Talk:List of mathematics articles

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A WikiProject has been developed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics regarding issues of form, structure and notation for mathematics articles.

Contents

[edit] Initial comments

−Very nice and useful list. The only strange thing are the names of mathematicians. I guess they should be excluded somehow or they should be in a separate list as they are already in list of mathematicians.

I think they should at least go to a separate list. They clutter the present list. There is the additional problem of their ordering: the first letter of the first name determines their classification: that makes it about useless. So Dirichlet is found under J as "Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet". A few minutes ago, it was under P as "Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet". God knows where he will be tomorrow ;-) FvdP 23:01 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)

Ha, ha. I guess he would end at P, because someone someday will short his name to Peter Dirichlet. --XJam 23:29 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)

The mathematicians are here so that we can track all changes on pages remotely related to math with a single "Watch links" operation. This list is not primarily for public consumption, and the alphabetical ordering is unimportant. If you want a nicely organized list of mathematicians, you can go to a list of mathematicians, but please don't remove them from here. Thanks, AxelBoldt 03:42 Oct 9, 2002 (UTC)

A bit late, sorry for having pushed that move out... --FvdP

[edit] Names of theorems

It is OK to write Matiyasevich's theorem but not Dirichlet's theorem. Why is that so? Can you please decide how to name theorems? --XJam 09:50 Oct 14, 2002 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (theorems)

Should redirects like poset also be listed ? --FvdP

Yes, for two reasons: some people will use this list to look up a certain term, and we shouldn't hide "poset" from them; also, sometimes a redirect is turned into a real article, and we want to monitor things like that with the "Related Changes" feature. AxelBoldt 01:24 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

What about deleting one of "regular expression" and "regular expressions"? They point to the same article and are definitely redundant in this list. I would delete "regular expression", because the plural form sounds nicer to my ears (just a feeling ...). What do you think out there? --zeno 07:12 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'd say it's a pretty common standard in the mathematics area to use the singular; that way you can write [[number]] of [[integer]]s and get number of integers (the Wiki formatting automatically includes the "s" in the link). If only the plural form were only available, you'd have to write [[numbers | number]] of [[integers]]. The worse part is - without a standard, you'd always be guessing; is it the Sylow theorem or Sylow Theorems?. So I always use singular, as in real number, rational number, etc. Chas zzz brown 09:18 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
The main purpose of this list is to monitor changes in the math area by using the "Related Changes" feature in the sidebar. Since the article lives at regular expression and regular expressions is just a redirect, we need to keep the singular in the list for this monitoring to work. The plural could be deleted. As a general naming convention, singular terms are preferred in article titles, for the reasons Chas gave above. AxelBoldt 20:11 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

In view of the length of this page and the time it takes to load, I think it would be useful to have a page titled "Mathematical topics" on which one sees: A, B, C, D, ....., Z, and then clicking on any of those would take you to a page that lists mathematical topics with the corresponding initial letter. Michael Hardy 00:53 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Yes very good idea Michael. The same thing would probably be with page List of astronomical topics and if someone would start others like List of physical topics, ... I guess AxelBoldt did not think this would be necessary some day. --XJamRastafire 01:04 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

The problem for me is, I have a shortcut which takes me to related changes for this page - if we broke it up into A, B, C, etc., then I'd have to check related changes for math with "A", then check related changes for math with "B", etc. I don't know if there's a workaround; but the main reason for this page to exist is that related changes function. Maybe a database function could be implemented which would make this easier somehow... Cheers Chas zzz brown 02:02 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Chas: the original reason for this page was to enable "Related Changes" for a quick list of changes in the math area; it's not really meant for users to look up mathematical topics. They should just use the search engine. AxelBoldt 04:18 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Yes Chas and Axel's arguments are just okay. But I understand also Michael's torments when he is opening this page. This problem still remains regardless of being just a function for related changes. His second function of being a certain mathematical index is also very useful. How to kill two flies with one shot would be fine to know. --XJamRastafire

If, for each link in the page, "Related changes" returned changes in both to the article and the talk page, then we could remove about half the current links (the talk: ones). That would probably make the page load a bit faster. Chas zzz brown 10:47 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

A related idea I've been thinking of... Many of the topics on this list might be better served by a List of physics topics. For some examples from recent changes in the last 2 days: temperature, charge, semiconductor, Electromagnetism, special relativity, evolution, diode. These are topics that I wager a lot of mathematicians know something about, but strictly speaking, they aren't mathematics proper.

Of course, a lot of physics these days is mathematical; and there's no particular reason some topics couldn't be on both lists; after all, this is primarily a maintenance page. But I see no particular reason to include "diode" for example. I can start on this process, but first - comments? Chas zzz brown 01:47 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Sure, diode and evolution don't belong here for sure. Do you want to start List of physics topics? It's a lot of work though. AxelBoldt 03:23 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Start with List of physics topics Looxix 00:34 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

Refactoring is sure needed but first can we break this up into several pieces? The article is extremely too long to edit. -- Taku 14:39 18 May 2003 (UTC)

What is the purpose of all the empty Talk: links? Don't they make the page unnecessarily large? -- Timwi 22:57 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

They are there so that when you click "Related changes" (which is the main purpose of the page) you see recently modified Talk pages as well. --Zundark 19:12 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Aahh.... the software should really be doing that automatically :-p -- Timwi 21:39 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How about having two lists? One as an "index" of terms and the other as a list of top level categories. For example, the last list could simply have "Group theory" while the first has Lagrange's theorem, normal subgroup, group homomorphism, automorphism group, etc.. Phys 17:09, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The top level topics should be (and I believe are) listed at mathematics. AxelBoldt 13:20, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If I could just make a general comment. Currently the number of mathematical pages not linked to from this list must run well into three figures. That is, simply finding what is on the site and relevant is an uphill task. Fine-tuning would be welcome in all of the areas (a) organisation by topic (b) tutorial guidance (c) standardisation of article format to something stable and appropriate at a level.

If my previous wiki experience elsewhere is a reliable guide though, something has to be done first about the tide of stubby articles and 'opportunistic' edits. Not to speak of the demarcation questions on the physics and compsci and other fronts. Centralising lists are good for the simple reason that they find stuff.

Charles Matthews 08:37, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why are computer terms on here? I study math and work on computers and the two fields are very different. Some things are arguably pertinent to both (eg Cryptography), but FIPS, ENIAC? These did/do nothing for math.....

The answer to the question about ENIAC seems to be that it was added a long time ago (in terms of this page) when, for example, there were also many topics in physics and other mathematical sciences included.

Charles Matthews 13:17, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What do you people think of the idea of creating a list of mathematical examples? It would list concrete examples; Cantor function would be a good candidate. Many articles probably already exist that would be appropriate. I may write one illustrating the use of Lebesgue's convergence theorems; it was that one that caused me to think of this. Would those who would contribute so indicate below? Michael Hardy 00:39, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Lists are good. Would you want Petersen graph, just because it's a famous example? Sin(1/x) thingies? Counterexamples to symmetry of second derivative? Just saying 'example' is leaving it very broad.

Charles Matthews 09:36, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The fact that it's broad would mean the list would be long -- maybe even half as long as the list of mathematical topics. I would include all of the above. I guess a certain concreteness would be a qualification for inclusion in the list. "Riemann integral" is not conrete enough, IMO. The Petersen graph definitely is. Proofs and theorems would not generally be included; mathematical objects would be. The outer automorphisms of S6 would be included if there's a Wikipedia article about them. (6 is the only value of n for which Sn has any outer automorphisms.) The non-Desarguean projective planes would be included if there's a Wikipedia article about them. Many concrete examples are very enlightening and should be objects of study in their own right. Michael Hardy 20:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK - sounds like a 'mathematical atlas'.

Charles Matthews 20:53, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. And I'm eager to hear about the outer automorphisms of S6 (if there's anything deep underneath at least). --FvdP

On general stuff about these mathematical topics pages:

  1. there is now no consistency in the way they self-link;
  2. the links to each other are as they should be (??);
  3. I don't actually agree with the idea of links to (for example) Riemann as well as Bernhard Riemann now being in the list.

Charles Matthews 14:32, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganizing this list

I would like to suggest two changes to this list:

  • We stop listing mathematicians here. It's too easy to forget to add them here as well as to List of mathematicians.
  • We go through and remove the non-math topics listed, especially if they are already covered on another list of topics. I volunteer to do this.
I would suggest that in removing a topic on the grounds that it is a non-math topic, you make clear in your summary that that's the reason for removal, and state which topics were removed. That way those who might disagree are given notice. Michael Hardy 21:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That is a reasonable request. -- Walt Pohl 21:52, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the above suggestions. Here's another minor one:

  • Move the A-C topics to another page and move the categorical sublists (currently on the L page) to here. That way when people come here they can easily choose to browse alphabetically or by category.

I'd have done this already, but I'm not sure if it will screw anything up. -- Fropuff 01:48, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)

Those are both really good ideas. The inclusion of A-C on the main page is so odd, though, that I had just assumed it was for strictly technical Wiki software reasons. :-) -- Walt Pohl 02:26, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hear some good ideas here. Perhaps the relatively simple moves should come first (lists to the 'main page', A-C to own page). Then a bit more policy discussion. For example, the charter is currently drawn up very broadly, and the content reflects that. Things move on, and I agree for example that mathematicians should be on their proper list. But it would be good to have proper consensus about that.

Charles Matthews 08:40, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

While we're at it, a couple of other policies to work out.

  • Red links - it seems to me that people should put these in the proper Requested Articles page now, rather than on the list. The RA turnover is quite good, while the math-lists have become unreadable.
  • Redirects. Is there a policy to make for inclusion, or just leave it to common sense?

Charles Matthews 16:18, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the red links need to go. The RA page works much better for this purpose. I say just leave redirects to common sense. I include then unless they are just minor spelling differences. -- Fropuff 15:41, 2004 Mar 13 (UTC)

Do we want to add every current red link to RA?

It is clear to me that RA could be much expanded, if that were a good idea. Probably not a good idea, currently. So, I think red links from this list should be given priority for moving there: since people may have added them to the list thinking in good faith that they would attract attention, we should respect that. Some sorting may then be required. Charles Matthews 20:39, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

As for redirects, I think we should definitely include them for things that might have their own page someday, or things that are very common terms, like poset. -- Walt Pohl 17:12, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If no one objects, in the next couple of days I'm going to do the following:

List of mathematical topics
0-9, A-C, etc.
See also Lists of mathematical topics (lists) for lists organized by subtopic.

I'll save any other changes for a future day. -- Walt Pohl 17:12, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for my recent edit

Someone has put a very conspicuous link to the mathematics category page on Wikipedia's main page. At this time, very few of the mathematics articles on Wikipedia are listed on that page. Therefore, I put a warning to that effect on the category page, with a link to list of mathematical topics. So suddenly, this page becomes much more conspicuous to the (non-Wikipedian) public. Since the "recent changes" links on this page appeared above the actual topics lists pages, they were more conspicuous than the links to the actual topics lists. The non-Wikipedian public should be directed first to the topics lists and only later to the "recent changes" lists. Michael Hardy 20:32, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting criteria for the List of mathematical topics

As a possible future project I am considering adding to the List of mathematical topics all the articles from the math categories. I would like to sometime have a community-wide discussion of this. For now, I have a question, which would need to be solved if one would ever attempt to update this list automatically. And that is, what are the sorting criteria for the articles?

So far, I assume the following rules:

(1) Order is alphabetical, with capital letters, lowercase letters, and accented letters treated the same.

(2) The space character takes precedence to numbers and letters, and numbers take precedence to letters. So,

Abel theorem

is before

Abelian

(please ignore the fact that Abel theorem is not grammatical).

Now the tricky part, as there are other characters involved. It looks to me, that the general rule in this list (not universally respected) is to treat:

(3) The apostrphes, quoting characters, commas, and the parantheses, as the empty character. That is,

Abel's theorem
Abels theorem
Abel's (theorem)
Abels, theorem

are considered equal when it comes to sorting (again, forget the grammar for the moment).

(4) The dash character is treated the same as the space character, so

Abel Rufini

and

Abel-Rufini

are treated as equal when it comes to sorting.

I wonder if this is acceptable, and if I missed something. Thanks, Oleg Alexandrov 01:16, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since the main reason now to have the lists is to use RelatedChanges - for which the order doesn't matter - I'd say any consistent system is good. Charles Matthews 07:34, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Another problem is that many mathematicians are sorted on their last name. However, I agree with Charles that the ordering is not that important; even an unsorted list of all articles in Category:Mathematics and its subcategories and LoMT would be very useful. -- Jitse Niesen 09:33, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Right, the mathematicians are sorted by the last name (I had forgotten to mention it, but been aware of the thing). This can be a problem when adding new people as software is too stupid to figure out which is the last name in certain cases (I will inspect every single entry individually, which will take more time, but will take care of this problem).
To me, the order does not matter absolutely at all either. What I mentioned above, is what I think the order is implicitely assumed from carefully inspecting the existing lists. I will soon ask for more community opinion onthe whole thing. Oleg Alexandrov 15:57, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I would say that in a big revision the mathematicians should all be removed: list of mathematicians must anyway be big now, and the old reasons for having a single list of mathematics-related topics have gone. Charles Matthews 16:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Fine with me either way. Oleg Alexandrov 17:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some statistics

Here I will write from time to time the number of articles we have in the list. So far, before removing the mathematicians, there were

5067 articles.

(So, a ~ 3500 figure I gave a while ago is wrong, it was due to a bug in my code.)

After removing the mathematicians, we are left with

4663 articles.

Just curious how many we will have after all the articles from math categories will be added. Oleg Alexandrov 03:22, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I finished adding the articles from the math categories. There are now 6964 articles in List of mathematical topics A-Z, and, together with the articles in List of mathematical topics 0-9, gives us 7197. That's a lot of math articles!
There are still math-stubs to be categorized, and I was kind of conservative when deciding what a math category is. With the latter, I might need some help and suggestions, see list of mathematics categories. Oleg Alexandrov 04:54, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Update

Today I started adding articles from the math categories. I caught some bugs in my code, and as result at some point I reverted the lists 0-9, and A to C. (And I learn again and again that the only way to make sure a bot does its job is to check every single edit. :) Oleg Alexandrov 04:33, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of mathematics categories

I started a new list, List of mathematics categories. I would appreciate it if more people have it on the watchlist and correct me if I add something wrong there. Oleg Alexandrov 01:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

The reason this list is important is because my bot daily fetches articles form the categories listed there and adds them to the list of mathematical topics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed renaming

This is a result of discussion over at List of lists of mathematical topics - most people wanted it renamed, and it was also suggested that this article (and related) be re-named List of mathematical articles or List of mathematics articles. I know it would be a lot of work to actually do, and I would be happy to help out where I could. What do people think? Tompw 23:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Now the page violates WP:SELF

Topics are external to Wikipedia, as they exist in the real world. Wikipedia's articles exist solely within Wikipedia making reference to them a self-reference, and a departure from Wikipedia's Manual of Style. --The Transhumanist 11:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia is free content. To ease reusability, never allow the text of an article to assume that the reader is viewing it at Wikipedia, and try to avoid even assuming that the reader is viewing the article at a website. There may also be stylistic issues with using phrases such as this article unnecessarily.

Another point is that we're reinventing the wheel here. What is a "list of articles"? There are two types of such lists that come to mind: Tables of contents and indices. What you guys have created is a massive index system for the mathematics contents of Wikipedia! And since you've made the move to formality by the inclusion of the word "articles", you might as well go all the way by naming it Index of mathematics articles. --The Transhumanist 11:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


I think it may be time for a new namespace: Contents:.    to be reserved for tables of contents (article lists) and indices of articles. --The Transhumanist 11:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New namespace proposal

I've posted the above thougth at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#It's time for a new namespace: "Contents:".    --The Transhumanist 11:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-references and suggested move

I just left this same note at User talk:Oleg Alexandrov. I think that a move to the Wikipedia namespace should be seriously considered. The problem with this page is that, except for the {{MathTopicTOC}} template, the entire page is written as if the reader is an editor of Wikipedia. If this text were reused for some reason in another form, it would not make sense. Khatru2 18:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you should post the note of suggested move to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Note that the move would be a lot of work (I did one such move earlier) and I would not agree with it, I think those lists look better in the main namespace. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Lists are an exception to the no self-references guideline. See the list guideline. The Transhumanist    19:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mathematics? 68.192.48.250 00:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're suggesting it should replace this list, I'd say that's wrong on several counts. That category is not intended to contain all mathematics articles most of which are in subcategories, and categories are vastly inferior to topics lists. Michael Hardy 02:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Michael. Categories are vastly inferior to topics lists. The entries of a topics list are centralized, that is, they reside on the topics list itself and can be edited directly; categories are autogenerated, with their entries on the pages of the entries rather than on the category pages, which makes the direct editing of categories impossible. This makes categories cumbersome to create and maintain. Because they are decentralized, categories are much harder to edit, requiring a tool like AutoWikiBrowser, which most editors do not know how to use, and force a time-consuming save operation after the addition or removal of any change in a category, which slows edits down to 2 to 6 edits per minute. By comparison, in topics lists you can add, delete, or move hundreds or even thousands of links at a time without having to edit the pages represented by the links being moved. Lists take a fraction of the time to build and maintain, and therefore a single list editor can maintain many times more list items than the category items a category maintainer can handle. Topics lists are also easier to monitor and defend against vandalism and inappropriate changes because they have edit histories, while the edit histories of category pages do not track changes to the categories themselves -- and because of this, entries can be removed from a category and not be noticed by anyone else. Because of the reasons just given, lists with dedicated maintainers are much more comprehensive, while the corresponding categories are typically sparse or filled with holes. Topics lists are more useful: they support scrolling, while categories only display 200 items at a time, but force most topics to be presented in subcategories -- therefore, accessing topics in the category system is more time consuming, and its small segmentation and formatting hinders copy/paste operations. Topic lists support Related changes better, because more items can be presented on each page -- this is useful for spotting vandalism and inappropriate changes to the articles represented by the links on the list, making the lists a powerful tracking tool. They also support redlinks, which are useful for tracking topics that do not yet have articles, and for spotting articles that have been deleted, allowing a new gap in the coverage of a list to be addressed and corrected. Categories do not support redlinks - deleted pages simply disappear from categories. Topics lists can be formatted, structured with subheadings, supported by images and templates, and aren't forced to be alphabetized -- entries can be presented in whatever order is most appropriate or useful in serving the purposes of the list. Lists rock. Categories suck. Relatively speaking.  :-) The Transhumanist    18:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updating this page

I have made a couple of edits to this article in order to:

  • draw attention to the list of mathematics categories and its relation to this list;
  • clarify the purpose of the topical lists;
  • make this article look more like a mainspace article in an attempt at compromise with those who think it should be moved to Wikipedia (I am neutral on this point, but understand that it would be a lot of work).

There are a couple of other changes I would like to make:

  1. incorporate the recent changes lists into the {{MathTopicTOC}} template, so that they are less dominant;
  2. replace the final section with a See also section pointing to these links with briefer descriptions in a more appropriate tone.

Comments? Geometry guy 12:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I've now partially carried out these last two suggestions. I wasn't able to incorporate the recent changes for mathematicians into the template, because there is no page where these are all linked any more. I also didn't introduce much tonal change in the See also section. Geometry guy 18:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Should there be an exception for indexes?

There's a discussion on what the reference requirements for lists like this one. The Transhumanist (talk) 01:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)