User talk:VectorPosse

Welcome!

Hello, VectorPosse, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some articles that you might find useful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Kouluhai ۞ 09:07, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Fleiss' kappa

Thanks for your comments :) I think I've taken care of them. - FrancisTyers · 23:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Symmetry

Regarding Symmetric matrix, you changed normal matrix to symmetric matrix. It could be reworded but I think normal matrix is correct in the general (complex) case. (At least that's what someone told me on Talk:Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace#Orthogonality and that appears to be what normal matrix says.—Ben FrantzDale 02:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Response on your talk page. VectorPosse 04:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Frustration

Hi VectorPosse. You have been frustrated by me. There is no need for that. WP is a place where you are welcome to contribute, but you do not have control. It is the desire for control that makes you frustrated or perhaps even angry. When you accept that you do not have control, then the bad feeling will leave you and you will feel fine again. I feel fine. Some people, like yourself and Steven Johnson, yell at me, and I listen to the arguments, not to the yelling. The yelling only makes it more difficult to understand the arguments. My success is that I make a good well-formulated positive contribution, not that it stays in WP forever. Some of my contributions remains, but others were deleted by editors who disagree or who haven't heard about it before and therefore think that it is new or nonstandard. I regard this behavior negative, but it is outside my control, and I am relaxed about it. I advice you to take the same attitude. Be careful to write well. Read what you read before you submit it, so that you do not have to regret it in public, and so that you do not contradict yourself. Don't complain that you are wasting your time, because that is your problem and nobody elses. You alone are responsible for how you use your time. Be focused on the goal, 'to make a great encyclopedia', and refrain from talking about persons. This was my piece of advice to you. My success is that it is well formulated, not that you take it, which is outside my control. Have a nice day. Bo Jacoby 12:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

If I were the only person frustrated by you, I would believe you and take your advice. But I am not the only person (take a poll at WikiProject:Mathematics some day--maybe even WikiProject:Physics too from what I understand from others). And I do not believe you, for as sincere as you think you're being. If you would read everything I write and not just cherry-pick from my responses, you would see that there is no contradiction in the math I discuss. About my "public regret", I was being facetious. Of course, I don't really regret what I wrote. Otherwise I would not have posted it. I have never yelled; I have expressed my firm belief (and getting more firm) that you are principally an agitator. I treat you as such because we all feel that way. It's just that some of the editors have more patience and time to deal with you than I have. Some editors think that because you occassionally make good edits, that somehow we all have to tolerate the bad ones too and revert you constantly. I have said before: I'm sure you think your motives are pure. That does not make your actions acceptable. You must learn that your behavior at Wikipedia is not helpful. It steps on many peoples' toes. But I can't force you to change, and you're smart enough not to do stupid things like make your POV edits three times in the same day to get yourself banned. But if it were up to me, you would not be allowed to touch anything in Exponentiation involving 0^0. It's not up to me, and I don't want to deal with it anymore, so I left. (If I'm such a control freak as you seem to be claiming, why would I do that?) Anyway, I'm glad there are a few editors left with more patience. VectorPosse 18:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for your welcome message on my talk page. Artie P.S. 12:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

roses

Hey, vector posse. Your edits to roses are problematic: note the areas for the two cases are not given by the same integral. For n odd, the limits are only 0 to pi, not 0 to 2pi. Check out the first version you started editing. Cheers, Doctormatt 22:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I just realized that as you wrote. I was just working it out on paper. (Previously, I was just trying to clean up the exposition.) I'll fix it if someone doesn't beat me to it. Thanks! VectorPosse 22:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I think it's right now. VectorPosse 22:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I use Gnuplot mostly. Occasionally I use Grapher, but it's a commercial product (though it comes bundled with Mac OS X) and I'm a big free software fan. My usual method with gnuplot is to create the graphic as a postscript file, then view it as large as possible on my screen, take a screenshot (so at this point it's nicely antialiased) and then, usually, reduce the scale to make it look extra smooth. I've been pretty happy with the results. The only downside is then it's a bitmap, and the pro-SVG crowd gets on my case. As soon as someone comes up with a nice PS to SVG converter that I can use (on a mac) I'll do that. At the moment, that conversion is a pain, at best.

Thanks for your work on this stuff. It really helps to not be doing things alone, and to know that someone notices. Cheers, Doctormatt 17:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Misleading statement in "contact geometry" entry.

Thnx for your consideration of my comment about the cohomological obstruction in the contact geometry entry.

I agree to your last comment. I forgot that symplectic forms are usualy required to exist globally. The geometric condition behind, the non-degenerate condition, is a local condition. In contact geometry, the contact condition - nonintegrability of a hyperplane field - is a local one. If you require the same for the describing contact form as for a symplectic form - to exist globally - the corresponding three manifold has to be orientable ?

best wishes. S. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.202.109.215 (talk) 05:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

Please excuse my rudeness not to introduce myself first. I wrote both this and the other comment without login. best, Stscho, 24 April 2007

No offense taken.  :) The answer to your question is yes. If a contact form α is given on a (2n+1)-manifold (rather than just a contact structure) and if that form is required to exist globally, then $\alpha \wedge (d\alpha )^{n}$ is a volume form. The point is that a contact structure is just a hyperplane field and so the corresponding contact forms need only be defined locally. (And even then, they are unique only up to multiplication by a positive function since it is only the kernal of α that matters.) While the nondegeneracy of a symplectic form ω is a local condition, the fact that it must be defined globally forces $\omega ^{n}$ to be a volume form. I think I'm just repeating what you said, though. VectorPosse 05:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Mathematics CotW

Hey Vector, I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 00:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Algebraic link

Hey there Vector, Since you have experience in low-d topology, I hope you can help me out on this article. It is in need of help, and any expansion, however minor, would be appreciated. Thanks!--Cronholm144 03:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to take a look as I have some time, but it might be a few weeks. I'll put it on my to-do list. Thanks for getting involved to help make this place better! VectorPosse 03:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Surgery theory

Hey VP, You left a comment on the talk page of Surgery theory to check if someone was planning further edits, before you went in and made them yourself. Now, as far as I can tell, this page has been stuck in its current, very provisional, state for a while now. It really needs a lot of work, both on its style and content. So I think any improvements you can make would be very welcome. (This may seem like a bizarre comment to leave, but I started the article, and so I have a strange attachment to it; it makes me sad to see it left half-finished.) Artie P.S. 07:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Not bizarre at all. This is exactly what I was hoping to get: someone saying they wrote the page and feel some attachment to it. I'm happy to help bring it up to shape. I'll put it on my to-do list, along with a bunch of other stuff that is on hiatus while I finish my dissertation. So it won't be any day soon, but I do want to help eventually. VectorPosse 01:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Geometry vs topology

I've now rolled out a tag for topology and I remember you asked me to involve you in this. Please replace any field=geometry tags by field=topology wherever you think this is appropriate. This change is experimental for now, but I expect to complete the split very soon, unless there are serious objections. Geometry guy 23:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. I'll try to hit them as I come across them. I'm sorry that I don't have more time to go through any kind of list systematically. Mostly I'll try to deal with the symplectic/contact issues we discussed. VectorPosse 06:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Thanks for your comment of support on my talk page, but I don't think it's actually a big deal there. It just appears to be just a group of edits who are very vocal in their support of each others' edits, upset because I blocked an editor in that group for edit warring, and unfamiliar with the basis for such block in policy. The discussion is already winding down, and I don't think there is reason to prolong it much further. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:19, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I applaud your patience and restraint. It offends my sense of justice to see four or five people on the attack like that. The whole situation arose because of an apparent misunderstanding of what consensus allows people to do, and the irony is that the same "consensus" is being used to impugn your integrity. I did not mean to make the situation worse for you, and I sincerely hope I have not done that. VectorPosse 23:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, VP, I was going to leave a comment re the "piling on" accusation only to come here and find further dissembling on the part of an admin, and a rather bizarre read on the actual issue. Has truth no value any more? Has the value of answering honestly-put questions in order to assist others in understanding one's actions become de minimis or void? I suppose I set my standards too high. •Jim62sch• 15:28, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Your comment has further established my point. VectorPosse 01:06, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Henrik's google search

You appear to have User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search in your monobook.js. It now seems to work in the new Vector skin, should that be of use to you. If so, load the updated code from Henrik's page into your vector.js page, clear the cache, and you should be away. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:38, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, VectorPosse. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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