Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0

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Contents 1 Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project 2 Most commonly viewed? 3 Famous mathematicians 4 Categories and ratings 5 subfield core topic tables 6 more 7 Changed "Quality" legend 8 B plus articles 9 Top 9 mathematicians 10 Rationale for rating? 11 Mathematics Vital Articles 12 Strange things to list as number theory 13 Split page up? 14 "Field" element of maths rating - propose replace "history" with "general" 15 Mathematics articles with the most incoming links 16 Riemann-Roch theorem : Which field?? 17 Help with math

[edit] Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

(The following was moved from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Articles_for_the_Wikipedia_1.0_project Tompw 16:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC) )

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think a great many very good math articles may be incapable of ever becoming Featured Articles due to their being too technical. I guess we should just call them Good Articles? -lethe ^{talk +} 23:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think manifold looks pretty good these days. -lethe ^{talk +} 23:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics is a connected body of knowledge. Isn't there a danger that cherry picking a bunch of mathematics articles, even if they are individually excellent, will create something that lacks consistency and coherence ? The idea of core topics partly addresses this issue, but the proposed core topics list contains less than 10 mathematics articles, which is not enough (where are mathematical analysis, combinatorics, number theory, calculus, topology etc. etc.). Gandalf61 11:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a good case for identifying the key mathematics articles and trying to bring those up to Good articles, A or B class standard. Establising a rating system for mathematical articles could be a good task. The list top linked maths articles which I reciently compiled could be a good starting point for identifying the most important mathematics articles. The top twenty articles on the list are: (excludes physics and computer science topics)

1. Area - 2491
2. Mathematician - 1949
3. Statistics - 1164
4. Latitude - 1090
5. Geometry - 979
6. Algorithm - 960
7. Longitude - 910
8. Frequency - 901
9. Logic - 898
10. Real number - 881
11. Function (mathematics) - 788
12. Geographic coordinate system - 771
13. Integer - 752
14. Diameter - 714
15. Cryptography - 697
16. Set - 687
17. Degree (angle) - 665
18. Information - 664
19. Complex number - 636

establishing a rating system for mathematics articles like the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment could help us indetify areas for improvment. We may like to establish our own criteria specific for mathematics. --Salix alba (talk) 13:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

• It is completely reasonable to establish individual criteria within a WikiProject, based on the Grading scheme, and assign benchmarks that are necessary for the articles to become a particular class. Something similar is done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 01:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, please feel free to keep the table for your WikiProject up to date when you're doing assessments, as it makes things much easier. Thanks! Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Coppied from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#My Muddle

I think Too Old has a valid criticism, frequently repeated. The coverage of mathematics is often at too high a level, organisation of articles is confusing, core topics like Algebra are woefully inadaquate. Yes we have done good work todate, our coverage is extensive, but there is still a long way to go.

I propose creating Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Essential articles where we can identify which are the most important mathematics articles, assess then for quality and also mathematical level required. An example we could follow is Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Essential articles which nicely organises that fields core material. This would also fit in with the Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project discussed above.

Is anyone interested in helping on this? --Salix alba (talk) 23:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the point that high-level math articles can be inaccessible, and I feel we shoudl aim to ensure that articles remain as accessible as possible. With regard to which topics to use... what about using the topics linked from Portal:Mathematics#Topics_in_Mathematics? These are the "big" topics in maths, and give a broad overveiew. I'm not saying they all should be (eg not Topos theory), but most should be. Of course theer is a strong overlap with the topics already listed.

Indeed. Many of the article in the maths portal should be listed here. It's very much a work in progress at the moment. Fell free to modify and expand. --Salix alba (talk) 11:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Now done... due to the numbers involved, they have been sorted by the area given on the portal. Also, only sorted into "major"/"minor". Tompw 13:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most commonly viewed?

Instead of looking at the "most comonly linked" articles, which reflects a certain author bias, can we get a list of "most commonly viewed" math articles, which hopefully reflects reader interest? Better yet, "most commonly viewed by non-editors" of which "most commonly viewed by anons" might be an aproximation. Just because diameter is heavily linked does not imply to me that anyone is interested in reading about diameters. linas 21:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

How is anyone supposed to know how much an article has been viewed? From what I've heard, that feature was disabled a few years ago because it bogged down the servers. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 00:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

this page from 2004 may be helpful. Walkerma 05:29, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I filtered the list to only show the mathematics articles see User:Salix alba/maths/top viewed maths articles. Its nice to know that mathematics ranks high at number 16, (above Penis so there is hope for humanity). Some of the articles we rate as most important get a poor showing. Algebra, Arithmetic don't appear and Geometry ranks quite low at position 1803. --Salix alba (talk) 09:41, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that viewing ratings depend on both importance and value-to-the-reader! If you look at the articles you mention as they were in Jan 2004, you can see they were all basically stubs: Algebra, Arithmetic and Geometry. Thankfully this project has made all three much more useful today, thanks to you for that. Walkerma 16:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a brand new page listing the top 100 most viewed - Maths takes a back seat compared to sex, I'm afraid! Walkerma 02:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Famous mathematicians

I came here from the Version 0.5 nominations page looking for an expert assessment on John von Neumann, but I see that you don't include any biographies in your list. Do you plan to include these? Biographies are some of the most popular pages for people to view (see previous post - von Neumann is a lot more interesting than "diameter"!). Thanks, Walkerma 03:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we have a plan? That implies some sentiance, which may be lacking! Good question re- most notable mathematicians. Off the top of my head

• Newton
• Gauss
• Galois
• Leibniz
• Pythagoras
• Euclid
• Cantor
• Descartes
• Hilbert
• Gödel
• Fisher - statatitician
• Wiles?

I would not have put von Neumann as one of the most notable mathematicians. Definatly most notable computer scientists but there are many who have left a greater mark on mathematics than von-Neumann. --Salix alba (talk) 07:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree about von Neumann. Also, I've never heard of Fischer. Shame on you for forgetting Archimedes, Poincaré, Riemann, Cauchy, Lebesgue. And the list is fairly devoid of modern mathematicians, where are Grothendieck, Chern, Serre, Mac Lane, Lawvere, Smale, Witten, Donaldson, etc? I guess modern mathematics is not very well-known, its areas of research only being known to specialists, so those guys are maybe not as famous as the earlier mathematicians. -lethe ^{talk +} 08:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

What about Fermat, Euler, Ramanujan, al-Khwarizmi, Chiu-Shao, Chebeshev, Erdős, Vaughan Jones, Thurston, Atiyah, Emmy Nöther? Well, this is silly; we already have extensive enumerations at Category:Mathematicians. --KSmrq^T 08:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! Now shame on me for forgetting those people. Next someone should come along and tell you who you forgot. Though actually, I don't like some of those people on your list, and wouldn't include them next to Gauss and Grothendieck (or at least, if we include your guys, we'd better include von Neumann as well), though I'm bummed that I left out Atiyah and Noether. But that's just my own indefensible POV. If we include person x, then we have to include person y, and this can go on forever. But it's not that silly. Now that we have a list of names that you, Salix, and I think ought to be on a list of greatest mathematicians, I will wikify all the names, and we can follow the links and see which ones are good enough for 1.0 or whatever. So this fun game also serves a purpose. -lethe ^{talk +} 09:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

For the needs of the Version 0.5 nominations page and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics

and Category:Mathematicians will not do. They are looking for the most important articles and the 1000+ mathematicians there is too many for them to sort through. So its up to us to let them know which are the most important ones in the bunch. Its also a useful tool for us to identify any weeknesses in our coverage. In the table below the ratings are Feature Article/A/A-B/B/B-/Start/Stub and there definatly a few articles which are very week. Feel free to change any ratings/lists of fields, a bit of a rush jobs by me.

This is going to be a subjective game, but I think we are close to identify the big hitters. --Salix alba (talk) 10:43, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm done adding names to this list. It's gotten quite long, maybe I got a little carried away. Nevertheless, I think every name on there is either a household name (for mathematicians at least (Hilbert), if not for the general public at large (Gauss)), a historically important founding figure (Castelnuovo, Madhava), or a giant of his field (Tarski, Grothendieck). Now do I have to go through and rate all the articles? -lethe ^{talk +} 12:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow, isn't Wikipedia amazing! I post a request, and within 9 hours a whole group has produced a fairly comprehensive list! Thanks a lot! By the way, I wasn't assuming that von Neumann would be on your list, I just knew you had a worklist so I took a look. Like here, the computer science worklist is only topics, not people, and there's is much more basic than yours. I would suggest you add this table into the main list and add a column for "Importance". (FYI, we at WP:1.0 "stole" your importance template for our use, and it's now even read as a parameter by the bot!) You could also consider using Mathbot to do a lot of the work for you, as other groups do, setting this up is quite easy. The tedious part is assessing the articles and adding the assessments into the talk page templates. Thanks again! Walkerma 14:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

How do we rate importance? I'm going to add a column to the table and put in numbers on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being the most important, and 5 being just barely getting on the importance list. This is highly subjective and personal, so I'm sure others will be along to tell me how full of shit my ratings are. -lethe ^{talk +} 14:47, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Importance and article quality are according to the following scheme

p.s. I stole these templates from Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Essential articles so credit should go there.

p.p.s. This table should eventually go on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 main page rather than talk. --Salix alba (talk) 15:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

See the project page for table of mathematicians.

Thanks for putting all this together so quickly! I've nominated Leibniz, Cantor and Hilbert for Version 0.5. I hope we can also include big names like Archimedes and Pythagoras, but I'm hoping those will reach A-Class first! Many thanks, this is a great help, Walkerma 03:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories and ratings

I've now created a bunch of categories and a template for inclusion on talk pages.

• Category:Mathematics articles by quality
• Category:Mathematics articles by importance
• Template:Maths rating

very minor start at adding the template to pages. --Salix alba (talk) 16:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

And mathbot (who else? :) generated Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality which I guess will be the repository for WP 1.0 mathematics articles. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I note there is a comment column in the table. How is this filled in? --Salix alba (talk) 08:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

That needs to be done by hand in the table, then the bot will not overwrite it. I don't know of any good way to add that info by a bot using the categories. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] subfield core topic tables

So the table on the page for topics in algebra looks lonely. Do we intend to eventually have a table listing the core topics for other subfields, like say topology, geometry, analysis? What about more refined lists of core topics? Like a core topics list for group theory? Wait for Wikipedia 2.0, probably. -lethe ^{talk +} 11:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Ideally. I think the priority is to identify the Top importance articles, in each sub field. Just a matter of time and effort. Eventually these tables will be replace by the automatic lisiting in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality, this will require the {{maths rating}} tag adding to the articles. --Salix alba (talk) 11:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I should mention, we at WP:V0.5 have built into the template {{V0.5}} a parameter called "category", so we can classify articles as Socsci (Social Sciences & Society) or Math, take a look at the template (which includes a nice summary of how to use it). There are ten subcategories of Version 0.5 articles that correspond to these. I could see you organising the maths articles the same way- category=Topology and the like. That way you could (at least in principle) have the bot generate a table for each of your subcategories, such as "Mathematics Topology articles by quality". Walkerma 16:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] more

I suggest adding langlands and selberg. Dmharvey 15:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I considered adding Sylvester, Hesse, Cardano, Bézout, Möbius, Wroński, some Bernoullis (Jakob and Daniel probably), Bessel, Christoffel, Hankel, Sylow, Leray, Michael Artin (the father is on the list), Fatou, Pólya, Hopf, Beurling, Veblen, Voevodsky, Bieberbach, Teichmüller, Connes, van der Waerden, Kac, Hermite, Max Noether (Emmy's father), Lasker, Todd, Hensel, Heine, Bolzano, Bolyai, Stone, Gelfand, Kodaira, Eilenberg, Dieudonné, Ehresmann, Chevalley, Lambert, Laurent, Eisenstein, Littlewood, Moore, Halmos, Steenrod, Quine to the list, in case anyone wants to stick up for one of these guys. I thought of simply adding every fields medalist, wolf prize winner, and bourbakist. You could also campaign to remove some of them, especially Segal, who doesn't even have the good grace to have an article. The list is probably far too long. -lethe ^{talk +} 16:46, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Er, yes I guess we are getting a few too many now. For the purposes of WP:0.5 they are probably only interested in the Top and possible High rating ones. That said the is no harm in adding {{maths rating}} to the talk pages of these articles.

Still its a good discussion so a few I haven't seen yet Bertrand Russell, Goro Shimura, Yutaka Taniyama. --Salix alba (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changed "Quality" legend

I've changed the "Quality" legend table to better conform to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. — Paul August ☎ 21:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] B plus articles

I'm increasingly finding a need for a B+ category, these are articles which are close but not quite at GA status, and those which have either been delisted from GA or been failed GA. Pi is a typical example better than your average B-class article but not quite making the GA grade. There seem to be quite a lot of maths articles which fall into this cat Knot theory, Fractal, Chaos theory, Number, Statistics, Matrix (mathematics).

I've changed the maths rating template to allow for this new rating, this should not affect the 1.0 Assesments as articles will also be listed as B-Class. Hopefully this category will allowus to identify those articles with the best chance of becoming GA's. --Salix alba (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top 9 mathematicians

On Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Core_biographies#Mathematicians.2C_9 there are 9 mathematicians.

1. Archimedes
2. Euclid
3. Leonhard Euler
4. Pierre de Fermat
5. Carl Friedrich Gauss
6. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
7. Gottfried Leibniz
8. Blaise Pascal
9. Pythagoras

These don't match with our ratings as Pierre de Fermat, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Blaise Pascal only get High or Mid ratings.

If we could suggest just 9 mathematicians who would they be? (Newton is already included under physics). --Salix alba (talk) 20:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rationale for rating?

I notice that ratings like "B", "A", etcetera have been popping up on articles lately. It would be helpful if somewhere the rationale for these ratings were posted, so that the feedback could be used to improve the articles. (Conversely, then we can also assess whether the "graders" are using reasonable criteria.) —Steven G. Johnson 21:40, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

See the main page for the grading scheme. Basically

• Stub - very short articles
• Start - fair coverage of mathematics, but missing important sections, like history, context, illustrations, references. May not be accessable, to the layman.
• B - passable articles, most of the basics are covered, but needs expansion and polishing.
• B+ - Better articles, generally have a good attempt at explaining the topic in laymans terms, history section, Addition is a good example of this.
• GA - reserved for articles which are Good articles
• A - Articles close to being featured articles
• FA - reserved for featured articles.

The line between Start and B can be fuzzy. Importance can be faily subjective.

• Top - the absolutely essential articles. Top level articles on major fields, and basic mathematical concepts.
• High - Important topics, any good mathematical reference work should have these
• Mid - Topics a for well rounded mathematical education.
• Low - Specalist topics.

The grading is still in development, much of it is a comparative grading, obtained by comparing the different articles. Input is most welcome. --Salix alba (talk) 22:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I saw the general guidelines for grading. What I am suggesting is that graders add somewhere (e.g. on the Talk page of the article in question) the specific reasons why they assigned a particular grade to that page. It is almost totally unhelpful (and fairly arbitrary) to see that a particular article was assigned a "B" grade without knowing what specifically "needs expansion and polishing". —Steven G. Johnson 17:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a particular article you are think of? --Salix alba (talk) 18:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a way... you use the "comment" option in the math rating template. For example, the Topology article has
{{maths rating|vital=Y|class=B|importance=Top|field=geometry|comment="Elementary introduction" needs breaking up into smaller subsections; theorems and "Outline of the deeper theory" need more prose; history needs expansion. ~~~~ }} Is this what you had in mind? Tompw 19:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics Vital Articles

The following are articles listed in Wikipedia:Vital_articles#Mathematics. Current count: 58 Mathematics articles. These (should) all now appear in the main page, so have been removed here for reference purposes. Tompw 18:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics Constant Pi Differential equation Digit Equation Exponentiation Function Infinity Limit Logarithm Number Complex number Integer Natural number Rational number Real number Series Square root Variable Algebra Analysis Arithmetic Addition Decimal Division Fraction Multiplication Percentage Subtraction Calculus Derivative Integral

Chaos theory Fractal Cryptography Game theory Geometry Line Plane Angle Coordinates Linear algebra Matrix Vector space Vector (spatial) Logic Number theory Prime number Proof Probability theory Statistics Set theory Set Topology Trigonometry Sine Cosine Tangent

[edit] Strange things to list as number theory

Why are Hypercomplex number, Quaternions, Octonion, Sedenion, Hyperreal number, Surreal number, Ordinal number, Cardinal number, etc... listed under number theory? Was this already debated? They are not generally considered to be number theoretic topics. shotwell 06:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point, not quite sure whre to place all these. Hypercomplex number, Quaternions, Octonion, Sedenion probably go under Algebra. And Hyperreal number, Surreal number, Ordinal number, Cardinal number, are set thoery hence under foundations. --Salix alba (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think (quite possibly me) knew that the ywere types of "numbers", and thus felt they should therefore go under number theory. The logic would be fine if it wasn't for tge fact that number theory isn't really about numbers... Tompw 11:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split page up?

The Wikipedia 1.0 is now 43KB in size, and won't be getting any smaller. I would therefore like to propose each of the twelve "Articles to include" sub-sections into seperate pages (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Basics, etc.), and leave everything else on the main page. What do people think? Tompw 18:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Given three days has passed withotu a single comment, I shall go ahead and do this. (Such move won't affect Mathbot's stats collecting - that's done via the categories). Tompw 20:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Field" element of maths rating - propose replace "history" with "general"

"Currently supported values for field are: basics (elementary material and terms used throughout mathematics), analysis, algebra, geometry (includes topology), applied mathematics, probability and statistics, number theory, Discrete mathematics, foundations (logic and set theory), Mathematical physics, history and mathematicians."

I'd like to propose that history be replaced with general. The reason is that there is only one article on the history of mathematics, but there are lots that are more general (such as everything under the general section). Tompw 17:05, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics articles with the most incoming links

The following has been moved from the main page. Articles on this list should now be all included in the relevant section. Exception: the following articles were felt by me to be outside the scope of WP:MATH: Acceleration, Billion, Entropy, Frequency, Geographic coordinate system, Information, Latitude, Logistics, Longitude, Momentum, Sequence, SI, Solid, Velocity. Tompw 20:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

All articles with over 100 incoming links can be found in User:Salix alba/maths/top linked maths articles

Area - 2491 Mathematician - 1949 Statistics - 1164 Latitude - 1090 Geometry - 979 Algorithm - 960 Longitude - 910 Frequency - 901 Logic - 898 Real number - 881 Function (mathematics) - 788 Geographic coordinate system - 771 Integer - 752 Diameter - 714 Cryptography - 697 Set - 687 Degree (angle) - 665 Information - 664 Complex number - 636 SI - 633 Prime number - 602 Natural number - 549 Hexadecimal - 543 Topology - 528 Dimension - 522 Probability - 521 Group (mathematics) - 518 Vector space - 476 Volume - 474 Binary numeral system - 467

Theory - 453 Matrix (mathematics) - 449 Number theory - 440 Sphere - 439 Field (mathematics) - 439 Space - 437 Circle - 433 Solid - 430 Calculus - 420 Encryption - 417 Triangle - 416 Cardinal number - 398 Polynomial - 394 Topological space - 390 Derivative - 390 Graph theory - 385 Billion - 376 Algebra - 374 Subset - 368 Ordinal number - 363 Probability theory - 362 Game theory - 360 Manifold - 359 Velocity - 357 Algebraic geometry - 349 Sequence - 346 Set theory - 339 Category theory - 334

Entropy - 329 Vector (spatial) - 327 Polygon - 323 Pyramid - 322 Euclidean space - 321 Pi - 314 Number - 313 Continuous function - 310 Angle - 309 Variable - 308 Momentum - 302 Integral - 301 Rational number - 299 Orders of magnitude - 299 Wave - 298 Acceleration - 297 Factorization - 296 Symmetry - 293 Linear algebra - 290 Probability distribution - 287 Logistics - 287 Decimal - 283 Abstract algebra - 281 String theory - 280 Square (geometry) - 278 Combinatorics - 276 Hilbert space - 272

[edit] Riemann-Roch theorem : Which field??

To quote from the article:

"In mathematics, specifically in complex analysis and algebraic geometry, the Riemann–Roch theorem is an important tool in the computation of the dimension of the space of meromorphic functions with prescribed zeroes and allowed poles. It [the theorem] relates the complex analysis of a connected compact Riemann surface with the surface's purely topological genus g, in a way that can be carried over into purely algebraic settings."

... which means it encompasses geometry, topology, algebra, and analysis. So, what should I put in the "field" element of the maths rating template? Tompw 19:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with math

We've got a weird situation over at GA Review - we have someone who is claiming that his math proves Einstein's theory of special relativity is false and so should lose its GA rating and he won't go away until someone checks his math :-P We're not mathematicians, etc., so was going to see if someone here might be able to put this to rest? --plange 15:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)