A fact from Grünbaum–Rigby configuration appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 May 2019 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that although the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration(pictured) has been studied since 1879, it was not depicted in its realization as three overlaid heptagrams until 1990?
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Hi all, congrats on the DYK! As a non-mathematician (my background is in chemistry), I can't work out why the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration is notable. Please would it be possible to put a brief description in the lede? Thanks, Brammers (talk/c) 13:44, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Can I second that request? Red Fiona (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean why it is notable by Wikipedia standards, or what is significant about it? Because those are two different things. It is notable because multiple mathematicians have written multiple different publications with nontrivial details about it. It is significant for multiple reasons: it describes the perspective transformations of the Klein quartic, it describes the pattern of nonsecants and interior points of conics in PG(2,7), and it is the first -configuration to be realized in the Euclidean plane. This is all in the article, if you read it. And the only part of that that is not already briefly summarized in the lead is the connection to conics in PG(2,7). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for taking the time to go through the reasons. But I'm not keen on the implication that I hadn't read the article – I tried, and the fact that two readers (one at least of whom is educated to masters level in a numerate field) have come to ask on the talk page suggests that there's room for clarification. Brammers (talk/c) 20:48, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So you want our mathematical articles to have deep enough mathematical significance to be the object of independent study, but also non-technical enough that readers without any prior experience with the subject can read them and immediately understand everything about them? That's a tall order. You might check out what Euclid said to Ptolemy. As a chemist, do you expect non-chemists to be able to immediately understand and immediately recognize the notability of, say, thioester, without even trying to read any of its linked articles? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:48, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, um, yes. The thioester article is a start-class article and asserts that they are part of the production of a significant amount of the world's biomass, and could potentially be a building block for sulfur-based lifeforms. That's at least vaguely informative to a lay audience. I'm not expecting a high school student to be able to understand the subtleties of organosulfur chemistry from the article, but they're offered at least a foothold. Even spin glass, which is a pretty flaky article about something you wouldn't come across without a couple of years' college under your belt, still tries to throw a bone to a reasonably educated reader. Brammers (talk/c) 22:09, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Those are all buried well below a mound of technicality. Similarly, in this article, I would expect any high school student to be able to understand the construction from regular heptagrams. The complex and mod-7 constructions are necessarily more technical. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:52, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
