User talk:DavidCBryant

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Contents 1 My first message 2 Electron config context 3 Applied mathematics 4 Schumpeter 5 Passive voice 6 Generalized continued fraction 7 Motivation 8 Happy St. Nicholas Day 9 Thanks ...

[edit] My first message

Nobody has sent me a message yet, but I figure I may as well set this page up now. If anyone wants to send me e-mail, just <mailto:davidbryant@att.net>. DavidCBryant 15:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello DavidCBryant, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style
• Also feel free to make test edits in my sandbox.

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, please leave me a message!
Enjoy your first message! ^_^ -- ShakingSpirit^talk 15:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Electron config context

Hey, I removed the context tag, since the page has been expanded and worked on a lot since i put it up. I don't remember exactly why i put up the context tag, but one usually does that if the page isn't "accessible" to people who don't already have a background in the subject. Links, and background information provide the context. But yea, it looks good now. Fresheneesz 22:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Applied mathematics

Anyone can provide ratings for mathematcis articles - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 for details. Just make sure you copy your comments across to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Applied mathematics. You might also find Areas of mathematics useful (and in need of expansion). Tompw 13:52, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Schumpeter

I poked and prodded this generally excellent article a little bit today. I need to go back and poke it a little bit more. DavidCBryant 13:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Passive voice

Just so you know, your recent edit at Gödel's incompleteness theorems — the one with the edit summary "/*First incompleteness theorem */ I hate the passive voice. And truth is timeless." — did not remove any instances of the passive voice, and indeed introduced three new ones.

(Personally, I'm not anti-passive-voice, so don't mind; I just thought you might like to know.)

—Ruakh_TALK 05:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I do hate the passive voice. But I also hate a clumsy sentence. Despite my prejudice, I will use the passive voice to make a sentence run more smoothly when I must.  ;^> DavidCBryant 11:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a very enlightened prejudice you have. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 14:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Generalized continued fraction

Hello David.

No problems with you editing CGF as you see fit. To me, continued fraction means having ones on the numerators and positive integers on the denominators, but the generalized in generalized continued fraction should mean that all restrictions are off. I've been meaning to learn about (generalized!) continued fractions in complex analysis for some time now, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing some new stuff on GCFs!

best wishes, Robinh 22:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm off and running with this one. DavidCBryant 00:31, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Motivation

A cf cannot be "motivated" -- it is inanimate.

The OED disagrees with you. It includes citations back to 1949 of "motivated" applied to the inanimate result of a motiv. For example, "The vast majority of pictures are sexually motivated." "Their actions appear ... strangely motivated." -- Dominus 15:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, well, I finally got around to dragging all 9 pounds of the good old OED off my bookshelf, and I still think the change I made is a good one. Apparently some authors (ca 1850) used the verb "to motivate" to mean "instill with a motif", as in "to put flowery wallpaper in two or three rooms of a house". In more modern usage, though, the word is generally taken as a synonym for "to stimulate", more or less.

Using phrases like "the song was motivated by a desire to express his burning love" is figurative speech that is easily understood -- clearly, the author of the song was motivated (or stimulated) to write it. In writing about mathematics, though, I would rather avoid such figures of speech most of the time. DavidCBryant 18:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, you changed "continued fractions are motivated by..." to "the study of continued fractions is motivated by...", which is not consistent with either the ratinale above or with the one you put in the edit summary. What you really meant was something like "the mathematicians who invented continued fractions were motivated by...". -- Dominus 00:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Happy St. Nicholas Day

I hope you will be pleased by this edit to Continued fraction.

One of the hardest things to learn on Wikipedia is that it will not be obvious to other editors that you want X in order to have Y. Sometimes editors who reject X will also want Y; sometimes they will like Z which is about as good as Y; often they have assumed in their turn that Y is in the article already, and that therefore you must want Y' and Y'', which you think would be going too far.

Cranks never do learn to do this, but assume that since it is obvious that X implies Y, all the objectors to X must be evil Y-haters. This is half of Assume good faith. The other half is: treat cranks like gentlemen anyway (something I fail on), you'll feel better. Septentrionalis 03:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, PMA. I appreciate your candor and good will. But I'm not sure you understand where I'm coming from, yet.

I actually do know quite a lot about continued fractions. Besides the very limited use (representation of a real number in canonical form) the headline article says is their most important function, continued fractions have a plethora of uses in real and complex analysis. They are very widely employed to construct computer algorithms. They have served as the inspiration for many ideas in abstract algebra (integral domains, for example), and are even finding a niche in modern cryptography (Lucas sequences).

I'm going to add quite a lot of material about continued fractions to Wikipedia. Since I'm a very careful mathematician who tries to avoid contradiction and ambiguity to the greatest extent possible, it seemed that the logical place to start this project was by clarifying the basic definition in the headline article. Now I'll just have to get that done via a more circuitous route. DavidCBryant 19:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks ...

... for tidying up after me. I have never read all the guidelines either - I guess there are so many, and life is short! I really ought to get round to deleting that page anyway, I only created it when writing the first draft of a requested article (I think, from memory). Have a good day yourself! Madmath789 18:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)