Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Sexist content edit summary

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Is this considered sexist content. Solomon7968 has been removing Erdős numbers from articles with that edit summary. Here is an old talk page discussion, which references this project, hence the reason I am asking here. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 14:52, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It could be the case that we list Erdos numbers for a lot a women in mathematics, but not many men. The same editor is also removing Erdos numbers from male mathematicians. There's a discussion to be had whether Erdos numbers should be listed at all, unless they are discussed in secondary sources. Tito Omburo (talk) 15:23, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen multiple removals by the same editor on articles about men, and the "sexist content" summary on only one article, despite having many more women mathematicians than men on my watchlist, so I suspect that any disparity in how often we list it goes the other way. Anyway, I don't see how it is sexist. Trivial, arguably, but it does give some indirect indication about how well-connected to topics of interest to Erdős (like combinatorics) the subject is. If the subject had significant and noteworthy interactions with Erdős himself we should definitely list it but I don't think listing or not listing these numbers is important. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:36, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I first noticed the "sexist" edit summary on an article you created, sexist content. I restored it as I trusted your judgment for including it in the first place. Isaidnoway (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect the "sexist" summary may have been a misinterpretation of my wording there. It said "Through her collaborations with Wormald, she has Erdős number 2." That was intended only to mean that the path from her to E runs through W, but it could have been (incorrectly) misinterpreted as a sexist statement that her own accomplishments were not hers but W's. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:14, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A counterexample to this interpretation is this. Tito Omburo (talk) 16:24, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I now see that they have gone on a spree removing Erdos numbers from mathematician articles, but in the male mathematicians, the removal is classified as trivia, but in the female articles, it is sexist. This topic is outside my purview, so I'll leave it up to more experienced editors on this topic as to whether the number removals are trivial or sexist, and whether they should be removed at all. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 15:37, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted all of the removals. Perhaps these are trivial, but that is a matter for community consensus. I note that in several instances the editor removed Erdos numbers on the basis that the paper for which the subject gained that number was "not his most widely cited one", which seems to have no conceivable basis in policy. BD2412 T 17:31, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the edit summary is clearly inappropriate and not a valid justification for the edit. (Maybe better justifications for some of these edits are possible, though.) --JBL (talk) 18:11, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Whether it's for male or female mathematicians, listing the Erdos number of someone is trivia and it seems perfectly acceptable to me to remove it. PatrickR2 (talk) 21:14, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems reasonable to me that the Erdős number is trivial information unless there's something significant (like the decreases from posthumous papers, or the one that was described as filling a much-needed gap), though at the point where you're doing mass removals and getting challenged you should definitely try to get consensus.
And the description as sexist is just confusing. Sesquilinear (talk) 22:29, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Talking about the article on Susan Assmann, which triggered this discussion, the Personal life section says she was interested in change ringing and hapsichord music. True facts, but it also seems rather trivial in an encyclopedic article about a scientist. What would be the rationale for including this? PatrickR2 (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(1) Because articles that give only the basic dates of career-relevant milestones are skeletal and boring. If we have sourced publications about some other interests, that can make the article less dry. It's a helpful to convey to our readers the idea that mathematicians aren't robots. (2) Change ringing is actually extremely relevant for someone who started out working in discrete mathematics. (3) If a notable mathematics society saw fit to include this in a professional obituary, why should we second-guess that decision? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:35, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for enlightening me. PatrickR2 (talk) 22:32, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why would Isaac Newton's interest in alchemy be relevant to his biography? Or that Milton Babbit also worked as a mathematician? Tito Omburo (talk) 21:38, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2017/May#Erdős_numbers is the archived discussion, where there seems to have been a rough consensus that Erdős numbers only should be mentioned when the number itself is significant or linked through a significant paper. (I think this also explains where the "not most cited paper" thing came from, which I think might be over-reading the consensus, but I can at least trace the path) Sesquilinear (talk) 17:17, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like there to be some sort of formal discussion on this topic now, rather than relying on a discussion from 8 years ago. My personal opinion: although I agree that having mention in a biography's lead paragraphs is often not warranted, a single sentence in, say, a Background section is fun. The reader who doesn't care is burdened with one small sentence that can easily be ignored. The reader who finds this interesting is rewarded with that little nugget of information. Because the cost is so small (i.e. "<Author> has an Erdős number of 3."), I'm in favor of keeping this information in biographies. (Disclaimer, in case it is relevant: several someones I know who have pages on Wikipedia have Erdős numbers of 3 or less.) —Quantling (talk | contribs) 18:27, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind having the Erdős number listed in articles. I'm strongly opposed to its mass removal without consensus. I'm strongly opposed to removing it from any article because of supposed sexism. - CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:08, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Forget about sexism. That was a red herring. The issue is about triviality. PatrickR2 (talk) 23:16, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely the key point, on which there is no solid consensus. Tito Omburo (talk) 23:18, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If it's included, I'd prefer that it be included with some other related detail, such as the nature of the research or the names of the collaborators that led to the number. The number itself, devoid of context, is not particularly interesting. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:35, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that there should be context around the number. In general, I think only Erdos numbers 3 and less should be reported. As you get to larger Erdos numbers, the meaning of the number has less meaning as a person is more likely to be in a different discipline and not have much to do with Erdos. A few exceptions would be an academic descendent of someone with Erdos 1, or every paper between Erdos and the person is on the same problem. Thus, context would be leading why we list the number, and a number with no context would encourage people to write about the context or realize that it is trivial (like someone with Erdos number 17 is just weird to list). EulerianTrail (talk) 00:09, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It might be interesting to see in the future an infobox parameter listing Erdos numbers, but for right now I think it better to decide on how we actually talk about Erdos numbers and which ones are truly notable. EulerianTrail (talk) 00:11, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with including it, since the cost of even a fuller description is small ("<Author> has an Erdős number of 3, thanks to..."). It can make an article a tiny bit less dry, and it doesn't require problematic Original Research on our part. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 01:21, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support the removal of the Erdos number from articles in most cases. Some supporting arguments:
- (1) It is kind of a triviality.
- (2) The number can change as new papers get published, based on who an author collaborates with.
- (3) This information is available online, at the click of a button: https://www.csauthors.net/distance/. For example, this shows Susan Assmann's Erdos number is 2: https://www.csauthors.net/distance/susan-f-assmann/paul-erdos.
- (4) I may remember things wrong, but isn't there a general Wikipedia guideline that says Wikipedia is not the place for routine information that can be gathered routinely from the internet? PatrickR2 (talk) 23:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why should information be removed from Wikipedia just because it is easily found elsewhere too? Many other places on the Internet will say that Paris is the capital of France, that zebras have stripes, that the area of a circle is , etc.
And if a person's Erdős number changes, we can always edit the article. We include plenty of things in academic biographies that are subject to change, e.g., a person's current title and place of employment. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 01:14, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also some random website that claims to be only about "computer scientists [sic] bibliographies" does not seem like a great source for this information about people who are not computer scientists, the Erdős Number Project only counts up to two, and the MathSciNet distance calculator doesn't let you check what the joint publications are (necessary to check whether they should really count as joint publications) unless you have a subscription. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:55, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The zbmath version is open access: https://zbmath.org/collaboration-distance/?a=David+Eppstein&b=Paul+Erdos PatrickR2 (talk) 03:44, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTDIRECTORY is what I was thinking about. But maybe not applicable. PatrickR2 (talk) 03:37, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything there that would be applicable to this question. We're not talking about making a directory of all professional mathematicians, or a complete bibliography of all mathematical publications, or even a list of all the publications by any individual mathematician. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 03:43, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, not applicable. PatrickR2 (talk) 03:44, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Has User:Solomon7968 been notified that this discussion is happening? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:00, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Solomon7968: now he has been ping EulerianTrail (talk) 23:43, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Solomon7968&diff=prev&oldid=1303015606 quite some time ago. Has only made one edit since. 173.79.19.248 (talk) 01:40, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Expanding Infinite group

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The page on Infinite groups is currently a stub, and only lists a few examples of infinite groups. Is there any broader coverage on the subject that could be included, like properties that hold generally for infinite groups, or comparing different kinds of infinite groups? ALittleClass (talk) 02:21, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article Group (mathematics) actually says more about infinite groups than Infinite group does. The Numbers and Lie groups sections have a lot of prose about them, for starters. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:37, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on that, a better solution would be to delete that article altogether. PatrickR2 (talk) 18:55, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the existence of Gromov's "Asymptotic invariants of infinite groups" may caution against this. His basic idea is to study infinite groups metrically, using the word metric. Whereas, "locally" an infinite group has no interesting structure, asymptotically they have non-trivial structure, including a Carnot-Caratheodory metric on the asymptotic cone. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:10, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a term for a number that can only be calculated by the multiplication of two other specific numbers?

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For example, the number 15 is 5 x 3, but there are no other positive whole numbers that can be multiplied to get 15, as compared to, say, 45, which could be 15 x 3 or 5 x 9 or 3 x 3 x 5. Also, is it correct that the product of any two primes will only be calculable by the multiplication of those primes (such as 64,507 only being reducible to 251 x 257)? BD2412 T 17:04, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

semiprime Tito Omburo (talk) 17:12, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Thanks. It seems that all the number articles on numbers with this characteristic note this as well. BD2412 T 02:10, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@BD2412: Note that in Wikipedia articles one should write 5 × 3 rather than 5 x 3. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:14, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And if you cannot make × conveniently, it's &­times­;. —Tamfang (talk) 03:43, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mixing {{math}} and <math>

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@Beland I see that you modified the manual of style here and are now populating pages with MOS:FORMULA notices that this should be respected. Have there been any official discussions on this topic? —Quantling (talk | contribs) 20:03, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not Beland, and I'm not sure where this 3-year-ago change might have been discussed (I didn't find it in the archives of this talk page nor the one of MOS:MATH), but I strongly agree with the quote of User:D.Lazard on that edit summary that mixing template-formatting and math-formatting within a single formula is "awful". I don't know of a good way to find these abominations myself so I think the tagging is useful. More strongly I would prefer not mixing the two kinds of formatting even within a single article, but these changes are only about single formulas. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:24, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe @Beland has made several such MOS changes unilaterally, and then gone around flagging them or changing them en masse. Most of the time the changes seem trivial and harmless (e.g. changing unicode symbols specified by character entity reference to directly encoded symbols), but sometimes they seem like minor disimprovements, e.g. automatically swapping thin spaces that some editor added deliberately for full-width spaces in mathematical formulas typeset with {{math}} templates. I'm not convinced this type of activity is of net benefit. –jacobolus (t) 21:17, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
E.g., [1]? Tito Omburo (talk) 22:35, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That edit was slightly in error; named HTML entities are supposed to be kept for articles with <math>...</math> markup, for easier searching. The only reason I touched that article was that it was violating MOS:BBB; I must have not noticed that it was using <math>...</math> markup before I approved the diff, or clicked the wrong button or something. -- Beland (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The MOS:FORMULA change disallowing mixed markup in a single formula arose from a complaint by User:D.Lazard at User talk:Beland#Coherent style for formulas in 2021. I am just now getting around to finishing cleaning up after myself, and in doing so I noticed other editors had done the same thing (hence the tagging). -- Beland (talk) 23:34, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Please, avoid mixing latex and html rendering in the same formula [when making script-assisted edits to replace unicode characters]" is not the same as "Mixing LaTeX and math templates is now banned site-wide and must be indiscriminately eliminated by a script". –jacobolus (t) 00:04, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but what's the argument in favor of complicating things by making exceptions to a relatively simple and easily implemented rule? The downside of mixed markup is that it is more difficult to read and edit, on top of the difficulty already faced in 1.) understanding the math involved and 2.) understanding HTML, LaTeX, or both. -- Beland (talk) 01:37, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's no inherent reason to make up and then rigidly apply rules. The point of the "rules" here is to codify editor consensus. I don't really see consensus: just a few people's general best-practice advice (which I agree with, in general) and one single person's really strong opinion that this should be universalized. Anyone who is editing articles about pure math topics on Wikipedia inevitably has to be familiar with both LaTeX and our {{math}} templates, so this "difficulty" argument is pretty weak. –jacobolus (t) 03:52, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with David. I'm not generally a fan of article tags, but this seems like a good use, and it is relatively easy to fix an article to remove the tag. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:28, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For example, is "f : → [0, 1]" actually awful? Especially because unicode support for the character is inconsistent (at least in my experience) and I prefer over R, I think that this is a good use of mixed HTML and LaTeΧ. My experience is that people are pretty good at using just {{math}} or just <math>, and only go to a mixed approach when it actually is a reasonable thing to do. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 20:49, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, your example is awful. If there is proper unicode support for , it should be embedded as the appropriate unicode character, and not something that generates a PNG (maybe depending on browser configuration). This strikes me as a more important counterexample, although one which admits an obviously compliant workaround. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:59, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is proper unicode support for ⁠⁠, i.e. ℝ, but its use is more or less banned here due to inconsistent font support which makes it not render for some readers. Instead articles using {{math}} templates tend to use ordinary bold R instead. –jacobolus (t) 21:05, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The specific guideline which requires the removal of the Unicode ℝ is MOS:BBB. -- Beland (talk) 23:39, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if we had an idea precisely which / how many readers can't see the ℝ (or various other symbols). The browser version / OS / device share of Wikipedia readers continues to evolve, and problems from a decade ago might be less serious today. For instance at the point where all of the readers on "Grade A" browsers can view these glyphs, we could plausibly change our recommendation, which was originally added in August 2009. –jacobolus (t) 00:15, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to research the question and propose an MOS change on the appropriate talk page. -- Beland (talk) 01:57, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(And to be clear, I would be happy to hear that Unicode ℝ is widely supported, because it would reduce the need to clean up after people inserting it, and using it more widely would make a lot of markup easier to read for the rare person who is willing to touch higher-level-than-arithmetic math articles. -- Beland (talk) 02:01, 31 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]
I for one see ℝ as a super-ugly too-tall doublestruck-boldface-sans-serif atrocity. It is unusably bad in comparison to . —David Eppstein (talk) 02:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, both of those show up as sans-serif Rs for me, just with slightly different shapes. I couldn't have told you it was sans-serif until I took off my glasses and looked verrry closely at my screen. -- Beland (talk) 02:20, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This kind of variation is going to be true for the use of {{math}} templates to render any unicode glyphs; if these symbols render at all on everyone's devices they probably don't need to be treated specially vs. any other kind of math symbol. (Though with that said, it would be nice if Wikipedia would ship a font with wide symbol support of a consistent appearance to every reader, which could be explicitly chosen in the CSS for technical notation rendering. I don't know who to talk to to make that happen though.)
Which font does your browser use to render ℝ? The symbol that shows up on my browser as ℝ is apparently rendered using Menlo, which is alright but not amazing, conceptually better than the LaTeX default but also not really consistent with our math fonts. I wish it would pick the STIX 2 glyph instead as a fallback, which is similar, but browsers pick the fallback glyphs in a way that human readers have little control over.
The LaTeX default ⁠⁠ is unfortunately quite ugly in context of Computer Modern math, since it is just a hollow variant of Times, which (a) doesn't really match the thematic goal of a blackboard bold letter, and (b) doesn't remotely match the Computer Modern font in style. Unfortunately, LaTeX never bothered to ship a Computer Modern based alternative as a default, so we can't use them from Wikipedia. (Computer Modern based blackboard bold fonts do exist, and should be used by anyone typesetting mathematical documents with Computer Modern as their math font who has control over their own rendering environment. Take a look at the 'doublestroke' package) –jacobolus (t) 04:42, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For me, Unicode ℝ renders in Noto Sans Regular. Putting it in {{math}} (ℝ) renders as Noto Serif, but I don't actually see any serifs. I don't get any serifs with <math>\mathbb{R}</math> (), either, because it also renders as Noto (I have MathML selected in my preferences). -- Beland (talk) 18:56, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we should be dogmatic about this. For example, Lemniscate elliptic functions has: "The lemniscate functions have periods related to a number 2.622057... called the lemniscate constant, [...]", as an isolated example, where I think it works more or less fine to mix LaTeX with ordinary wiki-markup because that makes the numerical digits searchable and copy/pastable. The difference in fonts is not particularly noticeable in most environments, nor is this especially ugly. –jacobolus (t) 21:01, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Haha. I just made your example compliant with the Beland regime. (I don't care if you revert it.) Tito Omburo (talk) 21:06, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The all-LaTeX version is preferable to the all-{{math}} template one, but I really don't see the supposed catastrophic problem with the mixed version. –jacobolus (t) 21:11, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I screwed that one up. In any case, the main usage seems to be with using blackboard bold in {{math}}-expressions. That seems like a fixable problem en masse. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem of math formulas being selectable or not is general one; it's a bit odd to make complicated markup (against MOS:MARKUP) just to make it selectable by default in one instance. LaTeX output, including this, is selectable for me, because I set my account preferences to use MathML. Adopting a general solution for all users seems more maintainable. In this case, I have changed the formula to be {{math}} only, so that it's both selectable and not violating the MOS. (Violations will show up on future problem reports, so they shouldn't just be left laying around.) -- Beland (talk) 00:02, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your heavy-handed over-interpretation of the MOS doesn't match the text. (Except possibly parts you added without consensus.) –jacobolus (t) 00:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this edit summary that it would be helpful if the template came with more information about where exactly the supposed problems were. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 21:15, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In this instance I would recommend switching the whole section (article?) to LaTeX versions. It's weird having H1 ⊗ H2 but . –jacobolus (t) 21:19, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors obviously spent many hours de-<math>-ing the article. That would certainly be ironic. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:24, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From a quick skim it looks to me like this has always (since 2003) been a mixture of LaTeX and wiki-markup. At some point it was switched from bare italics to {{math}} templates. –jacobolus (t) 21:38, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Spent many hours de-<math>-ing the article? I would rather change them immediately while expanding or restructuring the article, if I have the time. Except there are two cases, where: (a) you cannot change to LaTeX in a header or subheader; (b) it is impossible to blue while being wikilinked, especially in the sources that provide the URL link. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:02, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can make LaTeX glyphs explicitly colored if you want: take your pick from ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠. I would generally recommend against it though, since readers' unclicked and clicked link colors are usually different and vary from reader to reader. In many cases I think it's okay to have a black math symbol in the middle of a colored link text, but use your own discretion. –jacobolus (t) 05:08, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jacobolus: is not correct notation. , coded as H_1\mathbin{\widehat\otimes}H_2, is correct. Observe the typographical difference:
Michael Hardy (talk) 17:05, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but seems a bit off the topic of mixing {{math}} templates with LaTeX. Someone should feel free to fix this at Hilbert space. (I would recommend uniformly adopting LaTeX in at least that section.) –jacobolus (t) 19:25, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Siri, enhance: [2]. Thinky face emoji. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:27, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking this template should be nuked from orbit now. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:29, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned above, this edit was made partly in error. {{MOS}} is used for a lot of different purposes, most of which are unrelated to mathematics. -- Beland (talk) 23:36, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks. I wonder if there is a better way to do this than cleanup templates? These aren't very targeted, since it leaves editors having to dig through pages manually to find nested structures. And, as others have noted, it may or may not be verboten to use this nested construction in some limited special cases. I think a subpage of WPM, with metadata like locations would be more useful. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:28, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you need help finding where on the page the problem is, I have been using this search. There are only 75 pages that need to be fixed, and I expect this is mostly a one-off catchup on a couple decades of overly-complicated markup and transition to compliance with MOS:BBB. I don't think it's worth the overhead of setting up a new wikitext list that will quickly become obsolete. If we just fix the markup as we remove the tags, then overhead of tracking which have and haven't been fixed will drop to zero.
If you see specific instances where you think an exception should be made, they would be worth discussing to see if there actually is consensus for that. -- Beland (talk) 21:09, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can also use that regular expression to search the page if your web browser supports that or you use a regex plugin. (The site-wide search results take a few minutes to update, so it can be annoying to wait for them when there are multiple mixed formulas in the same article.) -- Beland (talk) 21:15, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted the unwanted changes to Greek letters in that edit. I also figured out the replacement LaTeX and cleared the MOS problem tag for that article. Assistance converting the remaining math markup problems would be appreciated from those who are familiar with LaTeX-style syntax. -- Beland (talk) 23:55, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is particularly awful about mixing <math> and {{math}}? I assume that it is a visual thing, but what specifically is happening visually that you go with "awful"? For example, on my systems using {{math}} but inserting a LaTeX version of some blackboard bold into the middle of it renders just fine -- and maximizes searchability possibilities and cut/paste opportunities within the constraint that blackboard bold unicode characters aren't in everyone's font sets. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:18, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The rendering may be correct, but the source code is very difficult to read even for experimented editors. Also, I suspect that screen readers cannot parse correctly such mixed fomulas. There is also a problem of semantics: a formula is a single entity that must be parsed as such by every browser. Note that I used "awful" for the formula {{math|''n'' ∈ <math>\mathbb{N}</math>}} that has a tag <math> in its middle and uses the symbol "∈" that is badly rendered on some browsers. I have changed it into <math>n\in\mathbb{N}</math> that is must easier to parse by humans as well as machines. D.Lazard (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lemniscate elliptic functions

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Jacobolus has restored the mixed markup version of Lemniscate elliptic functions:

  • {{math|<math>\varpi =</math> 2.622057...}} ... {{math|<math>\pi =</math> 3.141592...}}

I had previously resolved the conflict with MOS:FORMULA with a LaTeX-only version:

  • <math>\varpi = 2.622057...</math> ... <math>\pi = 3.141592...</math>

That was reverted with an edit summary which mentioned "the point here was to make the numerical digits selectable / searchable".

I then resolved the conflict with MOS:FORMULA with an HTML-only version:

  • {{math|&varpi; {{=}} 2.622057...}} .. {{math|&pi; {{=}} 3.141592...}}

This addresses the preference articulated by several editors for not mixing markup, and also addresses the objection to the LaTeX form not being selectable by default. This is how a lot of math articles look, using named HTML entities for easier searching through wikitext when LaTeX is used for other formulas. I don't like it, but I've been asked to leave this sort of markup in place, so I do. The objection to this was "there is no consensus for this. you should discuss instead of acting unilaterally" which does not clarify why this markup is objectionable, but as requested I'm opening this thread to solicit more opinions. Thoughts on which is preferred or if there are other preferred alternatives? -- Beland (talk) 01:57, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just use LaTeX whole page for consistency, or use {{math}} for paragraphs but not in a centered formula, which uses LaTeX. What's terrifying is that one could alternatively use HTML instead of those two, which is used for both paragraphs and the centered formula as well. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This whole page now uses LaTeX consistently, except for (a) the single case of listing the digits of ⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠ in the lead in a way that can be selected, which seems like a pretty reasonable compromise for concrete reader benefit, (b) various references to the names sl and cl (and similar) in running text, when not used as part of a longer expression (again, these are then searchable, etc.; the LaTeX versions ⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠ should appear very similar for most readers), and (c) content in captions, where LaTeX doesn't render when images are expanded to full screen. –jacobolus (t) 05:23, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issue of mixed markup (whether in a given formula or across the article) applies only to editors reading wikitext; the issue of selectability and searchability applies to the broader population of readers. I temporarily changed my Appearance -> Math setting to SVG (which I believe is the default) and tested out both functions on all three versions. Copy-and-paste produces the following results:
  • Mixed: π = {\displaystyle \pi =} 3.141592...
  • HTML: π = 3.141592...
  • LaTeX: π = 3.141592... {\displaystyle \pi =3.141592...}
Searching on "= 3.14" works with the HTML version, but not the mixed version nor the LaTeX version.
Searching on "3.14" works in all versions, but is confusing in the LaTeX-only version because the searched texted isn't highlighted even though the window scrolls to it.
Searching on "π" works properly in the HTML version; I think it scrolls correctly for both the mixed and LaTeX versions, but it's hard to tell because that instance of this Greek letter isn't highlighted when it is found.
This was with Firefox. If this is representative of common browsers, and we value these reader differences over these editor differences, is not the HTML-only version the best-performing for these chunks of markup? -- Beland (talk) 07:30, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the HTML-only version is that the symbol ϖ can look different than the symbol ⁠⁠ depending on the font. This glyph is not included in many common fonts, and as a rare Greek letter variant may appear substantially different from font to font, especially if the fallback font chosen is something weird (which unfortunately happens). Our font stack for {{math}} templates is: «"Nimbus Roman No9 L", "Times New Roman", Times, serif», so as an example, in Nimbus Roman No9 L, the ϖ symbol looks substantially different than the LaTeX glyph, being a kind of cursive version. Versions of "Times New Roman" and "Times" are highly variable, but in the one on my computer there's fortunately a version of ϖ which looks about right. (Personally I override the CSS to set the math template font as Charter instead, which also has a similar looking version of this symbol.)
Since we elsewhere in the article (with the exception of image captions) consistently use the LaTeX symbol ⁠⁠, I think it's better to use it in the first instance as well. So an all-LaTeX version is preferable, in my opinion, to an all-HTML version. But I still don't see any urgent reason to categorically ban mixing of these different notation rendering methods. –jacobolus (t) 10:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure any of the HTML-rendered characters would be wrong, but I definitely think it's important to match the LaTeX rendering closely if they are mixed in the same article, so I would support an all-LaTeX version. (More important than selectability because reading is much more common than searching or selecting.) This also does make a much better argument for a mixed construction. However, elevating selectability to something that justifies using HTML over LaTeX implies to me that we should change from LaTeX to HTML wherever possible, and have mixed formulas almost anywhere LaTeX rendering is needed for accuracy?
Quantling seems OK with mixed formulas in general; @D.Lazard, David Eppstein, Tito Omburo, Dedhert.Jr, and Michael Hardy: y'all seem to be against mixed formulas in general. Do you find the arguments for mixing in this instance strong enough to make an exception? -- Beland (talk) 19:09, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely don't think we should use HTML wherever possible, nor should we have "mixed formulas almost anywhere LaTeX rendering is needed...." . LaTeX is generally preferable for most formulas, and searching in the document, copy/pasting, etc. are on average not as important as looking correct.
I don't have an incredibly strong preference in this case, and if many editors are seriously bothered by:
The lemniscate functions have periods related to a number 2.622057... called the lemniscate constant, [...],
then we can switch it to the all LaTeX version:
The lemniscate functions have periods related to a number called the lemniscate constant, [...].
I've mainly been trying to explain why the specific choice of the current version was deliberately and thoughtfully made in that article and why I think indiscriminate removal of mixed formulas seems unjustified. –jacobolus (t) 21:14, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But what distinguishes formula elements you think are worth making searchable/selectable from those that you don't? If the rule is that numbers are in and Greek letters are out, numbers appear in a lot of formulas, as do Latin letters which it's unclear what you think about them. -- Beland (talk) 21:33, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like many cases where there is some kind of trade-off or compromise, there is no clear single right answer. When I added this to the lead of Lemniscate elliptic functions in 2001 (special:diff/1046031674), I started with a {{math}} template version, but decided just afterward that it seemed like a better compromise to try to match the use of LaTeX for the symbol ⁠⁠, while leaving the decimal expansion as plain text. I think we should generally leave choices up to local consensus and editor discretion, rather than trying to make up and enforce rigid and decontextualized site-wide rules. –jacobolus (t) 21:38, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Beland: In html I would not write π = 3.141592...; rather I would write π = 3.141592... Michael Hardy (talk) 17:08, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, right, italics are required here by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics#Greek letters. -- Beland (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Jacobolus appears to have made four reverts in the span of five hours to that article, none of which had the excuse of being undos of vandalism, and should be reminded of WP:3RR. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:11, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tito Omburo's edit was literally broken. @Beland's 3 edits were, as you say, a clear violation of the recommendation against edit warring. The ordinary protocol in this kind of situation is to restore the stable version (which has been there not bothering anyone for literally years) and have a discussion. @Beland has inappropriately declined to do that, and has instead resorted to edit warring. –jacobolus (t) 04:12, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, this has gotten unnecessarily personal. I did not revert this small chunk of markup to the version I initially changed it to, because you (Jacobolus) objected to that version. There were also objections to the version you changed it to, so my third edit (the first one was putting on the tag, not fiddling with markup) was to put in a compromise version that I thought satisfied both your objection and the objections of editors against mixed markup. I'm sorry I seem to have angered you by trying to quickly find a compromise on what seems like a super minor question that I really did not expect to be controversial.
BTW, I don't think Jacobolus' changes are worthy of complaints about reverting too much either; if they wish to discuss these changes, that's fine, and we should do so on the merits. (On which basis I'm responding in the other subthread.) -- Beland (talk) 07:14, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry; I'm more frustrated with David here ("no excuse ...") than with you, Beland, and shouldn't have taken that out on you. I think we shouldn't be in a rush to change this at all without discussion. Thanks for bringing the topic here. –jacobolus (t) 10:08, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did not say there was no excuse for the reverts, as individual edits. I said that they did not pass the vandalism-based excuse for exceeding the limit of three reverts in 24 hours (you are allowed to make more than three reverts if what you are reverting is vandalism). —David Eppstein (talk) 17:30, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Once upon a time using Wikipedia's stripped-down LaTeX in an inline setting rather than a displayed setting cause comically gigantic characters to appear and it got badly misaligned, so sometimes I put html in "inline" contexts and LaTeX in displayed contexts. But I have always found it offensive to common sense and to other things to put LaTeX and non-LaTeX notation into one and the same expression. It often looks incredibly stupid. I seems to be done by people who have the wrong-headed notion that LaTeX is a last resort to be used only for things that cannot but done without it. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:14, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cells of a table

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I know this is somewhat off-topic from the previous discussion. So what happens if one formats type of mathematical writing like {{math}} or HTML into LaTeX? Will the consequence remain the same as the one in the image's caption: huge and centered-align? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:11, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what context you're thinking of, but if you're wondering how something would look, you can always try it out in your sandbox. The appearance does vary depending on what users have set in Preferences -> Appearance -> Math, and what fonts they have installed and potentially what zoom level. (For me, LaTeX is closely matched in size to regular body text; I use MathML rendering.) -- Beland (talk) 06:19, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally the common skins would all be set up to make LaTeX math fonts closely matched to the x-height of body copy fonts. Unfortunately, by default for most readers LaTeX math is noticeably larger. (My personal choice of skin + user-specific CSS sets it to be close to the same size.) No idea about MathML; I find the current implementation of MathML LaTeX rendering to be unusably ugly and sometimes broken. –jacobolus (t) 07:08, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A big deletion of some Ramanujan identities

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this diff Explains that a deletion of some identities of Ramanujan was done because they fail to satisfy some official policy. Probably at some point I'll look closely at that policy. Others here may have views on this. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:59, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Hardy (talk) 16:59, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the problem that @Allan Nonymous had with this material (Allan: feel free to correct me if this is an inaccurate summary) is that there are no listed sources explaining the relevance of these identities to the square root of 5 per se. Mentioning that the square root of five appears in one or another identity without unpacking why it appears there, why the identity is interesting, etc., makes it seem like an arbitrary list of trivia. Surely there are infinite possible identities containing any particular quantity, so why are these ones worth mentioning in particular? –jacobolus (t) 19:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I would be in favor of including it just for the shock value that most of Ramanujan's identities have. Tito Omburo (talk) 19:43, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a more than accurate summary of the issue here. Specific sourcing as to why these should be on the square root of 5 specifically is preferable so as to keep articles from being stuffed with an infinite number of correct facts. Allan Nonymous (talk) 22:30, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My basic take is that Ramanujan identities are inherently notable. Tito Omburo (talk) 22:32, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The identity may be notable, but why is it relevant to square root of 5? A reason for inclusion at that article should be specific to the article; "square root of five appears in this identity" is equally true for pi and e. —Kusma (talk) 11:46, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Brownian motion and Riemann zeta function

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Hi everyone, I started an article on the relationship between the Brownian motion and Riemann zeta function, which is mainly based on the excursion theory of the Brownian motion. The user @Ldm1954 inserted a template claiming multiple things such as original research and no significant coverage. I would like some other opinion on this.

There are a couple of articles (linked in the wiki article) but there is a whole chapter in the book "Marc Yor and Roger Mansuy - Aspects of Brownian Motion" and some results also appear in the book "Marc Yor and Daniel Revuz - Continuous martingales and Brownian motion". The latter is one of the standard references on Brownian motion and Marc Yor was one of the leading experts on stochastic processes.

This is an advanced topic and hence there is less coverage, but I don't see how this violates the no significant coverage rule. The topic itself was also explored by other people such as David Williams (mathematician), Anton Thalmeier or Persi Diaconis. So it is not original research, although it was shaped by Yor, Jim Pitman and Philippe Biane.

Although the article focuses on excursion theory, there are more connections between Gaussian processes and the Riemann zeta function for example in random matrix theory (e.g. Fyodorov, Hiary and Keating - Freezing Transition, Characteristic Polynomials of Random Matrices, and the Riemann Zeta-Function).

I don't see how this is not relevant for Wikipedia. Lastly I decided to create a separate article on this topic since it deals with an advanced probability topic and not solely with analytical number theory. Therefore I thought it makes sense to not include everything in the Riemann zeta function article. BTW: it's the second time the user questions the notability of my articles. Regards--Tensorproduct (talk) 14:13, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For rigor, my tagging, which also included duplicate citations and unsourced claims was standard WP:NPP, and cited WP:SYNTH, not what is stated above. I also restored a previous tag from an earlier NPP review by Alpha3031 of essay-like which was removed twice without explanation. One of the duplicate references has since been removed, but the article has repeated sources in the bibliography and references which is certainly duplication. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:34, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1) You added the "duplicate citation" not in your original edits diff=prev&oldid=1304338560 and you also didn't mention it on my wall. You added it after I edited the article again [3].
2) I removed the "essay-like" template because I heavily changed the introduction since then. The previous introduction was essay-like but I don't think the current on is. Besides no one said that the new one is.
3) You add the unnessecary comment "according to whom?" on the statement "this is not the only process that follows this distribution." which should obviously be clear since there are at least 2 processes mentioned in the article.--Tensorproduct (talk) 14:54, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have assessed the article and removed most of the tags. I am already familiar with the papers cited in the article, and it is clearly notable and not synthesis. There are duplications of citations in the References/Bibliography section, so I left that tag. Tito Omburo (talk) 15:12, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tito Omburo Thank you very much for confirming that this is not original research and for removing the tags. Have a nice day!--Tensorproduct (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2025 (UTC).[reply]
Off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The problem resolved, thanks to @Tito Omburo. To share some background, the user Ldm1954 also tried to prevent another article I wrote about Benjamin Schlein with the argument, that he is not an important scientist. Schlein was Editor-in-chief for the most prestigious journal in functional analysis: the Journal of Functional Analysis. And Schlein received "Hausdorff Chair" at the University of Bonn, one of the most prestigious award for mathematics professors in Germany (and Schlein wrote an article with Terence Tao btw.). Also for you @Johnjbarton to know.--Tensorproduct (talk) 21:09, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a gross misrepresentation of those events. A basic and important principle of Wikipedia editing is that it is important to not personalize disagreements and to act on the presumption that other editors are acting in good faith, which is obviously the case in the disagreement here as well as the earlier one that you (inexplicably) are rehashing. --JBL (talk) 21:43, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@JayBeeEll Can you prove how this is a "gross misrepresentation" of these events? I might was wrong and misinterpreted the actions of this user. But I never said that this user did not act in good faith - I am sorry if you understood that. And I understand that it was misleading when there were tags like "This article does not cite any sources containing significant coverage." when I quoted a standard reference on the Brownian Motion by one of the biggest experts of Brownian motion: Marc Yor.--Tensorproduct (talk) 21:57, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you prove No, social interaction is not part of mathematics, I cannot "prove" anything. I did, however, observe the events at the time, and I have observed a repeated pattern on your part of inappropriately personalizing disputes, imputing bad motivations to other people when more plausible and innocuous explanations are available, and now also grudge-holding and axe-grinding. None of these behaviors are appropriate on Wikipedia; you can read the links in my previous message to understand why. --JBL (talk) 22:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was in the process of responding to Tensorproduct, but JBL already did so I will just point to the article history. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:47, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Where does the article history contradict my premise? I am a mathematician who writes articles and you tried to prevent the Schlein.--Tensorproduct (talk) 22:05, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Expert opinion needed on Draft:Jesús Guillera

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An expert opinion (and edits) is needed on Draft:Jesús Guillera. The page is on a mathematician who is mainly self-taught and spent much of his life teaching in secondary schools. My first reaction was to decline the draft, but when I checked his cited publications indexed by Google Scholar his h-factor is 19 with several cited more than 100 times. There are at least a couple of pages on him [4] [5].

He certainly does not fit a conventional WP:NPROF pass, but might be unconventionally notable. Some editing would be needed. Ldm1954 (talk) 12:02, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like a really interesting and worthwhile article, but it definitely doesn't meet WP:PROF, and I don't see WP:GNG saving it on the basis of one or two citations. Tito Omburo (talk) 22:08, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your time. How could I appeal the decision? Jesus Guillera is considered a "Ramanujan" type genius and experts like Doron Zeilberger
and Wadim Zudilin can testify that he is wikipedia material. Lucymarti (talk) 01:40, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Lucymarti, you need to read WP:NPROF, WP:SIGCOV & WP:SIGCOV, then read them again. You need to find articles that discuss him in detail. The El Pais article is one, can you find 3 or so more? Testimony will not help. Detailed math reviews of his papers would.
If you improve the page enough it should pass after resubmission. It was not a terminal decision, but you cannot appeal it Ldm1954 (talk) 01:59, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do articles in Spanish count? Lucymarti (talk) 03:07, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, any language. —Tamfang (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have added more citations. Any feedback is welcome and I would appreciate it! Lucymarti (talk) 13:37, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can also ask for opinions at WP:Teahouse. Ultimately, the status of the draft article would be determined at WP:AFD if the draft was moved to article space, and then nominated for deletion. Johnuniq (talk) 02:05, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are more news articles linked from his personal webpage https://anamat.unizar.es/jguillera/media.html – I'd generally be inclined to keep articles like this, though perhaps more effort should be made to avoid puffery. –jacobolus (t) 20:25, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematician not currently listed in WIkipedia

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For Wikipedia Requested Article page. Possible category: Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Missing mathematicians


Stephen Charles Locke

What makes this case interesting: 1. International Champion 1974 Putnam Team Competition (age 21); success on earlier competitions in H.S. in Canada 2. Ph.D. in Mathematics with close to 50 journal articles 3. High ranking black belts in two martial arts: Judo and Jujutsu 4. A conjecture that generated interest in the faulty hypercube community.


Please use whatever is appropriate from this rough draft.


Stephen Charles Locke (born 1953) is a English, Canadian and American Mathematician. He is a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Florida Atlantic University, and has twice served as the Chair of that department.


Early Life. Locke was born in London, U.K., in 1953, moved to Canada in 1958, and then to the U.S.A. in 1981. He holds passports from each of these countries.

In Ontario, he attended two elementary schools in Barrie [Hillcrest and Prince of Wales] , one in Port Hope [Central], one in Brampton [Gordon Graydon], and three in Bramalea [Aloma, Clark, Dorset], before attending Bramalea Secondary School. In Grade ten, his Math teacher, Mr. Burke, helped register him for the Junior Mathematics Contest, and Locke placed fourth in Canada the next year. In grade twelve, Locke placed third in Canada on the Descartes contest. Later, in 1974, Locke placed in the top ten on the William Lowell Putnam Competition, and was a member of the winning Putnam team that year.

Locke earned all three degrees from the University of Waterloo, a B.Math. in 1974, an M.Math. in 19675, and a Ph.D. in 1982. His Dissertation was title "Extremal Properties of Paths, Cycles, and k-Connected Subgraphs of Graphs. His doctoral advised was Adrian Bondy. Other members of his doctoral committee were William Tutte, Ron Read, Bela Bollobas, Ian Munro. Also in attendance at the defense were Laszlo Lovasz, Vera Sos, Jack Edmonds, Bill Cook. (The last sentence could be hard to verify.)


Publications. Locke has published approximately fifty research articles. A list of publications is available from MathSciNet or from Google Scholar. Locke has graduated four Ph.D. students, the most recent in August 2025. Locke's early area of interest was how simple conditions on connectivity and minimum degree force graphs to have many long cycles. In 2018, Locke began publishing on Combinatorial Games.

Listing which journal articles are the most interesting is rather subjective. The papers on relative lengths of paths and cycle show a marked contrast between 2-connected and 3-connected graphs. The paper on cycles through three vertices in 2-connected graphs, led to other researchers working on cycles through k+1 vertices in k-connected graphs. The paper 11/30 is also of note.

Locke also solved problems from the Monthly and other journals (starting in 1976), and proposed problems for those journals. One of these problems, does an (n+2)-dimensional hypercube always have a Hamilton cycle, even after deleting n vertices from each parity class, caught the attention of some researchers in the fault-tolerance community. Another problem asks if, under certain conditions on degree sums and distances, a graph always has a non-separating copy of a any given tree on n vertices. The current work almost achieves the suggested bound.

Locke's two most frequently cited papers, according to Google Scholar are:

The subchromatic number of a graph, MO Albertson, ST Hedetniemi, RE Jamison, SC Locke, Annals of Discrete Mathematics 39(1989), 33-49

Largest bipartite subgraphs in triangle‐free graphs with maximum degree three, JA Bondy, SC Locke Journal of graph theory 10(1986), 477-504.

The MathSciNet review for 

    Cycles and paths through specified vertices in  k-connected graphs, 
    Y Egawa, R Glas, SC Locke, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 52(1991), 20–29

refers to this as an excellent paper.


Hobbies. Locke has a seventh degree black belt (shichidan) in Judo from the United States Judo Association, and a sixth degree black belt (rokudan) in Jujutsu from the American Traditional Jujutsu Association. In Canada, he studied for a year or more under Wayne Erdman, a Pan-Am Champion. He founded Tomodachi Judo club in 1990. The club has been a 501(c)(3) charity since 1993.

Minor interest in languages. Not fluent in any of these, but he studied French, German, Latin, Russian, Japanese, in High School and/or University and played with Old English.

Mid-level duplicate bridge player but played very infrequently the last several years.

Family. Parents: Kenneth and Lily Locke. Wife: Joanne Thomson Locke. Sons: Daniel (Rin) and Geoffrey. Siblings: Jacquie Redwood, Graeme Locke, Sharon Clarke.






https://www.math.fau.edu/people/faculty/lockes.php

https://www.fau.edu/registrar/university-catalog/catalog/faculty/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4r2jkAMAAAAJ&hl=en

https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/author?authorId=115185

https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=23366


The 1974 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. The American Mathematical Monthly 81(1974), page 821.

https://members.atja.org/Sys/PublicProfile/66640220/6395436

https://www.usja.net/member/profile/5202

https://pjm.ppu.edu/sites/default/files/papers/PJM_April_2017_0.pdf 131.91.7.56 (talk) 21:22, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Citation counts in the double digits, a low-level administrative role, student competitions, and hobbies are not going to provide evidence of notability through WP:PROF. We are missing articles on many significantly more notable mathematicians (for instance, see the many redlinks at Category talk:Fellows of the American Mathematical Society). And this is the wrong place to place your drafts. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Major Rewrite of the "Half range Fourier series" Article

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Hello all,

I've recently expanded the article for the half range Fourier series from a stub to a slightly more detailed article. I've:

  1. Included inline citations (previously missing)
  2. Added a clearer definition of the series and it's uses
  3. Added an explanation of what goes into deciding between a sine/cosine series
  4. Expanded the worked example
  5. Added an animated plot demonstrating convergence of the example result

I'd appreciate it if someone familiar with Fourier analysis could review for accuracy and suggest improvements to it. About 1/2 of the article is dedicated to working the example in detail, so I think that expanding the prose section could be worthwhile. Adding another example would also help the article be more general.

Feedback is much appreciated. Thanks! Owen Reich (talk) 02:10, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe worth mentioning topics like Discrete cosine transform and Chebyshev polynomials. –jacobolus (t) 20:33, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Aschbacher

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Would another editor or editors please take a look at the section "Classification of finite simple groups" in the Michael Aschbacher article? It has three paragraphs that paraphrase a significant chunk of an article in Social Studies of Science. I suspect that probably a briefer summary of the SSS article is appropriate, but that the amount paraphrased there is probably WP:UNDUE. It also tends to single Aschbacher out for criticism, which may raise WP:BLP issues. I feel too close to finite group theory (and have met Aschbacher once or twice), and do not want to be the one who picks out what is due/undue here. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:47, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've read the paper, and thus seems like a fair summary. That paper references a lot of more primary literature, such as Gorenstein's personal reflections, and the few paragraphs in the article might benefit from better attribrution. Tito Omburo (talk) 12:25, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it's a fair summary. My concern was about WP:DUE criticism of a living person sourced to the journal literature in social studies of mathematics. For one thing, the criticism "researchers no longer read papers as independent documents, but rather ones that required the context of its author" seems like one that applies to the entire Classification of Finite Simple Groups, not just to Aschbacher's contributions (and indeed more widely in modern mathematics, i.e. to projects like the Four Color Theorem). Looking again, perhaps the second and third paragraphs should be combined and streamlined? On the other hand, should some related material also be in the Classification of finite simple groups article? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:23, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That last point seems like a pretty strong one. Tito Omburo (talk) 21:07, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does read a little odd for what's supposed to be a biographical page about Aschbacher. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 03:46, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone satisfied with this? Tito Omburo (talk) 20:41, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's an improvement; thanks. I do wonder a little about calling his papers "very difficult to read", which kind of sounds like turning a judgment call into an absolute fact. There's a difference between having a reputation for impenetrability and being truly, objectively impenetrable. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, it is well-supported by the source. (It's nice to see this validated by well-researched summaries of secondary sources, rather than painful memories of graduate school.) Tito Omburo (talk) 22:04, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a synonym like "challenging", "demanding", or "formidable" would seem less judgmental. –jacobolus (t) 22:11, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think a phrasing tweak of that nature could make the passage less judgmental and more informative. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:01, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I like the change in general, but agree with the spirit of some of the comments. I tried to rework the first sentence, but found it easier to rework the entire paragraph. What do y'all think about the following? While Aschbacher's ideas were held in esteem by the group theory community, his writing style drew complaints. Some commented that his proofs lacked explanations of very sophisticated counting arguments. The difficulty in reading his papers became more pronounced as the papers became longer, with even some of his coauthors finding their joint papers hard to read. The challenge in understanding Aschbacher's proofs was attributed not to a lack of ability, but rather to the complexity of the ideas he was able to produce. This was part of a general trend where researchers working on the Classification of Finite Simple Groups began to view papers as requiring the context of their authors, rather than as independent documents. As a result, responsibility of finding errors in the classification problem was up to the entire community of researchers rather than just peer-reviewers alone. The one substantive change is to identify the move towards attention to the authors of a paper as a broader trend, which the source also does (the Aschbacher paragraph is in the midst of a section talking about similar trends with Gorenstein and others). Russ Woodroofe (talk) 10:06, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what "requiring the context of their authors" is intended to mean here. —David Eppstein (talk) 11:48, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Perhaps better phrasing would replace view papers as requiring the context of their authors, rather than as independent documents with view papers as being reliable because of the reputation of their authors and their previous work, rather than as self-contained documents? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 12:01, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is much clearer, thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 12:33, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Transfinite number merge

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I've started a discussion about merging Transfinite number into Infinity. If you have a minute, please feel free to contribute to the discussion here. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 15:23, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclotomic pre-polynomials

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Hungarian mathematician Kéri Gerzson [hu] has started an article Cyclotomic pre-polynomial and added some to Chebyshev polynomials based on his book:

Kéri, Gerzson (2021): Compressed Chebyshev Polynomials and Multiple-Angle Formulas, Omniscriptum Publishing Company, ISBN 978-620-0-62498-7

published by OmniScriptum, which seems somewhere between self-publishing and a vanity press. The only other source I can find mentioning this name is Kéri's paper,

Kéri, Gerzson (2022). "The factorization of compressed Chebyshev polynomials and other polynomials related to multiple-angle formulas". Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae Sectio Computatorica. 53: 93–108. doi:10.71352/ac.53.093.

It looks like a good faith effort, but probably runs afoul of Wikipedia policies about original research, notability, and maybe self promotion.

I tried leaving a message on his talk page about notability and original research, but without reply. I imagine there has been other published literature about more or less the same topic in the past, but I don't feel motivated to do a careful search about it. I figured I'd ask here instead of immediately sending the article to AFD. –jacobolus (t) 15:24, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I got a reply at his talk page. If anyone is practiced at helping Wikipedia-newcomer scholars, feel free to chime in there. –jacobolus (t) 16:14, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Algebraic-group factorisation algorithm

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I'm not an expert, and have only taught up to 7th grade math and one lesson plan on Hamiltonians. Can someone with more knowledge and ability please source this article? Bearian (talk) 22:28, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I have proposed it for deletion. It doesn't make much sense. Tito Omburo (talk) 23:32, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was able to find a source and added it to the article. I also removed the PROD added by @Tito Omburo as I believe this somewhat addresses the issue of being unverified, but I will need to do some work to match the article with what's here and other sources to improve understandability. I have also seen at least two pages link this article off-wiki, so something tells me that perhaps this topic might be notable enough should we be able to find non-circular sourcing. Gramix13 (talk) 06:49, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Examples in Bayes' theorem

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The Bayes' theorem article has a lengthy section of "Examples" that includes no sources and is written in a rather textbook-style manner. Contrast it with Pythagorean theorem, for instance, which doesn't do anything one would call an "example" until the passage about Pythagorean triples. It's not exactly the same situation, of course, since the cornucopia of different proofs is a much bigger deal for the Pythagorean theorem, but even so, in that article we don't have a whole section where a ladder is leaned against a wall, a jogger crosses a field diagonally, etc. This seems like a situation that needs some work. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 05:14, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If including examples about how to plug numbers into the formula is a good idea here (and maybe it is), we should probably go to standard statistics books and use theirs. The current ones read rather like an enthusiastic Wikipedian made them up 20 years ago based on the general themes of the examples they remembered seeing in class. We can do better, I think. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 05:29, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The introduction to the article includes an example which is not discussed in the article and thus not sourced. I suggest concentrating on one good sourced example in the body of the article and summarizing it in the intro. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:33, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like that idea. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And another thing: is CueMath (currently reference 25) a reliable source? It looks to be yet another EdTech company website, and the writing is not all that clear throughout. Maybe not the most objectionable page, but it does have the feel of a source plugged in because it was the first to come up in a Google search. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 05:35, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think tag these sections. There is no shortage of "real-world" illustrations in well-known textbooks (e.g. Berger). Tito Omburo (talk) 21:29, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've tagged the completely unreferenced section and marked several other passages more specifically. If anyone is fresh from teaching a semester of probability theory, those {{cn}} tags are good candidates to pick off. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 23:10, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is doing psychic damage to anyone you have just described. But fair. Tito Omburo (talk) 23:13, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Second pair of eyes on List of polyhedral stellations

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Can somebody (with better access to these sources) check to see if this massive 25k byte expansion to the article is actually sourced properly. Allan Nonymous (talk) 01:29, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]