ideas to the pictures in the poral right here. Shim'on (talk) 16:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks it seems to be getting harder to find picture that aren't all fractals. Aiden Fisher (talk) 02:02, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

archiving

I'm going to set up automated archiving (probably every couple weeks). Any objections or suggestions? --C S (talk) 07:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Archive the current stuff if you want to, but I don't see the point of automating it. This is the first new thread in the last two weeks. Algebraist 11:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

SLOUTION

A teacher wishes to test three different teaching methods I, II, III. To do this, the teacher chooses at random three groups of five students each and teaches each group by a different method. The same examination is then given to all the students and the marks obtained are given below. Determine at α=0.05 significance level whether there is difference between the teaching methods. Use Kruskal-Wallis test. Method I 78 62 71 58 73 Method II 76 85 77 90 87 Method III 74 79 60 75 80 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.165.226.18 (talk) 21:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a difference between the teaching methods at the α=0.05 significance level using the Kruskal–Wallis test. --Qwfp (talk) 21:50, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Technical contradiction of top box and Mathematics article

At the time of this posting, the top box of the Mathematics portal disagrees with the Mathematics article on the description of what mathematics is and from which particular form of a Greek word "mathematics" is derived from.

The explanation of mathematics as the study of quantities is inaccurate and the Mathematics article does better. The large list of things on the portal does not manage to make the description correct but does serve to make for difficult reading.

I put my hands up as unqualified for editing the Mathematics portal.  :)

mikeliuk (talk) 00:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)