User talk:DavidCBryant

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Welcome to my talk page. I'm always glad to hear from you, and I will respond (either here, or on your talk page, whichever seems appropriate to me.) Beat me over the head and shoulders with WP:AGF and similar guidelines if you want to, but please understand that statements of general policy can never replace sound judgment. dcb

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/Archive 3: The Ugly


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[edit] Stieltjes transform

Hello David, thanks for your invaluable remarks, councils and for the changes you have done in this article. I beg your pardon for my very bad english. Congratulations for all your very good job on wikipedia. Have a good day. ENRGO 20:11, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the welcome

...and tasty cookies, too. May I steal a copy of your Caltech banner? I'm too busy (pronounced "lazy") to make one of my own; besides, the directions are too intimidating. I have a license to post it on My page. Here is evidence of my license: D.E.I. (1984). Good to meet you. GrammarmongerTALK 17:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


Thanks for the flag. Now, the speed of that was scary! I'm far away overseas, and have to go to sleep now. Good night!

Coat of arms restored, for now at least. Now I hope to really sleep...Grammarmonger 18:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Now that was fast! I barely had time to feed the birds. Thanks, Gm! DavidCBryant 19:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Still can't sleep. The name Joe Decker more than just rings a bell, but I don't recognize him from the photos on this page.

Mine is a Blue and Gold Macaw. Very noisy and loves to chew wood. Like raising a permanent two-year-old. What kind are yours? Grammarmonger 18:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

While reading the OrphanBot page, it occurred to me that simply restoring the image might get me "blamed" for posting it. Might it soil my otherwise pristine reputation in here, or get me into real trouble? If so, perhaps I should take the image back off and discuss it with the OrphanBot administrator, or just wait until the original poster discovers it's gone and makes a proper terms of use page for it. What do you think about this? Of course I have no idea who uploaded it first. Grammarmonger 07:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I notice you put up a new Caltech box. I like the old one better, because it has the color scheme of the flag, at least as it was when I went there. Where can I find the code for the box on my page? I just want to change the wording from "This user is or was a student at the" to "This user is an alumnus of the" while keeping all the rest as it is. I'm still not too good at navigating in Wikipedia. GrammarmongerTALK 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for editing my Caltech banner! (and yours too, I see...) To say I wasn't interested in finding the code and fixing it myself isn't entirely true-I've been wanting to have the time but extremely busy is all. It's final exam week here, my some 450 students are awaiting their final grades for the term, and I'm still in the middle of all my other work, while trying to plan my own education for the next two months (I usually spend Feb/Mar in Taiwan practicing baguazhang), among other things. I really appreciate that you did all that stuff for me. I owe you acoupla (a coined word of my own) favors. I'll start having more time in a week or two. Let me know if you need anything. My macaw (named "pigu") is screaming REAL loudly right now. Thanks again! Gotta go! GrammarmongerTALK 14:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bloch Space

You're right - I'm used to \mathbb{D} as standard notation for the open complex unit disc, but it won't hurt to say so explicitly. You're welcome to do what you like with the rest of the article; I don't know anything about it - it was on the list of "very old requests" so I thought something was better than nothing. ArzelaAscoli 16:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for yet another Welcome

I have just found your welcome on my user talk - page. Thanks for it.

Concerning my article on Robert Fricke: I most assuredly have a lot of (expert) material on this mathematician and quite possibly will add some of it to Wikipedia. Still, I am not too sure, yet, if I can fully subscribe to the editorial policy of W., so for the moment I'd prefer to watch my favourite corners and see, how they develop.

Having said this, my pet project consists of the biographies of a number of 19th century mathematicians, who were students of Felix Klein in one way or another. I have seen, that a large number of these still are stubs, so a lot of work would be necessary.

Finally, there already is the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. A large number of (but not all) important mathematicians already have substantial, albeit sometimes anecdotal articles there. In fact the Klein article in Wikipedia is very, very, very similiar to the MacTutor one. Thus the big question is, if there really is the need for another collection of biographies in W.!

What do you think?

E. H.-A. Gerbracht 22:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to be a bit slow about writing back, Herr Gerbracht.
I understand your doubts about the editorial policy. Sometimes I wonder a bit myself. Still, on the whole it seems to work out better than one might reasonably hope. Most people who want to hurt Wikipedia aren't as serious as the people who are trying to improve it. So it converges – slowly – toward a more coherent version.
I'm far less certain about the need for additional biographical material relating to mathematicians. I like to use Wikipedia to look things up. That's how I got started writing articles here in the first place. Since I found it a handy reference, it seemed only fair to fill in some of the gaps. I think it's more convenient to find a link from, say, Gödel's incompleteness theorems to the Wikipedia article about his life than it is to go outside the site to satisfy my curiosity. So I'm sure your contributions relating to mathematicians who studied under Klein would be of value to students like myself.
Your time is of course valuable to you, so ultimately it's your decision as to how much effort you wish to put into it. I have seen some of your work, and it's very good, so I would encourage you to do more, as time and energy permits. I am of course thankful for the parts you have already contributed. DavidCBryant 20:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Posted also on Herr Gerbracht's user page.

[edit] Receiver operating characteristics

Hi, I am a bit confused, because I've never copy-pasted. I did surely move the article, but dunno why it looks that way. However, thanks for the clear up. Any names/capitalizations are all right for me. — Indon (reply) — 17:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] classification of Fatou components

Thanks for the change! Much better. Are you familiar with this theorem? Paxinum 13:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm not really familiar with it. But it makes sense. I can see at once that f(z) will have one or more poles corresponding to the zeroes of Q(z) (unless the numerator P(z) has zeroes of the same or higher order at the same places), so the classification must relate to those singularities. Anyway, "Siegel disc" has to be a circle, and "Herman ring" is an annulus. Oh – the word "respectively" usually works best when it comes at the end of a sentence: the Siegel disc and the Herman ring are a circle and an annulus, respectively.
I also redirected your link to "connected component" through to connected space, an existing article that explains connected sets fairly well. I hope that part still works for you. DavidCBryant 13:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
It works much better than before, thanks!
Paxinum 19:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your reply

Dear David,

Got your message.

Nice article of yours on continued fraction solution of quadratic equations. Around 1968 I was quite interested in continued fractions. I started with Hardy & Wright. I bought Perron's Die Lehre von den Kettenbruechen. Later I got Wall's book. Around 1973 at the University of Houston I took a tutorial from a guy who was into Diophantine approximation. So we looked at continued fractions, among other things. I wanted to have him as an advisor, but it seems his wife talked him out of being a professional mathematician.

I took 3 courses from Wall, each 2 semesters: differential equations, real analysis, and complex analysis. The d. e. course began with a development of the real numbers like what you have seen in Creative Mathematics. Yes, he would say number, not real number. Then he gave us an existence theorem for a pair of differential equations, to be proved in the term paper. The complex analysis course was idiosyncratic Wall - little about Taylor series, nothing I think about elliptic functions, but plenty about linear fractional transformations and using them to develop convergence theorems about continued fractions. I think I remember his saying something about a region of convergence bounded by a parabola.

The continued fraction (not the regular one) you have for pi looks like what Johann Heinrich Lambert (1761) used to devise the first irrationality proof for pi. I first encountered the regular cf for pi in Perron's book.

Scott Tillinghast, Houston TX 11:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


After about a month I think I have finally debugged a new program to compute discriminants of 7th degree polynomials. I am getting the correct discriminant, 2007889, for a polynomial whose Galois group is simple, order 168. On Easter! The program computes a 7-by-7 determinant. Instructions quite straightforward, but they use a long pointer table that is error-prone. From time to time I have occasion to approximate real roots of polynomials with continued fractions. Lately I have been interested in the Pisot-Vijayaraghavan numbers, especially those less than the golden section. I wanted the discriminants of 3 numbers of the 7th degree. I am examining a conjecture that all the PV numbers less than the golden section have a symmetric group as Galois group. The 3rd smallest PV number is quintic, discriminant 1609, and that is the smallest (abs value!) discriminant of any non-solvable algebraic extension of the rational field. 1609 is prime, and that summarily makes the Galois group S5. Scott Tillinghast, Houston TX 21:08, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] copyright violations

I've trimmed down the articles you found that violate copyright. I'm unsure if should delete them outright, as they also contain parts which are not directly copied from MacTutor. —Ruud 14:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Zereshk copied of few more articles :( —Ruud 14:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I think that a lot of material has been filched from the "MacTutor" site. I notice that the authors of that site have a "copyright information" button which opens another window that explicitly says their material is not available for distribution under the GFDL. They probably know about their problem with Wikipedia, but pursuing legal remedies can be expensive.
I read the procedures about COPYVIO, and wasn't entirely certain how to proceed. So I slapped the tag on a couple of articles ... I'm hoping other users who get involved with cleaning this mess up will teach me the best way to handle situations like this. DavidCBryant 14:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
The GFDL thing has to do with the fact that they have been repeatedly asked in the past if they wanted to release their articles under GFDL so Wikipedia could use them. They wouldn't, but do allow another site to host Spanish translations. I don't think there is a direct legal threat, but it constitutes plagiarism and a copyright violation nonetheless. —Ruud 15:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Austrian Economics

Thanks for all your work on the Austrian Economics page (and on fixing up my Zar Points page.) Sorry I wasn't able to get to back to you sooner. I've been out of pocket. The morgawr 05:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jack Copeland

Thanks for putting right my error. I don't know what happened I usually check the history - maybe I didn't go back far enough. --Richhoncho 13:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. This particular vandal was fairly tricky. First he replaced the real article with a spoof. Then he (probably the same guy, a new "user" User:Doobieashtray) added some smut to the article. This quickly attracted the attention of "Voabot", which removed the smut, but left the original vandalism intact. Eventually "Alaibot" noticed that the article was uncategorized, and that's when you got involved.
This particular vandal seems quite determined to make his changes stick. DavidCBryant 14:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks-giving

Thanks Mr David C Bryant This is Saravanan. I too love Ramanujan . Yes, he is one of the phenomenal genius this world had seen. I would like to have friendship hand with you. Please accept my request. ramtongauler 02:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] yea

actually i was pretty serious -_-;; yea, im just not really that smart. im just a 15 year old after all. anyway, yea, maybe i should go start one about complex numbers on simple english wikipedia so people like me can understand. :)76.18.202.211 23:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] thank you

thanks for ur attention, i understand complex numbers, just not the part where it gets to like "arctan" whatever. u know what im talking about? aw, my head hurts now. ;)76.18.202.211 01:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

u dont have to answer me, thanx for everything, but i feel like im wasting ur time. and again, im in high school so i dont think ill need this extra stuff. ill survive my algebra II class. really, thanx, ur one of the nicest people ive ever met on wikipedia, I hope you continue helping other wikipedians! 76.18.202.211 01:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics CotW

Hey David, I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 20:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Theorem

Hi David, nice to see you at Talk:Theorem, but I think you may have reopened a can of worms by introducing two distinct notions of "Theorem"! I think you were mainly referring to the distinction between "theorems" and "theories", or at least that may be a better way to explain it to those whose minds are not so good at handling blurred concepts ;) Anyway, I and a few others went to some effort to clarify the differences and relationships between theorems in maths and science, and theories. I encourage you to take a look at some of this, so as not to confuse our friend further and add to the length of these already-too-long discussions! Good luck, anyway! Geometry guy 10:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I read the entire discussion page (starting in December, 2005) before I decided to jump into that discussion. I also read a bunch of stuff on Sholto Maud's user page, to understand his interests. I don't think he's confused at all. I do think English is a second language for him, and he's looking for hard-edged definitions. Physicists do have their own set of theorems: see this article for an example.  :Do you think the discussion is too long? Maybe I'll archive some of it. DavidCBryant 11:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, there are theorems in physics, and also in engineering. However, these are very similar in nature to theorems in mathematics, in contrast to theories, which are very different in nature to mathematical (or physical) theorems. This is the confusion I was concerned about, and which I tried to address in my previous contributions. Anyway, since you've read these, I need say so more. I don't think the discussion needs to be archived yet. My real concern is that we are getting distracted from improving the article! Geometry guy 12:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, Geometry guy, I went through the whole article and made a few stylistic changes (weed out the word "that" where possible, re-order/streamline some cumbersome sentences, try to improve the idiom, fix the one misspelled word I noticed, etc). Overall I think the article reads fairly well. I do have some substantive concerns, which I'll post over on the article's talk page. But what I really want to do is read some more about Aurifeuillian factorization, so I can start an article about that. (Whew! I had to write that one down, before I forget how to spell it.)
Thanks for your good efforts! Have a great day. DavidCBryant 17:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Likewise! I was going to stop by anyway and thank you for improving the article. Good luck with the unspellable topic. Geometry guy 19:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] THANKS!!

Thank you, i kinda understand it now. Thanks again for your concern! 76.18.202.211 22:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

You're entirely welcome. I had a bit of trouble with the same thing when I was your age. It's kind of obvious why you can't just "pass through" +∞ to get to −∞ when dealing with the (real-valued) inverse tangent function. Interestingly, this can be done (sort of) in complex analysis, because there is only one "point at infinity" in the complex plane. DavidCBryant 22:52, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Indian Mathematics

Hi David, I finally have some time to start doing a major revision of the page, which I had originally planned to do much earlier (after the RfC in March). I hope you'll have some time to drop in every now and then and offer criticism. I have a bunch of books that I had ordered in March. Let's see how much they help. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] thank you for removing my additions

See Talk:Complex number. --VKokielov 12:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right, of course. The motivation, as I present it, is incomplete. As a matter of fact Birkhoff and MacLaine go on to explain that any field with a subfield ~ R and an element i that is the square root of -1 contains C as a subfield. That isn't trivial, because it shows how C is generated from R and i and where the formal definition comes from. I should properly present the whole thing. I'll wait until I have it worked out in paraphrase before adding it back.
I'm sorry for the irony, and thank you for being civil. --VKokielov 13:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
No problem. If you want to go farther, and introduce stuff about field isomorphisms, that would add something to the article. But then I'd suggest that your addition should go toward the end, perhaps in the section entitled some properties. Since some of the readers are likely to be mathematically unsophisticated, the article should start very simply, and build up more complicated ideas as it goes along. DavidCBryant 14:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. That's why I didn't feel free to dump the entire chapter into the article. --VKokielov 14:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Line breaks in formulas

Thanks for the welcome! I actually do have one question which I couldn't find the answer to on any of the help pages. Is there a way to prevent bad line breaks in formulas written in HTML? When my browser window is a certain width, I'm getting a break between 'E' and '(H)' in the formula E(H). I would like to to forbid this from occurring. Since this issue has the potential to crop up every time function notation is used, I imagine that people have been dealt with it many times before. --Will Orrick 02:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Existential instantiation

You're right about it being just a definition. The problem I found was that there was a Universal instantiation but not one for the equivilant instantiation. Normally people would be learning about both at the same time. Perhaps someone knows enough about it so re-write it. While they're at it, maybe they could replace the squares in Universal instantiation by the right symbols so that becomes readable too.
The preceding unsigned comment was added by RatnimSnave at 07:53, 23 May 2007.

Hi, Martin. I'm not sure rewriting it will work. My concern is that some "articles" really belong in the Wiktionary, and others are truly encyclopedic. Maybe the two articles should be merged, with redirect pages. I'll think about it some more.
The "squares" in this article are coded properly in unicode. The problem is in your browser. Either you do not have the proper fonts installed on your PC, or your browser specification of which font to use is not pointing to the complete unicode font you do have installed. Alternatively, you may be running an operating system that does not have adequate unicode support. In any event, I looked at the changes you made to "Universal instantiation". On my browser, the article looked better (more uniform rendering of symbols) before you made your recent change (which substituted a graphic image for the character-class data that had previously been there).
If you want some help on upgrading your installed fonts, I'll be glad to assist you. But I need to know what operating system and browser you're using. You may also want to read through this discussion, as well as this one, and also this one. You should also check out this table of special characters, to see which ones give you trouble.
Have a great day! DavidCBryant 14:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Yea I think merging would be a good idea. Seems I've had a bit of a baptism of fire with the finer points of WP. If it's ok with you, I'll hand over both the instantiations to you or someone else, as to be honest I don't know it fully myself. I just wanted there to be something for people like me in the future.

As for the Unicode trouble, I hope I haven't cause too much irritation by changing them to math. My view is (and I'm not going to patronise you by finding the relevant guidelines and quoting from them) that all pages, including math, should be visible by everyone. The fact is, the math environ does that. And while a more computationally efficient option is available, it clearly isn't acceptable as it doesn't work on plenty of computers. Obviously this discussion could run and run but I have to now just step back, so to speak.(RatnimSnave 14:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC))

Just an update, for completeness. The only way to make "all pages ... visible by everyone" is to get everyone to use Unicode (which is necessary for the display of many symbols that are common in other languages besides English). The article did not survive AfD – here is the archived discussion. DavidCBryant 11:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Restricted partial quotient

Thanks for restricted partial quotient. I've made some small updates and I'd appreciate it if you would review them.

I do have one criticism of your content. I believe the leading section may offer insufficient context for this equation:

x = [a_0;a_1,a_2,\dots] = a_0 + K_1^\infty \frac{1}{a_i},\,

Thanks again 74.130.9.41 03:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I edited your comments slightly, to make them fit into the existing article more smoothly. I'm not sure an article on partial quotients is really necessary – the concept is hinted at in the leads to both this article and this one. I did try to add "context" by adding a footnote about the "K" notation. Maybe the other articles should define "partial quotients" explicitly – right now they define partial numerators and partial denominators. I sort of think "partial quotient" is easily understood from that terminology and a general knowledge of English. But I might be wrong.
If you still think more context is needed, let me know and I'll amplify the lead section a bit. DavidCBryant 14:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I have moved this article to restricted partial quotients on the grounds that it doesn't make sense to say a single number is "bounded". Please check to make sure I have not introduced any errors. --Trovatore 20:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That's OK by me. I kind of thought the naming convention would trump niceties of logic, so didn't really worry about it very much. DavidCBryant 23:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stieltjes transform

Hello David, thanks for your invaluable remarks, councils and for the changes you have done in this article. I beg your pardon for my very bad english. Congratulations for all your very good job on wikipedia. Have a good day. ENRGO 20:11, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

(Excuse for the bad place of my first message,it was really the first I send on wikipedia and I don't know how to delete a bad edit.) ENRGO 06:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit

Thanks for the copyedit. The number of mistakes I make always suprises me. Pavel Vozenilek 13:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, the changes I made were rather small. I can't speak a lick of Czech, so you're really miles ahead of me, Pavel. I just have a fairly good ear for English idiom. ;^>
Thanks for a good article! DavidCBryant 15:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] John Riordan; Serge Lang

David, thanks for wikifying the book references and otherwise sprucing up John_Riordan. I'm hoping to find some biographical information about the man, but perhaps he epitomizes the ancient literary cliche' that an author is immortalized by his works.

BTW, you might be making a bit too much of Serge Lang's bad books. My view is that it's the same syndrome as Isaac Asimov: just too many books, and some of them are bad. Particlulary it's noticable in the typographical errors that make some of them nigh incomprehensible. But Complex Analysis (say) is a good book. Pete St.John 16:09, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd try to help with John Riordan, but I really don't know anything about him, although his name does seem vaguely familiar. As to Lang, I really don't have a personal opinion. I just ran across the Siegel quote, and I thought it was funny (especially the part about the garden). Thanks for reminding me that it's high time I put a new quote on my user page! DavidCBryant 17:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which Kendall?

You added a reference to the article on Kendall's W, being to an article co-authored by M. G. Kendall, who, I assume, is the same person as Maurice George Kendall. I notice that the German Wikipedia, in its article on Kendalls Konkordanzkoeffizient, ascribes the same to David George Kendall. Does your reference establish unambiguously that our German colleagues are in error here? (I don't have access to JSTOR or a research library, so I can't look this up myself.)  --LambiamTalk 14:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Lambiam, I'm sure that Maurice is the right Kendall. Take a look at the reference (you can read the first page of the article, even without JSTOR access) and you'll see that the article referenced is the very one that led to the statistic called "Kendall's W". You may also want to look at Kendall tau rank correlation coefficient. The W statistic is just a transformed version of the tau test. (The confusion is understandable. David Kendall also works with applied probability. But his interests seem to run in the direction of the topology of probability spaces. And he's more contemporary than Maurice. Anyway, Kendall's W and Kendall's tau are fairly old tests that have been in use since ca. 1940, when M. Kendall introduced them). DavidCBryant 14:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I've corrected the error on the German Wikipedia.  --LambiamTalk 21:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Noncentral hypergeometric distributions

Thank you for your nice comment om my article Wallenius' noncentral hypergeometric distribution before I even finished it. I see you are interested in continued fractions. See [[1]] regarding a continued fraction expansion of Wallenius' noncentral hypergeometric distribution. Arnold90 06:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Catastro

A million thanks for your corrections. I must apologyze myself for my bad english that you have already noticed. Only two things needs revision (yours, because the mine can be another catastrophe): 1- The number of questions was exactly 40 (as you can see in the external links). 2- The king himself (Fernando VI) can't be described "As a student of a very modern economic doctrine". In fact his mental insanity made impossible a personal rule in government. The former redaction was "Since a very modern economic doctrine (nearest to the Physiocratic school than to mercantilism), old taxes was seen like anti-economic by the state himself, as long as high and unfair" -sorry for cite spanish wikipedia: "Desde una doctrina económica muy moderna para la época (comparable ya no al mercantilismo, sino a la fisiocracia), se percibían como antieconómicas para el propio estado, además de muy gravosas e injustas"-. In short words: the reform was in interest of the state (or monarchy, if you prefer), but not an intelectual interest of king (that thing can be said for the marquis of Ensenada). Saludos y a tu disposición.--Ángel Luis Alfaro 10:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarifications, Ángel. I was a little uncertain about who proposed the single tax – I guess I was thinking of another Bourbon, who said "l'etat, c'est mois" when I rephrased that sentence – and I'm glad you brought the inaccuracies to my attention. I'll rephrase those sentences today, and hopefully I'll get it right this time. DavidCBryant 11:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
That Bourbon you remember was Louis XIV, king of France and grandfather of Felipe V, the former king of Spain and father of Fernando VI. The identification king-state is quite logic in absolutism, but redaction seems much better now, after your last revision. Thanks. In other gramatical things I cant help you too much, but I think you talk about two different spanish verbs: "percibir" (to percieve?, to see, to hear, to smell) not commonly reflexive unless you can smell yourself; and the reflexive verb "apercibirse"="darse cuenta" (to realize); there is even another use of that when is not reflexive: "apercibir" (to prepare, to admonish). About economic history: I dont dare make many translations to english (as you can see I hardly write in an awful english), I use to translate from english into spanish; but I suggest you (if you are interested in) to try with the parts of "mercantilism" that we have improved in the spanish article that the english wikipedia doesn't have. I made that suggestion in the discussion of mercantilism but there was no answer till now. Saludos.--Ángel Luis Alfaro 21:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I liked your maths story :-)

Great story, and I agree, 6 + square is much more intriguing :-) Natebailey 08:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio

Hey David, I replied on my talkpage.--Cronholm144 18:43, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello again, I sent you an E-mail. Cheers--Cronholm144 00:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try to patch up the "Remez inequality" article soon. DavidCBryant 00:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invite

 Thank you for your recent contribution to a few logic articles. Have you considered joining the Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic? It is an effort to coordinate the work of Wikipedians who are knowledgeable about logic in an effort to improve the general quality and range of Wikipedia articles on logic topics. We at the project invite your participation and correspondence. Be well.

Gregbard 06:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your opinion about small changes

Dear David,

I did two minor changes on the integral article, one of which in the introduction, the other in the "Terminology" section. They are very conservative refinements, and I thought they did not require a discussion. If you think that I should have discussed them, please let me know.

My idea is that a minor adjustment, which does not change the meaning of the sentence, and does not add new concepts, does not need to be discussed. It must include, of course, a good edit summary. Other users can easily undo or correct the minor edit, and answer with their own edit summary. This is kind of a discussion.

Let me know if you agree. I certainly don't want to offend you and the editors who so skillfully wrote the article.

Paolo.dL 12:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Paolo! I don't care if you make small changes. Those can always be discussed later. And yes, the remarks in edit summaries do constitute a kind of discussion.
My main concern is with deletion of entire sections of the article. I agree that the article is too long as it stands. But the best thing for it, probably, is to split several portions out into a separate article. That's major surgery, and ought to be discussed thoroughly on the talk page to reach consensus before it's undertaken.
By the way, Paolo, I read your talk page with some interest. I'm sorry you got crosswise with Charles Matthews when you first arrived on the scene. I appreciate your eagerness to make Wikipedia even better than it is. I don't want to discourage that eagerness. But I do hope you'll restrain your own impetuosity. In other words, be bold, but don't be reckless. We'll all get along better if we learn to recognize that subtle but important distinction.
Have a great day! DavidCBryant 12:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure, David. I am sorry if I seemed reckless, but I didn't mean to. You are right, I will not delete an entire section again without discussing it. However, please consider that I have not done that carelessly (although it might seem so). Please see on Talk:Integral my explanation on the specific case. My error was to think that a short edit summary (where my rationale was only partly explained) was enough to convince you. Now I realize that it was not sufficient, and I am not even sure anymore that the section should be deleted! :-). If you discussed it, a good reason is likely to exist that I don't understand yet. Thanks for sharing your opinion and for giving me good advices.

With my best regards, Paolo.dL 13:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, your non standard continued fraction for π using perfect odd squares is amazing! Paolo.dL 09:02, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hirschvogel

Hi David. Thanks for writing, and I'm glad you liked it. It's nice to know that people notice a given article! –Outriggr § 04:03, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Smile

selfwormTalk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

selfwormTalk) 00:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bryson of Heraclea

Hello DavidCBryant,
You left a question on Bryson of Heraclea asking:

Is this accurate? Since Archimedes' method amounted to erecting a series of isosceles triangles on top of the six equilateral triangles that naturally fit inside a given circle, it appears that calculating the area of the 96-gon is not much more difficult than calculating its perimeter.

I think that you are thinking of a different method. One way that Archimedes calculated pi was by means of the the Archimedean algorithm. I'll let Boyer(p. 125) explain it.

In his approximate evaluation of the ratio of the circumference to the diameter for a circle Archimedes again showed his skill in computation. Beginning with the inscribed regular hexagon, he computed the perimeters of polygons obtained by successively doubling the number of sides until one reached ninety-six sides. His iterative procedure for these polygons was related to what is sometimes called the Archimedean algorithm. [...] If one prefers, one can use instead the sequence an, An, a2n, A2n, ...; where an and An are the areas of the inscribed and circumscribed regular polygons of n sides.

In the Bryson article I was referring to Archimedes' use of the perimeter to find pi and not his use of area. Also I took the information about the complexity of Bryson's method from this online article:

Antiphon and Bryson of Heraclea came up with the innovative idea of inscribing a polygon inside a circle, finding its area, and doubling the sides over and over . "Sooner or later (they figured), ...[there would be] so many sides that the polygon ...[would] be a circle" (Blatner, 16). Later, Bryson also calculated the area of polygons circumscribing the circle. This was most likely the first time that a mathem atical result was determined through the use of upper and lower bounds. Unfortunately, the work boiled down to finding the areas of hundreds of tiny triangles, which was very complicated, so their work only resulted in a few digits. (Blatner, 16)

Take care. selfwormTalk) 22:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the extensive quotes, SW. I remain unconvinced that the essential difference between Bryson's estimate of pi and Archimedes' approach boils down to the difficulty of computing the area of a polygon – it's relatively easy to calculate the area of the 96-gon that Archimedes used, but somewhat harder if one doesn't use the doubling trick to construct successive polygons. (I see that the online article you cite ascribes the doubling trick to Bryson, but I'm not so certain that's correct – the MacTutor bio indicates that available details of the actual process Bryson used are somewhat sketchy.) I think the essential feature in the Archimedean approach was that it took just four steps to go from a hexagon to the 96-gon, and even with their limited ability to manipulate numbers (no zero), the Greeks could still do the arithmetic for four repetitions of a process. Anyway, it's no big deal, but I think the concept is interesting, so I may move some of this discussion to the article's talk page, when I have a little extra time.
Have a great day!  ;^> DavidCBryant 15:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Award

The E=mc² Barnstar
This barnstar is hereby awarded to DavidCBryant for his numerous prime contributions to mathematical articles. Good job! selfwormTalk) 07:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] relations

I have been working on populating the category Category:Mathematical relations, which I don't agree is entirely mathematical. I have information on many such relations. At some point I would like to see information on the following topics. Many of these are present under a different article name. If there is something that you can contribute to expanding these before I do, I would appreciate it. Be well,

Gregbard 12:14, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a separate article on each one of these is necessarily a good idea. Some of them don't even fit the notion of a relation very well. For example, a surjective or onto relation corresponds, I suppose, with the notion of a surjective function. The inconsistency I see is that such a function can involve infinitely many "related" items, and mathematicians generally don't speak of such a correspondence as being a "relation", not even in the abstract sense of that term.
Another thing – some of the names in your list probably refer to the same thing. For instance, I think an onto relation and a surjective relation would be synonymous, as would into relation/injective relation, and one-to-one relation/bijective relation.
Anyway, when I have time I'll poke into the literature a little and see how frequently the terms you're proposing to write about are actually used. DavidCBryant 14:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I do not use "into" to mean one-to-one (injective). It just means that the second set is a superset (either proper or improper) of the image of the first set under the function. I use it when I want to emphasis that I am not saying (nor excluding) that the mapping is "onto". JRSpriggs 21:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)

Thank you for informing me of Jitse's Bot, which in turn relies on MathBot. The appropriate thing would be for me to categorize mathematics articles that I see are not suitably categorized so that MathBot can appropriately index them and Jitse's Bot can appropriately list them on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity. This is only the second case of full automation I've seen to date, the other being WikiProject Paranormal. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. Thanks for taking the time to follow the PRODs so carefully. DavidCBryant 10:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sets und Menges

David, I reasoned exactly as you did, that Cantor had chosen M because it is the initial letter of Menge. There is something of a conundrum about how best to translate. I recognize that Allenby explicitly chose to retain M and m. My choice of switching to S (and therefore s) was based on the conscious decision that the typical reader of English Wikipedia isn't as interested in precise fidelity to Cantor's original as the typical reader of Allenby's book might be but, as a more general reader, would place higher value in clarity and understandability of the article. From that reasoning I concluded that naming a set S would be clearer to the typical reader in this context. Furthermore, although it is indeed Allenby's book that the article cites, that is merely to show the passage's authenticity. And it is not Allenby, but Cantor whom the article actually quotes. Sound reasonable to you?—PaulTanenbaum 17:15, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes – and no. I don't like to alter direct quotes, at all. I guess there's some room for editorial judgment, but I would rather err on the side of caution. If it's going to be in quotation marks, it should be a direct quote without alteration. A paraphrase is OK, but it shouldn't be in quotation marks. That's my opinion, anyway. And if we're going to offer our own translation from the German, then it would probably be best to show the German original somewhere, possibly in a footnote. DavidCBryant 18:31, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Hey, this certainly isn't anything I'd fall on my sword about. If you feel strongly, feel free to change it back to M.—PaulTanenbaum 18:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

"Menges"??? The plural of Menge is Mengen. Michael Hardy 03:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, thanks for pointing that out, Michael. I was going to, because I thought a Tannenbaum ought to get that, naturally. But hey -- I don't write everything on this page. And my main interest in this case is in an accurate quote, which I still can't supply, because I don't have a copy of Allenby's book handy. ;^> DavidCBryant 10:44, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NSA

By "coming out" I meant some official government announcement. The NSA wasn't in the official Government Organization Manual for a good many years, and NSA employees registered for conferences as being with "DoD". Many of us in the business thought the low profile was overdone, since any foreign intelligence service worth its salt knew about NSA and its mission. — DAGwyn 16:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Harry V. Roberts article

This is my first article and I would appreciate as much feedback as possible. Could you take another look at this article and let me know 'ALL' of your evaluative thoughts? I know that he is not a really major figure and I am not sure that I can get more material. I would like your thoughts on what would help improve quality, either by removing or adding material. DCDuring 15:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with underconstruction templeate?

I put an underconstruction template up on Time management, where I am undertaking some major editing. Somehow (possibly no connection with template) I lost an hour's editing. I can think of things that I could have done that might have helped, but I'm a little gun-shy now. What are the benefits to an editor to putting such a notice up? What are good, conservative practices that avoid whatever glitches there might be in the Wiki software? Who can provide advice on this, if you know? Thanks in advance. DCDuring 19:30, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Thank you!

[From Jim's talk page …]

Hi, Jim.belk. Thank you very much for writing the new article Euclidean subspace. The images are very nice, and add a great deal to the article. It's carefully and methodically written, and very clear.

I did make a number of small changes (mostly correcting typos, inserting "of" where it was missing, adding a couple of wiki-links where they seemed appropriate, etc.) Anyway, you might want to take a look at it to be sure I didn't mess anything up too badly. Oh – there was one spot near the end where you used "union" and "sum" as synonyms … I wasn't certain what you meant to say there, so I didn't make a change, but you might want to think about it a little.

Thanks again for an excellent article! DavidCBryant 14:48, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad that you like the article. The typos you fixed were all quite correct, and I have replaced the word "union" with "sum" in the spot you mentioned. Thanks for the help! Jim 18:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
My pleasure, Jim. :-) DavidCBryant 10:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Roderick Long

Thank you Mr. Bryant for welcoming to Wikipedia. I have been on a while, but have not made a page. You thanked me for catching Roderick Long as being an economist(professional) on a page when he is a philosopher(academic). The preceding unsigned comment was added to my user page by RG415WBFA. I moved it to my talk page. DavidCBryant 11:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Diophantus II.VIII

Hi David. Thanks for commenting on the above. I wrote the article because I don't really understand why Pythagorean triples are defined specifically as right triangles with integer sides rather than more generally as right triangles with rational sides. Diophantus II.VIII is in effect an algorithm for generating rational triples and Diophantus was evidently satisfied with rational (not necessarily integer) solutions to the problem. In the article I have attempted to follow through on his logic to arrive at what I would consider the 'core' triple generator which is:

[t; (t^2-1)/2 ; (t^2+1)/2]

Conventional literature on PTs refers to the above formula as a 'special case' of the supposedly 'more general' formula:

2mn; m^2 - n^2; m^2 + n^2 when n=1.

Perhaps I am just fencing with ghosts but it seems to me they have got it the wrong way round since the mn formulae may rather be derived from the above t sequence by replacing t with a rational number m/n.

Neil Parker (talk) 18:49, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On your redirects of the principles of addition and multiplication.

Hi, David!

I've added some comments on Talk:Multiplication principle and Talk:Addition principle (which articles you made to redirects some months ago). I suggest to revert them (but extend and improve them a bit). Best regards,-JoergenB (talk) 05:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] infinite continued fraction

Hello, DavidCBryant, I am meavel. Let's discuss about the formula of this picture:

\frac{a_0}{1},\qquad \frac{a_1a_0+1}{a_1},\qquad \frac{ a_2(a_1a_0+1)+a_0}{a_2a_1+1},\qquad \frac{a_3(a_2(a_1a_0+1)+a_0)+(a_1a_0+1)}{a_3(a_2a_1+1)+a_1}.

from infinite continued fraction of continued fraction. Continued_fraction

please compare with this.

x = a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1 + \cfrac{1}{a_2 + \cfrac{1}{a_3 + \cfrac{1}{\ddots\,}}}}


and here is my proof to show that conflicts.

Answer:Covergents:

x_1 = [a_0] = a_0\qquad
x_2 = [a_0;a_1] = a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1} = \frac{a_1a_0+1}{a_1}\qquad
x_3 = [a_0;a_1,a_2] = a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1 + \cfrac{1}{a_2}} = a_0 + \cfrac{1}{ \cfrac{a_1a_2 + 1}{a_2}} = a_0 + \cfrac{a_2}{a_1a_2 + 1} = \cfrac{a_0(a_1a_2 + 1) + a_2}{a_1a_2+1}\qquad
x_4 = [a_0;a_1,a_2,a_3] = a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1+\cfrac{1}{a_2+\cfrac{1}{a_3}}}\qquad
= a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1+\cfrac{a_3}{a_2a_3 + 1}}\qquad
= a_0 + \cfrac{a_2a_3 + 1}{a1(a_2a_3 + 1) + a_3}\qquad
= \cfrac{a_0(a_1(a_2a_3 + 1) + a_3) + a_2a_3 + 1}{a_1(a_2a_3 + 1) + a_3}\qquad

--Meavel (talk) 04:48, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

I've seen your important contributions for the article Hypergeometric series. I'm looking for the general (non-iterative) non-trigonometric expression for the exact trigonometric constants of the form: \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align}, when n is natural (and is not given in advance). Do you know of any such general (non-iterative) non-trigonometric expression? (note that any exponential-expression-over-the-imaginaries is also excluded since it's trivially equivalent to a real-trigonometric expression).

  • Let me explain: if we choose n=1 then the term \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align} becomes "0", which is a simple (non-trigonometric) constant. If we choose n=2 then the term \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align} becomes \begin{align}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\end{align}, which is again a non-trigonometric expression. etc. etc. Generally, for every natural n, the term \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align} becomes a non-trigonometric expression. However, when n is not given in advance, then the very expression \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align} per se - is a trigonometric expression. I'm looking for the general (non-iterative) non-trigonometric expression equivalent to \begin{align}\cos \frac{\pi}{2^n}\end{align}, when n is not given in advance. If not for the cosine - then for the sine or the tangent or the cotangent.

Eliko (talk) 08:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematical statistics

Sorry I never responded to your note about the Statistics article. (I didn't, right?) After my exchange with User:Henrygb (who I just noticed got banned from WP last year), I edited my version of the article for a while in my user space, but then gradually lost interest. I haven't made any particular effort to edit math/stat articles for a couple of years now. Mostly I just edit to fix "simple" problems, like formatting and grammar. Anyway, see also my response to the months-old discussion about redirecting Mathematical statistics. - dcljr (talk) 14:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)