User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welcome to user-land! :-) (bwahahahah!) -- Tarquin 20:27 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Michael,

We obviously share and interest in Archimedes and statistics.

Thanks for improving the explanation of Archimedes' theorem on the area of the parabola, and correcting my mistakes in the list of his books. I am writing from memory, since my copy of Heath is sitting on a shelf several thousand miles from me, so it's very good that there's someone out there to set me straight. -- Miguel

---

Just curious. Are you Michael Hardy from MIT, Michael Hardy from Texas (I found the two names on Google) or other Michael Hardy? wshun 00:49, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I was at MIT for three years; I no longer am. I've never had an academic appointment in Texas. Michael Hardy 14:02, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

---

Here's why I think the content of "Generatics" is not taught anywhere. The

American Mathematical Monthly of the Mathematical Association of America is considered the magazine for college math teachers, who prepare HS and Middle School teachers. In 1979, when I started at Naval Research Laboratory, with an excellent library, I spent many lunch hours, sandwich in hand, searching copies of AMM from first issue to last for an article on this subject, even mention of Hamilton's vector form. Nada. I then. in 1979, sent a one page explanation of this. It was rejected as "too difficult" for their readers. Next year, in 1980, I sent essentially the same article. No rejection or even notice of my submission. In 1981, ditto, with a rejection, again "too difficult". In 1982, 1983, 1984, no rejection, no notice of submission. Then I started sending a two sentence letter about this. Never printed.Twice a year, until my retirement in 1990, 12 letters in all -- each a 2-sentence letter, only syntactically varied. Never printed. Somehow it is heresy. And no one will tell me why.jonhays 00:29, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Your premises do not support the conclusion that anyone considers it "heresy". You have not demonstrated that the referee was wrong to call your article too difficult for that journal's readers. The individual topics you mentioned are standard parts of the curriculum, even if collecting them into a single topic under a single name is not. To imagine that the only reason anyone might reject your writings for publication is that they consider them heretical is to start to look paranoid. Michael Hardy 01:31, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

Hi - fab work on Boolos, Second-order logic (LONG awaited) and Cantor's Theorem and first uncountability proof. I added some bits and links to my stuff. There is still a confusion between the diagonal argument (which explicitly mentions the reals i think) and Cantor's Theorem (which simply says for any set S, P(S) > S). Not sure this is entirely clear.

Dbuckner

Hi Michael. Good job spotting my error in the Markov property article! Ben Cairns 03:45, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

---

I've nominated you for adminship. If you accept, please reply at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Maximus Rex 06:53, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

Hi Michael. Would you mind having a look at User:Bjcairns/Probability? I have an idea to build a table of contents for people wanting to learn probability from the Wikipedia, and would greatly appreciate your input. I imagine some kind of pre- or proto-Wikibooks thing. (Any other probability people reading this are also most welcome!) Thanks, Ben Cairns 00:37, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

CHALLENGE PROBLEM. Doggle Company has a fleet of 10 vehicles: 4 vans, 3 small trucks, 2 big trucks, 1 sedan. What is the probability, ceteris paribus, that. at a given time, 4 vehicles will be in use? Please note that this is not the multinomial probability distribution , which samples distinguishable items from a distinguishable population. Rather, it samples undistinguished items from a distinguishable population. The answer is found at http://members.fortunecity.com/jonhays/parprob.htm , which fills in a critcal gap in statistical literature. authored by User:Jonhays0, 03:12, 5 Dec 2003

---

You're now an administrator -- Tim Starling 00:32, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

Congratulations. If I had realised you weren't already one I would nominated you long ago. I know we have clashed on occasion but I am glad to see that someone who does so much good work on wikipedia is getting proper recognition. We could almost call you our editor-in-chief or at least proofwriter-in-chief. Good luck! FearÉIREANN 01:09, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you.

I promise to sentence three Wikipedians to burn at the stake for heresy (or maybe for hearsay) each week. Michael Hardy 01:44, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi there. Congrats on the adminship - join the club! You were asking why "Penny" was capitalised in the chapter titles but not in the introductory chapter -- the reason is the articles' subject is "Penny" and the "English" or "British" is just a qualifier. "History of the English penny" was not my title for the article, as it had a more hierarchical name to match all the other denominations linked off "British coinage" but someone else took a dislike to it and renamed it... not my idea! Arwel 03:03, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

I've found a misplaced reference showing that "generatics" did not start with me in content,

only in name. The book, "Learn from the Masters", edited by Dwetz, Fauvel, Bekken, Johannsson, Katz (Mathematical Association of America, 1991), says on p. 286, "It was not until 1894 that J. Tannery introduced the arithmetic of rationals as pairs [vectors] of integers." (Jules Tannery (1818-1910), French, is cited ONLINE.)--In 1957, I received a grant from the National Science Foundation to organize the first NSF Workshop in Puerto Rico, planned for high math school teachers (some from States). I taught "Foundations of Mathematics". I was sent papers (later lost) from previous Workshops. One set described Tannery's work and Hamilton's formulation of complex numbers as pairs or vectors of reals. The formulator filled in by deriving integers from pairs or vectors of natural numbers. The latter shows how "the law of signs" derives from CLOSURE on DEFINED DIFFERENCES (DDs) of naturals : (a - b), s.t. subtrahend is not greater than minuend, hence, a natural number. Critical is multiplication law for DD. From standard multiplication algorithm, find that, for DDs, (a - b) * (c - d) = (a*c + (-b)*(-d)) + (a*(-d) + (-b)*c). Applying, 10 = 5*2 = (9 - 4)*(2 - 0) = 18 + (-4)*(2) + 0 = 10, hence, (-4)*(2) must act as a subtrahend -8, leading to "negative times positive equals negative" rule. Applying product rule to 30 = 6*5 = (9 - 3) - (7 - 2) = (63 + (-3)*(-2)) - (18 + 21) = (63 - 39) + (-3)*(-2) = 24 + x = 30, hence, x = 6 = (-3)*(-2), leading to "negative times negative equals positive" rule. This is forced by CLOSURE on DDs. However, in the "Generating arithmetic" article which I initiated, some one put in that CLOSURE is a concept from category theory, very advanceed math. Yet, the above book, on p. 260, says, "For Galois (1830), Jordan (1870), and even in Klein's "Lectures on the Icosohedron" (1884), groups were defined by the one axiom of closure. The other axioms were implicit in the context of their discussions -- finite groups of transformations." So CLOSURE goes back at least to 1830.Jonhays0

---

Ok... What is the reason to have a self-link? - UtherSRG 00:36, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The reason is that the article is about the concept of a fixed point. Michael Hardy 00:41, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I'm clueless, but that doesn't give me anything. Or is this just a pun? :) - UtherSRG 00:43, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's a useful pun in this case, because it is suggestive of the article's topic. It is instructive; it helps the reader remember the idea. Humor should not be included when it is gratuitous, but this instance of humor helps get the point across. Michael Hardy 00:47, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yup. I was clueless. It's a great pun. I've been doing this too long today. :)

---

In my mind multiple comparisons is part of analysis of variance but simultaneous statistical inference is broader, including things like confidence bands in regression.Cutler 20:34, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea whether to put it here or not. I am still not very familiar with these systems, but I would want to say thank you, for your welcome and your advice. -Sothis

just want to say thanks for the many quality math articles you contributed. I enjoyed them extremely. Xah P0lyglut 14:06, 2004 Jan 7 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm glad someone's reading them. Michael Hardy 21:55, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

---

Michael, thanks for the comments on L-S. I still had the other comment, to more with the internal conection between this, your article on Second-order logic, and the other on First-order logic. As follows:

My difficulty is what "first order" sentences are. It says under First-order logic that "first-order logic is strong enough to formalize all of set theory and thereby virtually all of mathematics." But it also says " It [FOL] is a stronger theory than sentential logic, but a weaker theory than arithmetic, set theory, or second-order logic."

Yet under Second-order logic we have "second-order logic differs from first-order logic in that it allows quantification over subsets of a domain, or functions from the domain into itself, rather than only over individual members of the domain."

I have difficulty in understanding how "first-order logic is strong enough to formalize all of set theory and thereby virtually all of mathematics." But also that FOL by implication does not allow "quantification over subsets of a domain". These statements seem to contradict each other. If FOL does not allow quantification over subsets of a domain, how can it "formalize all of set theory and thereby virtually all of mathematics."?

Regards, Dean

Hi Michael, if the idea appeals to you, I'd like you to review Principle of indifference. If you choose to do so, and you see something that needs fixing but don't feel like doing it yourself, I'll be keeping an eye on the talk page. Cheers, Cyan 01:41, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

---

CHALLENGE PROBLEM. Doggle Company has a fleet of 10 vehicles: 4 vans, 3 small trucks, 2 big trucks, 1 sedan. What is the probability, ceteris paribus, that at a given time, 4 vehicles will be in use? Please note that this is not the multinomial probability distribution, which samples distinguishable items from a distinguishable population. Rather, it samples undistinguished items from a distinguishable population. The answer is found at http://members.fortunecity.com/jonhays/parprob.htm , which fills in a critcal gap in statistical literature.jonhays 17:54, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Claiming old edits of yours 2 Sugestion concerning the use of TeX on Wikipedia 3 Newcomb's Paradox 4 Mann-Whitney and other stats matters 5 Where did the page go? 6 Bravo! 7 Math tags are nice, but... 8 Introduction to articles (Style) 9 Hasse diagram: pictures 10 Rest, residue, and remainder 11 Request 12 Category:Proofs 13 Names of World Countries in Greek 14 TeX style guide 15 Statistics lead section 16 More on 0/0 17 OCA Autocephaly 18 Danke 19 Imaginary colors 20 Heartful Thanks 21 Could have been worse 22 Gian-Carlo Rota 23 Margin of error 24 Hello 25 Name impersonator 26 Thank you 27 Metropolitan / Archbishop 28 in regards to the "hack" page redirect 29 Radius of convergence 30 standard deviation 31 Article Licensing 32 Algebra of random variables 33 Coffield paradox 34 New user thanks 35 Protocol 36 HELP a little girl 37 Caley's Formula 38 A simple proof that 22/7 exceeds pi 39 Date Format 40 Partition2.jpg 41 Thanks 42   43 Image tag 44 Are you following me? 45 Modulo 46 Talk:Transfer operator 47 Pi symbol 48 On gcr.jpg 49 physical information 50 GSL References 51 Average rule 52 Re: Your grave doubts about slippery slope 53 good work 54 Order Statistics 55 New Mathematics Wikiportal 56 Improper integral 57 Thanks for the warm welcome 58 Extreme physical information 59 Comprise vs. compose 60 Knuth 61 Pick's theorem 62 Sufficient statistic to Sufficiency (statistics) 63 Ta 64 Error? 65 Self-energy 65.1 Re: Pre-emptive redirects are important 66 Intentional creation of pre-emptive redirects 67 Bessel function question 68 Help at Generalized_continued_fraction? 69 Faa di Bruno link 70 Help with typing mathematical expressions 71 Broken redirects 72 Help needed on the Ethics article 73 Miracle 74 Broken redirects 75 External links 76 Nation and the Taiwan Article 77 Reformatting of list of mathematical topics 78 Copula (Statistics) 79 New batch up at Wiki Syntax 80 Are you interested in being a Bureaucrat? 81 Bipolar coordinates 82 Octopus, octopi. 83 Correlation matrix and capital letters for random variables 84 Jointly Gaussian and uncorrelated implies independence 85 expos/nationals debate 86 Thanks for fixing Markov stuff in Kalman filter 87 rambling rose, bipolar coordinate 88 Uses of trigonometry 89 Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare 90 Bolzano-Weierstraß theorem 91 TeX 92 Thanks... 93 Please note... 94 Parameter estimation 95 Template:Wrongtitle --moved Stevertigo's comment from the user page. 96 merge notice on Contravariant 97 Squaring the circle 98 binary testing question 99 Least squares 100 Epiclesis 101 Scalar field 102 Image:Pythagorean.png 103 Lists 104 RABot... editting 105 Democratic Peace Theory 106 45th Parallel ? 107 Second Vatican Council 108 Statistics Suggestions 109 G Theory 110 Question about the correctness of Matrix 111 Defective (Titles) 112 Talk:Marcionism 113 Something to make you smile 114 RP speech 115 × 116 Statistics 117 Spectrum (dab) 118 Taking your name in vain 119 Nepnoc number 120 Re: anathema 121 P Prime Prime 122 Page refresh issues 123 0.999... equals 1 124 Red links 125 Enlisted jobs copyvio... 126 Category Combinatorics 127 New TeX user... 128 Using monospace text for math formulas 129 Probability Distribution standards 130 Continuous Functions 131 Random assistance 132 Thanks 133 Talk:Sigma-algebra 134 Sqlboy 135 Comment on user page 136 Wikipedia article sampling 137 Sklar's theorem 138 On squaring the circle 139 Degrees of freedom (statistics) isn't very understandable (to a non-statistician) 140 Could you take a look at... 141 Cerebellar hemispheres 142 Capitals 143 Bell number(s) 144 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/⅝ 145 inferential statistics 146 Tautology and Back-formatioin 147 Hi and help 148 Math punctuation 149 Redirects, Radii Of Curvature 150 Capital letters in martingale

[edit] Claiming old edits of yours

Out of an off chance on reading Talk:Aluminum, I noticed a number of edits you probably made when you were logged out. If you like, you can claim the edits under 131.183.84.196 if you still have access to that IP. Thanks, and HTH Dysprosia 09:04, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

Re: I. J. Good and [1]. It may interest you to know that Bruno de Finetti did in fact refer to him as "Irving Good" in a "Farewell Lecture" delivered at the Istituto Matematico G. Castelnuevo on the 29th of November, 1976 (translated and published as Probability: Beware of Falsifications in "New Developments in the Applications of Bayesian Methods", Ahmet Aykaç and Carlo Brumat eds., 1977). -- Cyan 03:00, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

[edit] Sugestion concerning the use of TeX on Wikipedia

On most browsers, TeX looks terrible when embedded in text, like this: . When it is "displayed", rather than embedded in text, it should be indented, like this:

and not like this:

Michael Hardy 22:06, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you. It looks better. Simple and elegant solution. -- Decumanus 22:16, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

But you can inline it like

  which looks pretty good.

—Herbee 11:58, 2004 Mar 16 (UTC)

On your browser, perhaps. On mine, Michael's original example looks perfectly fine; it's almost properly aligned and very nearly the proper size. OTOH, your "hackish" (no offense) alignment is completely misaligned! But it's all just coincidence, of course. On the machine I use at work, standard inline TeX looks awful. (I haven't checked this page on that machine.) This is why tinkering with the purely visual appearance of something on Wikipedia is not necessarily a good thing. BTW, before someone brings it up, one could argue that Michael's indenting of displayed TeX is not purely a visual choice, but also a somewhat semantic one. I mean, displayed math is indented (actually, centered) by default in TeX for a reason... - dcljr 21:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

Michael, in the book "Proofs without words", there is another nice visual proof (using a circle) of Pythagorean theorem, attributed to "Michael Hardy",...any relation? Revolver 03:07, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I seem to recall writing a proof of the inequality of arithmetic and geometric means that appeared under proof without words in the College Mathematics Journal; I suspect that is what you saw. Michael Hardy 23:57, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi,

It's seems like we are having a "little" Edit War on Newcomb's paradox. Ben insists that it IS NOT a paradox (he even putted a silly green box with an irony by David Hume -- see Newcomb's paradox history page). I yet talked to him but he doesnt want to hear me!

See the history pages on Newcomb's paradox and William Newcomb for more info

And please, edit this page, its more than 37k long --Dobrowsky Mdob 01:28, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Newcomb's Paradox

Newcomb's paradox is not a paradox because reverse causation is defined in the problem. Please return the David Hume quotation. Bensaccount 04:05, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

---

Michael, thanks for the articles on holomorphic and analytic functions, esp. the proof of holomorphic ==> analytic. Some classes don't make the distinction clear. Revolver 05:32, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks -- I'm glad someone's reading this stuff. Michael Hardy 00:55, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi

thanks for your edit on statististical efficiency. Would you cast your eye over my recent Cochran's theorem? I ask because I'm trying to get my brain round it and I figure that writing a wiki article is the best way to learn.

best

Robinh 08:31, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mann-Whitney and other stats matters

Hi Michael-- thanks for fixing up the maths in the Mann-Whitney U test. I have just put up a page on the Page test, a little known but very useful generalisation of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, which so far as I can see is otherwise undocumented on the web. The maths on that needs fixing, too, but I will get round to it eventually... More important, would you be able to have a look at the terminology etc? I am a user of stats rather than a statistician and there is always a risk I have committed a solecism. I'd be grateful.

I have added it to the list of statistical topics. Do you think we should have a subsidiary list of statistical significance tests?

seglea 01:36, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Where did the page go?

Special:Undelete/Single_photon_emission_computerized_tomography: the log shows you, at 01:19, 25 Jun 2004, moving it to '''Why SPECT?''' Similar to X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) allows us to visualize functional information about; the resulting redirect page was, as you might expect, severely broken. The long title to which you moved it still shows up in the full-text search results, but following the link takes me to a non-existent page. Do you know what happened? —No-One Jones 06:14, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, I don't -- that's why I asked the question. So far no one's answered, as far as I know. Michael Hardy 20:44, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bravo!

I still don't care to learn trig, and have forgotten all I ever knew, but bravo on What is trigonometry used for? That's a great article. jengod 00:15, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Math tags are nice, but...

The <math> tags are nice, but we probably want to refrain from using it whenever there is a reasonable substitute. The pictures not only cost bandwidth, but also hurt the eyes when mixed in-line. Also, I think it is good to respect other people's styles and let them use their own style of spacing, numbering, and such.
Peter Kwok 18:50, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)

I'm surprised that you're addressing this to me, since I have done dozens of edits that I summarized by saying that although TeX looks good in "displays", it often looks terrible on Wikipedia when embedded in lines of text; in those edits I changed TeX to alternative notations. I think I am the foremost proponent of the point of view that you've been urging. (Although I've been notably less fastidious about this after the most recent new server was put in place, since TeX now gets centered rather than lifted above the line.) Michael Hardy 20:41, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, no offence, but recently I couldn't help but notice that your name appeared in a bunch edits (e.g. subadditive function, Lubell-Yamamoto-Meshalkin inequality, etc.) unrelated to the correctness or accuracy of those articles. In some places, I feel that your addition of <math> tags were not necessary. Perhaps having a little toleration to other people's style would be good? It is almost like I am not even allowed to put the "in mathematics" part at the end of the first sentence and have to be corrected. While I understand that we all should respect each other's right of editing, I just feel that some of those edits were overdone and are counterproductive in the sense that it creates frustration and doesn't add value. I won't blow the whole thing out of proportion here. Just wanted to let you know where I stand.
Peter Kwok 00:33, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

I do not edit without intending to make the article better. "A k-set" is better than "An k-set" for obvious reasons. Putting "In mathematics," at the beginning is better than putting it after the concept being defined for two reasons: the latter interrupts the sentence, and in many cases the reader should be given the appropriate context first. Definitions should not say "is called", e.g., "An animal that barks is called a dog" is inferior style to "A dog is an animal that barks." I don't know why those edits would create frustration. I do know why I would expect them not only to add value, but to be perceived by readers as adding value.

I am very strongly opposed to the idea that only correctness and accuracy matter. The sort of edits I mention above add comprehensibility and memorability. Those who think smoothly flowing style does not matter as long as the semantic content is correct and accurate are very wrong-headed in that regard, in my view. Michael Hardy 22:37, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No one is going to argue about grammar and spelling with you. My main problem is that your sense of "style superiority" is rather personal and unconvincing. I have already stated the reason why I disagreed with your choice, so I won't repeat them here. From where I see it, you are not making the articles better— you are just making other people write like you. And I strongly believe that kind of attitude doesn't help promote respect and cooperation among users.
Peter Kwok 15:07, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)

I can't find the part where you explain why you disagreed with any of my particular choices. Putting in mathematics at the very beginning helps users who follow a link to an article without having any idea whether it's about stamp-collecting or religion or detective novels or botany, so that they don't have to wade through what to them may be incomprehensible technical language before finding out that it's mathematics. On a number of occasions I have started reading an incomprehensible sentence only to find out at the end of a long first sentence or even later that it's about characters in some novel I've never heard of, and I don't like that. If attending to that kind of editing is not your strong point, why not just leave it to others and concentrate on what you know, instead of taking personally something that is not? I don't think that it's just my own personal taste that says that

Chatoyancy is a term used by gemologists to refer to an optical phenomenon in which etc., etc.....

is not as good as

In gemology, chatoyancy is an optical phenomenon in which etc., etc.....,

and not only because the first sentence above is more complicated than it needs to be. Michael Hardy 19:37, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PS: As far as your comment about "not making articles better" is concerned, I don't think it's unfair to mention that I've added more solid content to Wikipedia's math articles, both in the form of a very large number of new articles and in the form of additions to already-existing articles, than all but perhaps four or five other Wikipedians, if that many. See the list of new articles I have created at User:Michael Hardy. Michael Hardy 19:54, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction to articles (Style)

Hi, I have read your conversation with Peter Kwok and I totally agree with you. I think your edits on the style of exisiting articles are very good and greatly increase the comprehensibility of the articles. Personal style is nice and all but someone needs to keep the style (design) of the articles consistent.

But enough of the compliments here is my question: How do I write the introductory sentence in an article on mathematics if I want to say

1. The article is on mathematics
2. Denote the subfield of mathematics the article belongs to
3. Denote the name of the object I describe in the article

For example an article on Triangular matrices.

In linear algebra, a subfield of mathematics, a triangular matrix is a special kind of matrix blah,blah.

This sound ok, but I would like to have the more general category (mathematics) before the subfield (linear algebra) so focus of the sentence narrows down as the reader progresses through the sentence.

Any ideas ? Or is there already some sort of convention in wikipedia ? MathMartin 11:21, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the vote of confidence.

In several articles on combinatorics I've written "In [[combinatorics | combinatorial]] [[mathematics]]". Maybe "In the [[mathematics | mathematical]] discipline of [[linear algebra]], a triangular matrix is ..." would do it. Michael Hardy 19:58, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

I've hopefully improved the article. Is it more comprehensible? Dysprosia 09:38, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Replied at my talk page. Dysprosia 09:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hasse diagram: pictures

Your pictures in the article on Hasse diagrams are fine, but their encoding (jpg) is rather unfortunate. Pictures that only contain huge areas of single colors can nicely (and lossless) be compressed as png's. I hope you still got the (xfig??) sources. Just export them as PNG and they will be much smaller and of much better quality. I added some more pictures to the page -- just compare their size and look (they were resized with The Gimp, so there is some grayskale interpolation which makes the files bigger ;-) --Markus Krötzsch 01:04, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Rest, residue, and remainder

(From merism) --- I don't use that one myself, but you are right; I have seen it. Smerdis of Tlön 02:29, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, since you asked, I am in fact a lawyer. A smalltown lawyer, fortunately. Smerdis of Tlön 18:39, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Probabilistic foam. -SV 16:47, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Proofs

Dear god, the whole categorization scheme is a mess. People went off willy nilly and created whatever category made sense instead of trying to use some established categorization scheme, or even discussing them much. I put that in that category pragmatically as the category that discussed that kind of issue currently, not to say it was correct or anything. - Taxman 22:04, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Names of World Countries in Greek

Here is a list of the countries of the world in Greek. The names are not in English, but their internet domains are; e.g., Φιλιππίνες (Filippínes) is PH which is the Philippines.

--Chris 00:45, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Michael Hardy 00:57, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No prob. BTW, I found an even better page! --Chris 08:25, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] TeX style guide

Hi, i would like to start a TeX style guide. People like you and Mat cross corrected my TeX but I guess after some time you get bored to point out the same mistakes all the time. Aside from the TeX style there could be advice how to name variables so the wikipedia math articles are consistent (e.g. γ for a curve because it is the c in the greek alphabet). Is there already such a page in wikipedia ? Do you know of any style guide outside wikipedia or is the correct TeX style just an oral tradition ? Where would I put such a page ? Thanks. MathMartin 10:18, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hello. I think I could contribute a number of things to such a style guide, but I'm not prepared to actually start the thing. Michael Hardy 22:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I started a page at User:MathMartin/TeX_Styleguide. Not much content yet. I will treat it as a repository for informal style hints. If it grows big enough I will think about merging it into Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics. You are of course very much invited to contribute as I really appreciate your style tips (TeX and English). I believe mathematics is not so much about discovering facts but about clarifying problems until the solutions becomes apparent (ala the late Wittgenstein). Therefore clear and precise language is very important for me. MathMartin 23:09, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics lead section

I've proposed a new lead section for the Statistics article. See Talk:Statistics#My attempt at article lead section and my comment immediately above that one. Comments welcome. - dcljr 19:38, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More on 0/0

(Written to User:Barnaby dawson and copied here).

What you've done is very good. I'm actually experiencing sibling-rivalry-like pangs because I started working on this—you can see what I've got on User:Dpbsmith/temp—but what you've got is much more straightforward and to the point. I might come back and polish it sometime. What I've written myself currently has too much in it about numbers and intuition and not enough about 0/0.

I think you should definitely copy what you have to a temporary location somewhere in case the 0/0 page does get deleted. I'm not sure where this material should go. It could go in Division by zero or Indeterminate form or possibly on a new page, Zero divided by zero. I'm going to put these comments on Michael Hardy's talk page, too, and see if he has any thoughts.

Actually, I have a technical question for Michael Hardy. It's one of the things that has hung me up a bit. What is the most correct answer to the question "What is the value of sin(0)/0?" I guess the question is, what is the meaning of "sin(0)/0"? If it means the value of sin(0) divided by 0, then the answer is "indeterminate" or "NaN" (not a number), as I don't believe 0/0 is part of any definition of "number" that has ever been proposed. On the other hand, if it means "the limit of sin(x)/x as x approaches zero," the answer is not indeterminate at all, it is 1. It just "feels wrong" to me to say that sin(0)/0 is indeterminate, though; I feel that it "is" 1. Thoughts?

An explanation as to why certain mathematical terms have been defined in the way they have is not necessarily without merit. We must remember that those who are reading our encylopedia may not have a degree in mathematics as you and I have. For those who have not studied mathematics the material on the page "indeterminate form" does not explain why 0/0 is regarded as undefined. We should also be open minded enough to understand that some people may have a different notion of what a function is than we do. To explain to these people why indeterminate forms are regarded as such we must do more than discuss a few limits. I would point out that the space of analytic functions on riemann surfaces is an alternative intuitive way of viewing functions and many people will start with a similar intuitive notion of a function (they need not understand riemann surfaces or the complex plain to have some similar intuitive notion). The links given at the bottom of the page are interesting further reading for people interested in foundational issues. I archived the original text before the revert and I am going to put up a new page using this text: zero divided by zero. I should point out that the decision on the page cannot be read as a decision on the rewrite as the voting after the rewrite was 4 to keep 1 to delete. Barnaby dawson 10:12, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] OCA Autocephaly

I'm adding this on the off-chance you're still interested in a question you asked on my talk page several months ago. I'm only an occasional contributor here and don't check it very often so I just noticed it now, but I figured better late than never. My apologies.

The issue with OCA autocephaly is that it was granted unilaterally by the Moscow Patriarchate. This would appear to be legitimate since the American Metropolia, as it was then known, was part of the Russian Church. However, Constantinople is promoting the theory that they and they alone has the authority to grant autocephaly and that therefore the OCA's autocephalous status is not valid. I'm not sure what they base this theory on, frankly, since historically that's simply not how it's worked.

The result is that the Slavic Churches generally recognize OCA autocephaly and the Hellenic Churches generally don't. There's little practical effect. Since as far as Constantinople is concerned the OCA is still part of the Church of Russia, the OCA primate's name doesn't appear in their diptychs. Were there to be a Pan-Orthodox council of some kind no OCA bishop could attend without controversy unless he appeared as part of the Russian delegation. But the OCA is in full Eucharistic communion with all the other Churches including those where its autocephaly is unrecognized. This is an administrative issue more than anything else.

There's no doubt a great deal of ulterior motive going on here. The native flock in Constantinople itself is reduced to a few thousand souls; barely enough to keep the place running. The lion's share of their income come from their American parishes. Money is also an issue for other Old World Churches in impoverished areas with substantial American flocks, such as Antioch. Were they to recognize OCA autocephaly, they would also perforce recognize it as the legitimate Orthodox Church of America and could no longer canonically justify their own presence there even were they to employ the mightiest of weasel words. Recognition would therefore seriously jeopardize their income stream. It's hard to blame them since left to their own resources they wouldn't have much, but it does leave the American Churches in a canonical mess.

Disclaimer: I belong to an OCA parish. Although my original remark was in the interest of NPOV, I have made no attempt to be such here. --Csernica 02:29, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Danke

Okay, thanks for reassuring me about Northwest Angle. Three cheers for new maps. Thanks. jengod 02:38, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Imaginary colors

Hi, yeah the "complimentary" was a typo. Although I believe the meaning of "complementary color" in the fashion world is more or less "complimentary"... Overall, the complementary color article would be scientifically superseded by an adequate complementary wavelength article. The guts of this is already laid out in the (my) dominant wavelength article. The information worth keeping at complementary color would be the historical/social stuff: painting primary/secondaries, fashion meanings, etc.

Imaginary colors: not my forte but it's good for my education to try to explain it, so I'll give it a shot. The canon is the textbook Color Science (and more recent variations) by Wyszecki and Stiles. I don't know what your background is, so forgive me my pedagogy.

If you check out International Commission on Illumination, you'll see the CIE 1931 representation of human perceivable color space (for the "standard observer"). The short story on imaginary colors is simply that anything outside the horseshoe shape is an imaginary stimulus; you can assign it coordinates in the color coordinates system, but it cannot actually be evoked in the human eye; it's "bluer than blue" or "redder than red", etc. This is a pretty trivial point; the more interesting question is "why would we care about imaginary stimuli?".

If you take a second look at the CIE diagram, you can tell immediately that this is an important question; look at the axes that the horseshoe shape is plotted on. These are not axes of real primary colors; the point 0,0 in the CIE x,y system is outside the range of perceivable colors. Weird! Why would the CIE parameterize their color space based on imaginary axes?

Okay, here's where primaries come in: as you can see at gamut, no three primaries are going to define a gamut triangle that covers the entire horseshoe of possible human perceivable colors. This often comes as a surprise to math types since the human visual system is based at the input level on a set of three detectors. It seems like if we could just pick one light spectrum that stimulates only the blue cone, one spectrum for red, and one spectrum for green, then of course we could stimulate the cones in any combination and thus produce any possible perceivable color; since the human color system starts with a parameterization of light spectra into three variables, shouldn't we need only three different primary stimuli to cover the entire space? The problem is that there is no spectrum that stimulates only the green cone, so it isn't possible to get the necessary three pure basis functions for generating all possible greens.

You can see this from the cone response functions in the plot at right. This plot shows the response amplitudes of the three cone types to pure monochromatic light stimuli of varying wavelengths. As you move along the x-axis, you are stimulating with different pure wavelengths (basically going through the rainbow spectrum from indigo to deep red). If you think about it, you can see that there is a problem in the area around 500-600 nm. For the red and blue primaries it's a no-brainer; you pick wavelengths at the extremes of the spectrum that only stimulate these cones individually, giving you maximal linear combinatorial flexibility. But what are you going to pick for your green primary color? Something around 500, where you get mostly green response, followed by red, followed by blue, or something around 600 where you get red response followed by green response? If you pick 500 for green primary, then you won't be able to recreate 600 with your three primaries because you won't have any way of getting green without adding blue, which you don't want for 600. If you pick 600 for your green primary, you won't be able to recreate 500, because your green primary always has too much red in it.

As a math type, you could probably state this as a linear algebra, dependent systems sort of conflict (in fact, if you can do this off the cuff, I'd like to hear how you'd describe it), but I'm not gonna get into that :). What the visually minded (myself) can see is that on the horseshoe CIE diagram, the greens problem reads out really nicely as the impossibility to cover the horseshoe with a (contained) triangle; you can cover the red and blue ends of the space pretty well with the corners of a triangle, but because of the bulge around the green perimeter, you aren't gonna be able to do justice to that area of the spectrum no matter what primary (triangle corner) you pick there.

In practical color science, there are ways to get experimental measurements defining only the green cone response. For example, you pick a green primary at 600 and then ask how much red must be subtracted from the stimulus in order to recreate 500. How this subtraction is calculated practically has to do with color matching experiments and we don't need to get into it. The point is, now we can cover the entire perceivable color space with RGB primaries, it just requires negative primary coefficients sometimes. This is ugly, but it's functional, so one version of the CIE horseshoe shape is actually plotted on RGB coordinates with part of the visible area extending into the negative coordinates (mostly for R but a little bit for G too).

However, the negative numbers are ugly, and make calculations harder (in turn making color technology more computationally demanding). Therefore, the standard CIE horseshoe is plotted on XYZ coordinates, a linear transformation of RGB that moves the visible area out of the negative ranges. So the XYZ coordinates are a transformation of real RGB primaries into more convenient, imaginary primaries.

Whew, that was a lot longer than I expected. Hopefully it was helpful. Let me know if you have more questions. Maybe a discussion like this will eventually become an article... So little time... --Chinasaur 03:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Heartful Thanks

Michael, please accept my gratitude for the nice and perfect work you did in the Romanian Orthodox Church article. Much appreciated! And also your clean tidy pages, articles, and even driving licence are appreciated :O). We certainly need more of your candid, true editors like you! This was the ORIGINAL Wiki spirit, and with you I see it's not agonizing. Many thanks - irismeister 18:54, 2004 Oct 10 (UTC)

Thank you; I'm glad someone appreciates these things. Michael Hardy 19:29, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Could have been worse

At least I didn't write "konsensos" Dogface 04:00, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Gian-Carlo Rota

Hi, Mike! I don't know whether you've seen saw my suggestions for possible improvement at Talk:Gian-Carlo_Rota—especially the one that I didn't withdraw. If you haven't, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look. —JerryFriedman 18:54, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Margin of error

Hi, Michael. You may have noticed that the article made feature status, and I wanted to officially thank you and give you credit for starting the article and making valuable edits. I also recently changed some of the opening equations, and I wanted to ask your opinion about the display here. I am wondering if there might be a more visually appealing or appropriate way to list three similar formulas. Of course, your other comments and edits are always welcome, as well. Best, Andrew (Fadethree) 21:43, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I made some edits and a reply at Talk:Margin of error. I always appreciate your edits, Michael. Also, I'm not sure how to edit the blurb, but if you'd like to update the main page blurb to reflect our edits to the opening, that would be great. Additionally, you'll note that I added a clearer MarginoferrorViz.png image, which the main page is not yet reflecting. Only if you have time, of course. Best, Andrew (Fadethree) 2:05, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. Best, Andrew (Fadethree) 4:35, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Michael - I made the disambig as a result of the talk page discussion on whether it was a polling specific term - I was sort of hoping that someone who knew more than me on this would add usages in other fields - it used to link to something else that escapes me for a moment, but someone took it off saying it was not quite the same thing. Take a look and see if you can find the appropriate things to link to. Thanks for noticing, Mark Richards 18:15, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Hi. I am searching for people interested in computer science and math. I found you via the history of the Boolean algebra article. I had a look at your userpage and understood that you have an interest in these areas, so I thought you might be interested to get invited in a new computer science project (not in wikipedia). See User:Npc/List. Thanks. Npc 21:06, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Name impersonator

User:MichelHardy looks like his username is designed to impersonate you, but it could be a coincidence. →Raul654 04:38, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for your recent edit to the Mung Bean article. you are apparently one of the quiet strivers for excellence. Thanks for being a good example.Pedant 22:45, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC)

[edit] Metropolitan / Archbishop

There are in the Orthodox Church actually only 3 ranks to the priesthood. Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon. All other titles are honorary based sometimes on the length of service of the priest, and sometimes the prominance of his territory (See). The various jurisdictions within the church have different traditions as to how they dispence these titles. In the Greek tradition any bishop who holds an ancient See is called Metropolitan even if that see is a small villiage. Archbishop is usually reserved for the lead bishop in a national church unless it happens to be Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, Russia, or Antioch; in which case its Patriarch (Or Pope). I have never heard of a Metropolitan Archbishop though its perfectly possible one of the jurisdictions provide this position. In any case, the most ancient patriarch, Metropolitan, or Archbishop are still equal in rank to the lowliest bishop over the smallest congregation except perhaps in adminstrative duties.

Phiddipus

[edit] in regards to the "hack" page redirect

Michael,

Truth for true, I haven't (hadn't) taken a good look at the "hack" page--only a cursory-enough one to notice that the (former) hack (disambiguous) entry for hacker pointed to it, which was clearly wrong (while "hack" probably does contain info re: hacking, I couldn't find it at first glance, which is enough to constitute 'confusing and inappropriate' in my mind). I also saw that hack writer was a stub. Put two and two together, and...

But the point is, while my judgment itself might have been sound, it was based on misinformation--which you've since corrected. I like your changes and support them wholeheartedly. Now all that's left is (re)building the "hack writer" page...

~CWatson (codename marblespire)

[edit] Radius of convergence

Hi, you are right that I didn't read it carefully enough, but the problem remains (moderated by your followup edit) that calling "infinity" a "quantity" is rather problematic and "nonnegative quantity" even more so. We are not referring to a particular infinite cardinal here but rather to a notation of convenience that is more like a symbol indicating the absence of a quantity than a quantity itself. --Zero 10:16, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] standard deviation

How you edited this, " If the population is normally distributed, then without that term, what is left is the simpler expression for the maximum-likelihood estimate" is far too late in this article. Would you mind moving it up to a better location. Pdbailey 04:40, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I think I fixed it.Pdbailey 00:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And I've reverted. Your "fix" caused me to realize what you meant by your comments above. But you're mistaken; no assumption of normality is needed where you put it. Michael Hardy 02:12, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. To be fair, what I wrote was correct but inferior in that it is less general than what you wrote. I tried to clarify what was there with the assumption you pointed out was needed on my talk page. Pdbailey 19:34, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Article Licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

1. ...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
2. ...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). Since you are among the top 1000 most active Wikipedians, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} with {{MultiLicensePD}}. If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know at my talk page what you think. -- Ram-Man 20:33, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Oppo moves this all around. I suggest you block him urgently. Gzornenplatz 02:21, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Algebra of random variables

Thanks for saving the algebra of random variables from the clamor of the Boetians. When I finally get around to writing algebraic counterparts to the articles on the measure theory foundations of probability theory I trust you will be there to help me get them right ;-) — Miguel 02:43, 2004 Nov 28 (UTC)

[edit] Coffield paradox

I think you might enjoy a glance at this article. :-) [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:28, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New user thanks

Hello Michael, thanks for the advice, and sorry for the trouble. Your statistic articles have been a powerful help in my statistics course, by the way. user:sean3000

[edit] Protocol

Hi, since I'm in a particularly masochistic mood, I've decided to tackle the morass known as Special:Whatlinkshere/Protocol, and in the process I intend to convert Protocol into a disambiguation page (so de-lousing it in the future will be infinitely easier). I wanted to solicit opinions as to how to divide up the existing content, and what to name the new page(s). My current thinking is to move it to Protocol (etiquette) (or maybe Protocol (diplomacy)), and Protocol (treaty). Do you have any improvements to suggest to that scheme? (We'll also need a Protocol (medicine), as I've discovered on some pages linked there.)

Also, the computer-related protocol pages are a bit of a mess - we have Protocol (computing), but Network protocol and Communications protocol; I was thinking of renaming them all to the form "Protocol ({foo})" so they'd all have similar syntax. Do you think that is a good idea, or should I leave it alone? Noel (talk) 04:40, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

BTW, this is not me just being nice. I really don't have any strong opinions on the issue of if and how to divide up protocol, and I would truly welcome any ideas people might have. (And I hope I didn't upset you by asking.) Noel (talk) 00:21, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks ever so much for taking the time to reply. It shall be just about as you suggest, I like the way that looks. Although I'll have to ponder how to handle the treaty case - I'll have to go off and look at Treaty, and see if I can find out how e.g. the "Kyoto Protocol" differs (if at all) from what's on the treaty page. Thanks again! Noel (talk) 01:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] HELP a little girl

Color Temperature needs a peek. Please help locate boo-boos. I'm tired I cannot see straight. dkroll2

[edit] Caley's Formula

Thanks for the edits you made to the Caley's Formula article I created. It was the first serious proof I contributed here, so I was a little unsure about what to do for style. If you have any further tips, let me know. Thanks! --Zarvok

[edit] A simple proof that 22/7 exceeds pi

Hi Michael,

Thanks for writing A simple proof that 22/7 exceeds pi! It's a neat proof that I'd never seen before.

I noticed you added

Formerly this article had the correct title, but then the software was altered so that the character π appeared instead as & p i ;.

You seem frustrated with the software limitations. But is it appropriate to comment on that at the top of the article page? I think that sentence should be taken out. (On the other hand, the {{wrongtitle}} template has the benefit that it puts the article in Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Wrongtitle, so that programmers know what software improvements are needed.) --Dbenbenn 21:46, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC) (David)

[edit] Date Format

I notice that you have spent some effort and concern about the format of dates in Queen Victoria (and perhaps other places too). The 24 May 1819 format (as opposed to May 24, 1819) is not "French" but is the most common format in the rest of the world outside of North America. As a mathematician, you must appreciate that it is a consistent format, as the units of measure are in ascending magnitude.

When dates are entered in proper Wiki style [[May 24]], [[1819]], the reader's Wiki skin will put them into the format the user has selected in his Wiki Preferences profile. Perhaps you have not yet selected one, and thus you see the default (the original entry format), instead of the format you would prefer to see?

You may be wasting a lot of your time editing the format of a variable that get changed anyway at reading time for most other users. --StanZegel 03:45, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I contrasted that which you say is not French with that which I said is English. The fact is that the use of the day/month/year format among English-speaking people is new, having begun only in the 20th century. The British have been rapidly altering their conventions in punctuation, spelling, and other aspects of usage very fast while seemingly ignoring the fact that that is what they are doing; every aspect of the English language that was standard in England from the year 1400 until 20 years ago is now characterized by the British as an "Americanism" which they believe to have originated in America. If the British did not recently change their usage from the month/day/year format to (not always but often) the day/month/year format by importing the latter usage from France, then do you claim their recent adoption of it was invented by them independently of the French, or that they imported it from somewhere else than France? Michael Hardy 21:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't know who told you that day/month/year is new to the British. Your source must have confused it with somewhere else. The British have used day/month/year for centuries. For example, here is an old document from England: 1707 and you can read for yourself the style of dating within it.

No ... "the 22nd of July 1707" is not an example of the sort of day/month/year form I was writing about (i.e., as you know, the one that someone added to the article about Queen Victoria. Michael Hardy 22:39, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There is a date in the last paragraph of this item signed by William Shakespeare in 1616.

No, those dates are in Latin, not English. Michael Hardy 22:39, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another document from even earlier has its date in its section 63: 1215.

No again. "fifteenth day of June" is not an example of the sort of day/month/year format in the Queen Victoria article that is what this discussion is about. Michael Hardy

You get the idea,

The idea I get is that none of the examples you've cited are valid! Michael Hardy

and can easily find more if you are interested, on the web or in your university library.

One can find an occasional example in England of month/day/year,

Not just "occasional"!! It was the prevailing system in England until recently, as you can see by looking at old books. Michael Hardy 22:39, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

but you can see that it was in the United States where the format was truly variable, as this 1778 document shows.

It is really very easy to examine old documents and see their dating. It is especially interesting to look at the dating on treaties involving Russia, because they always carred two dates, reflecting the fact that the Russian calendar was over a week behind the rest of the world. --StanZegel 05:33, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Michael, you are in denial, so there's no use of me spending any more time on this. Spend your time rearranging dates all you want... the Wikipedia skin will set them aright per the user's preferences. --StanZegel 00:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So I said that the "3 January, 1942" format came into use fairly recently in English, whereas the "January 3, 1942" is much older, and as evidence to the contrary you cite documents from 400, 600, or 800 years ago that say "the third of January, 1942", or that were written in Latin, and the fact that I find no evidence in your comments that anyone 400, 600, or 800 years ago who wrote "3 Janaury, 1942" while writing in English, proves that I am "in denial". Right? Michael Hardy 02:01, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Partition2.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Partition2.jpg. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Right now, I'll put it as unverified, but change it to what it's supposed to be when you get a chance. Thanks, Mattingly23 16:19, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, Image:PartitionLattice.jpg - Mattingly23 16:20, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have converted Image:PartitionLattice.jpg to a png at Image:PartitionLattice.png - please mark this image with the same copyright tag (e.g. {{GFDL}} or {{PD}} if you created it) — PhilHibbs | talk 14:00, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hi Michael. Thank you for your style tips, and for your useful corrections to mistakes in various articles. I'll remember your advice. :) Amelia Hunt 14:34, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] &nbsp;

It's a Non-Breakable SPace character, similar to TeX's use of the tilde character. I suppose Henrygb used it to prevent non-TeX formulas from being chopped in half in a potentially confusing manner. --MarkSweep 21:34, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Image tag

Thanks for uploading Image:Edgeworth.jpeg. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much, Aqua 05:17, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Are you following me?

or just taking care of me? subtractive color We got 2 places now that refer to the fact that there is only additive and subtractive. get one out maybe?

Maybe take this one out?

Anything that is not additive color is subtractive color.

It really is a complex concept to understand by itself.

SLOW down. you are all over wiki land. You will have a heart attack if you don't slow down. printing four-color printing color printing Watcha gonna do with that tangled web? Ididn't cause it.

--Dkroll2 04:04, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Modulo

Dear Michael, I just did some clean up of the modulo and modular arithmetic pages. They had much overlapping info, and clearly, the stuff about jargon use of the word module did not belong there. Probably the mod function either. Whatever its origin, now it is just a lowly function (its origin needs to be explained), and is no new terminology superseeding or competing with modular arithmetic.

Now, I noticed you started reverting some of my stuff. Let's talk a bit before you undo every thing. I know, I should have talked before I started moving things, so ultimately it is my fault, but now, revering things back and forth is probably not the way to go. What do you think? I will keep on eye on my watchlist. Oleg Alexandrov 00:55, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hei Michael, you started the discussion I wanted before I even asked :) Let me insert here what you wrote on my page, and let's continue. Oleg Alexandrov

I've made this a redirect page. If it really needs to be separate from modular arithmetic, it should be made ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that people in computing are not the only ones who used this term nor the ones who invented it. People in computing find it VERY DIFFICULT to understand that some things were invented more than 25 years ago, and by people who are not in computer science. They think they invented mathematical induction, numbers, geometry, and language, and reading and writing, all within the last 25 years. Michael Hardy 00:53, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So could you be more explicit? I don't think the mod function has anything to do with modular arithmetic (well, except for the origin and motivation). 01:01, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I will need lots of help with the page Modulo (general use) where I collected all the folklore from modulo and modular arithmetic. Oleg Alexandrov 01:09, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I have nothing against teaching youngsters that the world did not start with invention of computers. You could put some history on the page explaining the function modulo in computer science. Oleg Alexandrov 01:16, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am still waiting for some feedback from you on my changes on the module page and related. I don't agree with you putting the redirect to modular arithmetic from the page describing the implementation of the mod function in computing. Modular arithmetic has nothing to do with that function, except that both notions came from the word module. I am considering putting back the modulo (computing) page. There was good info in there. Oleg Alexandrov 00:02, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Transfer operator

Hi, could you review the Talk:Transfer operator;you added a link that I think doesn't belong.

[edit] Pi symbol

Thanks for your feedback on my user page -- I've since taken a better look at the Wiki style guide. However, I wanted to know how you created the pi symbol. Is it hiding on my keyboard somewhere? (Apologies for sounding like a dolt.) --Westendgirl 05:42, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] On gcr.jpg

The problem here is that Wikipedia can no longer allow images for which just permission has been granted. You will have to rediscuss this with Daniel Klain. Unless he is willing to relicense the image under the GFDL or similar license, the file will have to be deleted.

Reply on my talk page, not least because this page is getting quite big and unwieldy. Peter O. (Talk) 05:05, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] physical information

You're probably right, however, much more so than other similar articles I've checked, it seemed to rely too much on such terms. --Golbez 02:18, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GSL References

Hi Michael - I'm in a discussion with Zero0000 about including as a reference the GNU Scientific Library for the gamma function, specifically http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/gsl-ref.html#SEC120 I wanted to get your opinion on whether it is a good idea to include such a reference. It offers no useful information on the gamma function per se, but does inform the reader that it is available in GSL, how to call it from a c program, and since it is open source, will lead to an explicit algorithm for its calculation.

[edit] Average rule

I'm thinking of nominating Average rule for deletion on the grounds that it is a neologism and original research. This article has existed since August 2004 without anyone questioning it or proposing it for deletion. Do you think it's legitimate? Do you know of any reasons I shouldn't nominate it for deletion? Dpbsmith (talk) 15:35, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't seem very well written. I don't know much about politicial philosophy, but my gut reaction is to suspect you're right. Michael Hardy 20:25, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Your grave doubts about slippery slope

Actually I put that in. But this is a well-known formalization of the sorites or heap paradox. I certainly didn't invent it.CSTAR 19:33, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it is a formalization is the reason for my doubts about its rhetorical utility. Michael Hardy 19:43, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Isn't the fact that the formalization is well-known enough justification for putting it in? However, a remark stating in some form doubts about the rhetorical utility of this formalization might be just as useful.CSTAR 23:17, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] good work

I havenae read all the articles but i take it ya not a Taxi Driver I still have to brush up on my maths max rspct 01:38, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy 03:03, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Order Statistics

Michael,

I would like to keep the heuristic method also on the proof since it provides a much more intutive understanding. I would like to add it under the rigorous proof..--Vaidhy 23:46, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Improper integral

Hello Michael. I replied to your objection on my talk page about my edits of the Improper integrals entry before I realized I should have posted it on your talk page. I apologize. Here is the link: my talk page. --Iamunknown 04:51, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I looked at the article, and I think how your present the truely-not-improper but improperly-evaluated integrals with infinite bounds of integration is fantastic. Thank you very much, and sorry for the disturbance. --Iamunknown 02:01, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the warm welcome

The hypothetical question: If someone were to discover a simple method for factoring large numbers, whom should they tell? When asked of Sir Z, he responded, "If the world's best minds, who attend each other's lectures cannot find one, no one scratching on a napkin at lunch between filling out insurance forms will." Wandadubbayou

[edit] Extreme physical information

Your name in the version history and an empty talk page typically implies a sound article to me. But just now I was wondering about Extreme physical information and how heavily it should be linked to? Isn't that in essence a one person theory? It is visible in scholar.google.com, but somewhat below the threshold one would expect for an important concept. So, is it in proportion, that e.g. Uncertainty principle and Klein-Gordon equation link to Extreme physical information? --Pjacobi 23:03, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

[edit] Comprise vs. compose

Saw your edit on g theory ("They COMPOSE it. It COMPRISES them") and thought it deserved more than just a reversion. According to Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the active construction "the grapes comprise the bunch" is the older of the two senses (the OED dates it to the 18th century) and remains in widespread use to this day. The younger passive construction "the bunch is comprised of grapes" is also in widespread usage. The usage you suggest, active but with a singular subject, Webster's says, "can be found from time to time." Language commentators love to pick on the active construction, but reveal their ignorance in doing so. Moreover, the usage you suggest, "they compose it", is ambiguous, as "compose" can mean comprise or construct. In this context, "they comprise it" is superior. --DAD 03:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The issue I was writing about was not active-versus-passive. "The bunch comprises grapes" and "The grapes compose the bunch" are what I have understood to be standard. Michael Hardy 04:01, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Right. This understanding is incorrect. "The grapes comprise the bunch" is the standard usage of comprise (along with the passive construction which enjoys equal currency), while "the bunch comprises grapes" is comparatively rare but not incorrect, according to WDoEU. I mention the active/passive distinction because WDoEU does, I sense you like details, and you may appreciate the ammunition if you're ever incorrectly corrected on this issue. "The grapes compose the bunch" is fine, modulo mild ambiguity at times. --DAD 04:48, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Knuth

Please -- we settled this question last November. Knuth lives.

If we cannot even joke on talk pages... Serious, it was funny for me to upload the photograph, and see in the talk page that somebody had pretended that Knuth was dead. David.Monniaux 07:39, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pick's theorem

How exactly is the paragraph that you edited in Pick's theorem more cohesive? To me it just seems wordier, and a bit non-standard. "Interior points of the polygon" seems like a standard locution. "Boundary points on the perimeter" is redundant; what information does it convey that is not already in the phrase "boundary points"? Where, besides the perimeter, would boundary points be? The boundary is the perimeter; in the present context, the two words are synonyms. Michael Hardy 04:10, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty new, and am not sure if this is how I should respond, and whether or not you will receive this. I started out by making the words 'of' and 'on', 'in' and 'on'. Then I thought it needed a little more substance to make the senctence more understandable. I realize now that it would be fine in the previous version, with just the words 'in' and 'on' added, or how I have it now. I was just thinking about the grammar when I was changing it.

Dylan McKenzie-Tavish Finneran 03:22, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sufficient statistic to Sufficiency (statistics)

I'm curious why you moved Sufficient statistic to Sufficiency (statistics) (almost 2 years ago to the day) when sufficiency contains nothing. :)

Also, would you mind looking over estimation theory? Cburnett 23:13, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that list on estimation theory use was very POV....my POV. Those listed are in field I know, which is why I'm trying to solicit input. :) Cburnett 03:15, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ta

Thanks for the tips Mike Thruston 21:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Error?

As far as I am concerned,it is the widespread bad habit of spacing after punctuation marks that is an error,and those who insist on introducing this error into the more efficient format I use have only themselves to blame for their wasted efforts.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 01:56, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Self-energy

Hi! As part of the Wiki Syntax cleanup effort, I came upon a redirect from Self energy to Self-energy, which you put up last month. Since the target does not currently exist, that redirect would normally be deleted, but there are a couple of articles linking to it. (And I'm not familiar enough with that field of expertise—whatever field that might be—to dare edit those links.) Would you be willing to write a stub for Self-energy? That'd solve the issue, and make me a much happier person. :) Fbriere 18:47, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Pre-emptive redirects are important

Well, I couldn't find an official explanation to this (though there probably is one, deep in the bowels of Help), but broken redirects are not only candidates for deletion, they're actually candidates for speedy deletion.

My take on this is that broken redirects are insidious, in that they show up as blue links in articles,

That is definitely a software bug, and I pointed it out two years ago. Now I'm going to press the case to fix it. I've put work into judicious creation of pre-emptive redirects, and I will fight any efforts to create a policy opposing them. Michael Hardy 21:05, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

yet they don't lead anywhere. This is confusing for our users, and it hides problems from our contributors (who may otherwise spot a red link, and be inclined to submit material to it).

I think the WP attitude would be that if you're willing to add a redirect, you should take a minute to add a stub at the end of it. This really makes a difference.

-- Fbriere 20:59, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Often that's not possible. What if, for example, a popular misspelling of a word appear in a redirect page to the correct spelling, and I know nothing about the subject otherwise? I create a pre-emptive redirect page. That way when someone attempts to create the article with the incorrect spelling they get redirected, and they can either create it with the right spelling, or contribute if the page already exists by the time they get there. Michael Hardy 00:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great, an edit war to start the weekend. :(

I've raised this issue on the requests deletion policy talk page, which is what, frankly, you should have done in the first place. Feel free to argue for preemptive redirects there.

I should also point out that random matrix theory looks, to me, like a bad link; it purports to explain a theory, yet no mention of this is made by the stub.

That's only because it's a stub, but it won't be a stub for long. One expects such things on Wikipedia. Only if it were not appropriate to write the whole theory of random matrices in the article would I want to delete that particular redirect. Michael Hardy 00:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are random matrices a purely theoretical construct? Or is RMT a theory that uses or is based on random matrices—in which case it should be a separate article? (I'm an algebra guy who always loathed statistics, so please forvive my total ignorance of this topic.)

--Fbriere 00:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The theory of random matrices is all the rage as a field of research. There's no reason for a separate article on the theory; the page titled random matrix is the appropriate place. Michael Hardy 01:04, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please be notified that I consider this edit to be vandalism, and consequently I have reverted this edit. There is a policy stated clearly here which explicitly covers deleting redirects in this situation (i.e. "They refer to non-existent pages. Before deleting a redirect, check to see if the redirect can be made useful by changing its target."). That is what the Wiki Syntax instructions say as well. I understand that if you put effort into creating such redirects that this would be frustrating. However, can I please suggest creating a one sentence substub at the target in this situation? That must surely be as much effort as creating the redirect, but without any of the problems inherent in creating redirects that point nowhere. Or, you can put the redirect listing page up on WP:VFD, although I genuinely don't think a vote of this nature is likely to succeed. Alternatively, you are welcome to try and get the policy changed through the usual processes. If the policy is so altered, then WP:WS will of course abide by that. Until then though, please do not shoot the messenger, or vandalise the messenger's pages. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 04:56, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The redirects listing page has been protected. Wonderful. What that actually achieves though is anyone's guess. -- Nickj (t) 05:03, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Michael, it's worth noting (as Nick will no doubt recall :-) that the last time we did a bunch of these "non-existent target" redirects on WP:RfD (sorry, I don't have the time to dig through the history to find the reference), I didn't simply delete the whole bunch, willy-nilly. Instead, I went to a lot of effort (as you can see see by the existence of this template, as well as some other ones) to try and exercise a fair amount of judgement, and not simply delete them all, including any that looked like the might be useful. (This would of course include most of the ones you created.) As you can see from my note here about this batch, again I'm going through this list carefully, and not simply bulk-deleting them. Noel (talk) 12:45, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying everyone who deletes redirects with non-existent targets is a vandal, or that no one does it judiciously. I've probably done it myself. I'm saying the policy as it was written incites indiscriminate vandalism. It actually used the word broken to characterize all redirects whose targets don't exist! I am inclined to regard anyone who uses that word in that way as either a vandal or as one who has given the matter no thought. Michael Hardy 21:54, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Intentional creation of pre-emptive redirects

Redirects with a non-existent target are explicitly listed in the criteria for speedy deletion, and have been for a long time. Calling something that is not only not prohibited but explicitly allowed "vandalism" is an insult against those who disagree with you. Using your sysop powers to prevent people from taking part in a good-faith effort to follow established policy is abusive.

You have violated the protection policy by protecting a page you are involved in a dispute over. You have violated the no personal attacks policy by calling those you disagree with vandals. You are attempting to violate the Wikipedia:deletion policy by forcing us to keep things which are to be deleted.

I simply don't see how you can justify this behavior. The only thing destructive here is your hostile attitude towards others. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:48, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I did not call any particular person a vandal. I called a particular practice vandalism. I also said a certain page was inciting vandalism. Also, the bigoted practice of calling pre-emptive redirects "broken" incites vandalism. Michael Hardy 21:58, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If an action is vandalism, then the people who practice it are vandals. Calling these redirects broken is no more bigoted than saying an article consisting of "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda." should be deleted. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:13, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If an action is vandalism, then the people who practice it are vandals.

That is true, and there is no person whom I have accused of engaging in that practice, nor do I know of any particular person engaging in it. Since I have never so accused anyone, I have not called anyone a vandal. Michael Hardy 22:23, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You have not explicitly stated "[Person] is a vandal." This is true.

However, you say that the deletion of such redirects is vandalism. You agree that if an action is vandalism, a person performing the action is a vandal. I have deleted such redirects. The only logical conclusion is that you consider me a vandal. I hope you understand why I'm a bit unhappy about this. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:31, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not until just now did I know that you have claimed to have deleted such redirects, so I could not have considered you a vandal. I can see why you're unhappy if you don't agree with what I have said should be the policy. I am not at all sure that you understand what policy I have proposed, so I'm not even sure whether when you say "such redirects" you're talking about the same thing I have in mind. You are "a bit unhappy", and I remain very angry to discover that deletion of redirects only because their target does not exist has been treated as a policy and apparently facilitated by a lot of effort, and the emotionally charged term broken gets used in that way. I would think it would be 100% obvious that the page titled complex societies redirecting to complex society, when the latter article does not yet exist, has obvious value. And yet there it was, listed as a "broken" redirect and thus a candidate for speedy deletion. That is imbecilic at best. Michael Hardy 22:46, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And now I'm an imbecile, wonderful. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you saying you fail to see the obvious value in having a redirect from complex societies to complex society before the latter page is created, including the fact that such a pre-emptive redirect helps facilitate creation of the latter article? Michael Hardy 23:18, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

... and please note that your decision to construe the word "imbecilic" as directed at you is your own. To me it does appear grossly irrational to continue to fail to see the value in that kind of redirect even after an example of this kind has been adduced. Michael Hardy 23:40, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Interesting to learn that this sort of thing is a VfD criterion. How much was this discussed originally? To me, preemptive redirects are particularly important in cases where we are in danger of people creating redundant articles. This is not exactly the "complex societies" case, but there are similar cases where I have made preemptive redirects simply to prevent two separate articles on the same subject from getting started. Perhaps the original VfD criterion should be discussed more? --Chinasaur 19:25, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bessel function question

Hi Michael, notwithstanding the interesting discussion above, the main reason I came here: please take a look at my very simple, short question at Talk: Bessel function and fix things if you have a moment. --Chinasaur 19:28, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help at Generalized_continued_fraction?

Some anonymous user has disputed something at Generalized_continued_fraction, and I thought you might know enough to help. *shrugs* -Grick 00:11, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Faa di Bruno link

Dear Michael, the link to the AMS-article was the result of a Google search with the keywords "Faa di Bruno+Formula". There were roughly 500 hits (exactly 556), the said article ranked among the first 30 (I think it is a nice article). Strangely enough, it was impossible to locate that article directly on the homepage www.maa.org. You can find references to that article on the sublinks

http://www.maa.org/pubs/monthly%5Fmar02%5Ftoc.html

and

http://www.maa.org/pubs/monthly_toc_archives.html. By the way, it seems quite unusual (why is it the case here?) that the full AMS-article is accessible online (in general for copyright reasons only article abstracts are made available). Another way to find AMS articles is to search on www.findarticles.com. See for example

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3742 and the articles for march 2002: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3742/is_200203

(the Faa di Bruno article is in vol. 109, nr. 3).

Addendum: There seems to be (unfortunately) no systematic way of searching for an AMS-article in pdf-format. For example the same volume 109, nr. 3 contains an article by Sam Northshield named "Associativity of the Secant Method" which can in fact be located as pdf-file under http://www.maa.org/news/monthly246-257.pdf (note that a google search failed to spot this link). The reason why these two articles (exceptionally) appear (as full articles) here may be that they have the "distinguished status" as price-winning articles and therefore were made accessible as full text. See http://www.maa.org/features/080503_writingprize.html which contains a link to the article by Northshield (which is a dead or obselete link by the way). It also seems that the links on the page www.maa.org are reorganized contemporarily so some links might be unstable or invalid.

[edit] Help with typing mathematical expressions

Hi! Thanks for introducing me to Wikipedia's style guide. I've moved some of the material I thought I was going to introduce to the quantum harmonic oscillator to creation and annihilation operators instead.

I'm just wondering if you could direct me to a page where I can learn how to type in mathematical formulas? Preferably something that starts from the very basics. Thank you! HappyCamper 19:25, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One page I find useful (though by no means a tutorial) is meta:Help:Formula that shows most (all?) the tex symbols. Cburnett 19:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Try writing <math> body </math>, where the body is your formula. In there, "markup" is not done in the <...> ... </...> format otherwise used; it's done with commands starting with a backslash, sometimes with arguments enclosed in braces. Examples: \frac {numerator} {denominator} for fractions, base ^ {exponent} for powers, \alpha for greek letter, etc. An example: <math> I = I_0 \cdot 10 ^ { \frac {\beta} {10} }</math>, yielding . Note that most spaces inside the body make no difference (exceptions include the second space in a \cdot b). The best way to learn is lerning-by-doing, so just get startet (using the "Show preview" button!), and feel free to post problematic cases asking for help e.g. at my talk page; I tend to check in daily.--Niels Ø 20:04, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Broken redirects

The definition of a broken redirect is patently obvious. There is nothing it can mean other than a redirect whose target does not exist. If you don't stop yelling and start behaving like a reasonable person, you're never going to convince me of anything. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:24, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, I wrote some words in capitals for emphasis; therefore I'm "yelling", so I guess I must be unreasonable. Right? But if you read what I wrote, you see that I gave specific arguments that you haven't answered.

And if by "broken" redirects you mean any redirects whose targets don't yet exist, then the rule that said "However, such redirects should not be deleted if..." plainly refers to them. And it said they should not be deleted if they may prevently later creation of duplicate articles by redirecting a plural to a singular or a misspelling to a correct spelling, etc. Michael Hardy 02:29, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry you don't seem aware of basic netiquette, which says that writing in all caps is rude and equivalent to yelling. The speedy deletion policy says broken redirects are candidates for speedy deletion, and makes no exceptions for the reason they exist.

If you think that is in conflict with another policy, you can attempt to discuss reconciling the two. However, I think your interpretation of that line of the redirect deletion policy is fundamentally wrong. It is intended for redirects to actual articles. As Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion also says:

"Per policy, pages need to stay here for at least a week before they are deleted, unless they are one of the five kinds of candidates for speedy deletion (non-existent pages, user pages, move targets, recent uncommon typos, or vandalism)."

Even the page you cite as supporting your view says they are candidates for speedy deletion. If you continue trying to impose your view over other people's objections, this is going to enter the dispute resolution process. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:04, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The page I cite supporting my view says there are certain exceptions; all I did was make those more conspicuous since some people seem to have overlooked them. I did not create those exceptions. Michael Hardy 01:05, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed on the Ethics article

Unfortunately, someone set up an article parallel to our article on Ethics, in violation of Wikipedia policy. That parallel article violated NPOV by acting as a blog for one man's personal views, a person that also happens to be hard-banned user. Please see Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Simple view of ethics and morals
Thanks for your time. RK 20:13, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Miracle

Michael
First of all, congratulations for working on so many good mathematics articles.
I am writing however about the entry "miracle", which you edited on 24 Jan 2005 (quote from your comment: "I'm putting back some material that an anonymous editor put here earlier, purporting to present a Catholic view. This time it is so labeled and appropriately formatted for Wikipedia.")
Among the comments added is the claim that 40 mm miracles are estimated to have happened, in the history of humankind. While I myself do not believe in miracles as a religious manifestation, I would be interested in knowing how this estimate has been arrived to. I actually think that the basis of this estimate are a required addition to the paragraph.
I also believe that if such an estimate can not be described in some further detail and (as much as possible) in an unbiased way, then maybe that comment should be removed, having no sources or further detailed explanation.
To clarify further: I am unbiased as to whether that comment should remain and be expanded, or should just be removed. However I am adamant that it should not remain unexpanded in its current state. I will post this same comment in the entry's talk page, hoping to receive some illuminating comments from fellow wikipedians. Regards, gintaras 23:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I have no idea at all where that estimate came from. An anonymous editor put in some POV Catholic material; someone removed it. So I put it back with a label saying it's how Catholics view the matter, and formatted it appropriately for Wikipedia. But I can't vouch for its content. I'm actually inclined to doubt that the numerical estimate is official Catholic church material. Maybe one Catholic bishop wrote it at some point and so it's just one opinion among many Catholic views. Michael Hardy 23:27, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Broken redirects

Speedy deletion policy states that broken redirects are candidates for speedy deletion. The only exception is if they have a useful history. Your continued ignoring of this fact in favor of such insults as impugning my reading comprehension ability has now resulted in me filing you away as unable to be reasoned with.

Congratulations. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:38, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry; that's just not what the policy says. I've given arguments, and you've just made assertions, so you're the one who's not willing to reason. Michael Hardy 23:43, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That is exactly what the policy says, except when you try to impose your unilateral changes. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:58, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As I said, the long-standing policy mentions certain exceptions. I am not the one who put those there. I just called attention to them, because a number of people -- you among them -- seem to have neglected them. Michael Hardy 01:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Those are exceptions to the rules for deleting working redirects. Broken redirects are still candidates for speedy deletion. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:17, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's the part where you're reading incorrectly. It clearly says to delete a redirect if certain conditions hold, and then says "However such redirects should not be deleted if..." What could the phrase "such redirects" refer to, if not the items in the preceeding list? One of those is redirects with non-existent targets. I instituted no policy change; only a clarification. Michael Hardy 01:22, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The preceeding list does not (directly) contain the case of broken redirects. "Certain redirects can be deleted immediately without holding a vote or discussion." I find your interpretation that the exceptions must apply to broken redirects hard to fathom. If the exceptions apply, then no broken redirects can ever be deleted because "someone" (you) "finds them useful". This is obviously not the intent of their inclusion in speedy deletion policy. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because I have seen no distinction made that made any sense to me. A broken redirect that was intentionally created broken is still broken. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:42, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What value they may or may not have in preventing duplicate articles (I remain unconvinced) is outweighed by their breaking of our core navigational convention. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:57, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There's only one navigational convention that is affected by the existence or non-existence of an article. Blue links mean an article exists, red links mean it doesn't. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:07, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If such a feature existed, then my opposition to such redirects would be reduced to the point where I wouldn't bother complaining. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:21, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External links

Perhaps you can help me. When websites are sources, and other external (nort necessarily the same) links are also provided, how are these to be presented: 1 two section, or combined? Vaoverland 23:42, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nation and the Taiwan Article

Hi, I saw you contribute to the nation article, and so I thought you might have an interest in how that term would apply to the Taiwan article. And actually, it looks like it might be outside your normal interest and so all the more, a cooler-headed opinion would be appreciated.

The current state is that there are two articles: 1) Republic of China and 2) Taiwan. The ROC article covers the state, which has controversy surrounding it, but its scope is not challenged. There was a recent vote that essentially supported a change in the scope of the article to cover basically the geographical and cultural aspects of the ROC rather than just Taiwan Island, as Taiwan is almost never used to mean the island only anyways. I took a look at the nation article and it looks like from what I can tell, given the self-identification of 90% of ROC citizens as Taiwanese, the existence of Taiwanese cuisine, film, language, common democratic institutions, etc, etc, that it is accurate to simply say that the article is about the Taiwanese nation (even though China disputes the political state), in the same way there was a Jewish nation prior to Israel's establishment after WWII. If you agree or disagree, would you mind joining the discussion at the Taiwan article? Thanks a bunch.--160.39.195.88 05:41, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reformatting of list of mathematical topics

You are one of the few tireless contribtutors to the list of mathematical topics. So I wonder if you have any feedback on my revamp proposal of that list, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 22:31, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copula (Statistics)

I know that copula was inappropriate there, but when I orginally put it there it was too stubby for its own page. I was still new at Wikipedia and if I could do it again I would have made its own page. Statistics is not my area of expertise but I thought that Sklar's Theorem and Copula deserved their place in Wikipedia since I am a personal friend of Abe Sklar. I was shocked that these topics were not covered in Wikipedia. Thank you for expanding on the article and disambiguating for me. — oo64eva (AJ) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 04:58, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New batch up at Wiki Syntax

Hi Michael Hardy, FYI, there's new data up at the Wiki Syntax Project that covers redirects to non-existent targets; (The reason I'm leaving this note on your talk page is that you showed an interest in this problem category during the last batch). -- All the best, Nickj (t) 09:52, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Are you interested in being a Bureaucrat?

Hi, I am considering nominating you to become a Bureaucrat. The role would involve giving administrator or bureaucrat access to other users following consensus on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Although there are currently 18 bureaucrats, it may be helpful to have a few more. If you would accept a nomination, please let me know. Kingturtle 04:27, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I have nominated you at Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Michael Hardy. If you're ready, please accept. Kingturtle 03:57, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bipolar coordinates

I never heard of those before either. I would like to note from my experience with its creator, P0lyglut, that this person is a bit of an unserious troll, and maybe even worse than that (see his edits to G. H. Hardy and greatest mathematicians). I would not mind putting his bipolar coordinates up for deletion. Oleg Alexandrov 04:36, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Octopus, octopi.

Thanks for correcting me on the "synopses" typo. For some odd reason I can never remember the proper pluralization of words ending with "s." BTW, where is that typo located? addesso 21:28, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On your user page. Michael Hardy 22:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Correlation matrix and capital letters for random variables

My answer to both of your questions regarding nonstandard "correlation", as well as the usage of capital letters for random variables can be found on User_talk:Orderud. --Fredrik Orderud 21:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jointly Gaussian and uncorrelated implies independence

As a statistician, you are probably the right person to extend the Multivariate normal distribution article with the/your fact that (only) jointly Gaussian and uncorrelated implies independence. --Fredrik Orderud 22:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. See normally distributed and uncorrelated does not imply independent and the pages that link to it. Michael Hardy 23:19, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] expos/nationals debate

There is a major debate going on, and I wondered if you might want to chime in. The debate involves how to deal with franchise moves in baseball. The question is whether Montréal Expos should be its own article or if it should redirect to Washington Nationals. All other instances of franchise moves in MLB redirect the old team name to the new team name, and the history of the franchise is covered within the new team name (for MLB, NBA and NFL examples, see here. Some people are confused and think the Expos and the Nats are different teams. Some people don't want to upset Canadian readers.

Indeed, the Washington Nationals are not a new team - the Montreal Expos franchise has moved to Washington, and the old franchise name should redirect to the new franchise name, just like the 20+ instances of this occuring in Wikipedia. For example, Brooklyn Dodger history resides in the Los Angeles Dodgers article. New York Giants history, including the Shot Heard 'Round the World, resides in the San Francisco Giants article.

If you have the time, maybe you could chime in on the conversation there, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Montréal Expos. Kingturtle 23:16, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for fixing Markov stuff in Kalman filter

Thanks for correcting the statements of the Markov assumption in the Kalman filter! It's such a perfect example of what conditional independence is all about, I wonder if it's worth mentioning Markov chains on that part of statistical independence?

[edit] rambling rose, bipolar coordinate

why did you revert my edits for rambling rose, bipolar coordinate, and Nonfirstorderizability? Xah Lee 07:48, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

I've answered on your discussion page. Michael Hardy 22:26, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

i've also made a reply there. Thanks. Xah Lee 01:37, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

[edit] Uses of trigonometry

When I read what you've put into this article, I can't help feeling that your trying to tell the reader that the article holds no surprises and will bore him to death, so that he will stop reading after the first paragraph.

I'm not sure why you put this on my talk page -- did you perhaps mean to put it on Matt Crypto's page? I haven't edited the uses of trigonometry page yet and my only contributions are to the talk page. CryptoDerk 03:16, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry -- I mistook you for someone else. Michael Hardy 00:59, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare

I'm not sure why you wrote a long (and seemingly angry) note on my talk page about this stub being incomplete, rather than fixing it yourself. It's now fixed. Dave (talk) 16:15, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

There was no anger in my note, but I thought the article as written omitted what obviously needed to be said in order for the reader to understand it. I could not finish it myself since I don't know anything about the topic. Michael Hardy 18:58, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bolzano-Weierstraß theorem

Hi Michael. I need some advice and some help.

I just ran into the Bolzano-Weierstraß theorem article, and it looks to me that this better be spelled Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem according to English spelling rules. What do you think?

If you agree, could you help me delete the redirect at Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem and move Bolzano-Weierstraß theorem on top of it? Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 21:19, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

All done. Michael Hardy 23:01, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 23:05, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TeX

Hi,
Thanks for the tip. I actually knew that... some time ago... at least I think I did. --Smack (talk) 01:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks...

for the heads-up. -- Cyan 02:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please note...

My use of "dictionary definition" style, my not using boldface, and my capitalizing of all important words in a section title, were deliberate. They were not "usual newbie errors." All of the styles and formats I used are correct. They may not conform, but don't say they are not correct.

I suggest that it is you who are in need of newbie training.

From the Wikipedia Style Manual:

Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required.

From Wikipedia Edit Summary:

Avoid using a "judgmental tone in edit comments" as per Wikipedia:Civility#Examples. Examples include "fixed sloppy spelling", "snipped rambling crap".

If you wish to correct factual errors or typos, I appreciate the help. Otherwise, take your trivial and gratuitous "corrections" and comments elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a playground for pedants. — J M Rice 21:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Let me comment a bit in here. :)

Your contributions are very welcome, whether you decide to stick to the style accepted here or not. However, I would like to remark that I found Michael's note on your talk page entirely reasonable, and your response kind of rough.

You are right, Wikipedia article don't have to be perfect. However, objecting in such language to somebody who made your contributions conform to the style is not polite, this since you mentioned Wikipedia:Civility. Oleg Alexandrov 22:21, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Parameter estimation

Hello Michael - I have it in my mind to put a parameter estimation section in any probability distribution article that does not have it. You know this subject - would you have time to help? PAR 05:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Wrongtitle --moved Stevertigo's comment from the user page.

You, as a mathie, use it for such a reason, but its use is far more (too IMHO) general. Your argument is one-sided. As for the distinction between P-adic numbers versus p-adic numbers.. Will the title ever be lowercase first? Might be something to ask the m:developers - I dont think it will be the case that lowecase will ever be the default unless there's a way to handle hidden redirects and disambiguation-differentiation between the two. So, in that case the assertion that the title is "wrong" due to "technical limitations" is wrong on both counts. The title is not wrong -- merely capitalized, and the technical limitation: 'automatic capitalization of the first letter' isnt a limitation if its convention and policy. -SV|t 05:37, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] merge notice on Contravariant

I am trying to get the merge suggestion removed from contravariant and have placed comments on the talk page and a much longer comment just now on the talk page of "The Anome" as I know he is an admin and could remove the notice. I write to you as I believe you suggested or support the merge, and you know wiki technology/syntax better than I do. If you know how and have permission, you might consider that action, because (as I explained on Anome's discussion page) such merger would muddle the usages of "covariant".Pdn 14:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Squaring the circle

Why did you revert my changes on Squaring the circle? Since you didn't offer a reason i presume it was because the name "Category:Pathological science" startled you. I don't like it, either, but this was the closest i could find. If you have a better category that expresses the idea of many "free spirits" who've invested years in a misguided scientific endeavour, i'd be happy if you could assign it to that one. This article certainly should not only be under Category:pi! — Sebastian (talk) 20:06, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

I gave my reasons on your talk page before you posted the query above. Michael Hardy 20:09, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I see no reason why Category:pi is not appropriate. It seems very appropriate to me. Michael Hardy 20:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies! I'll move the discussion to talk:Squaring the circle, if you don't mind. — Sebastian (talk) 20:15, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

[edit] binary testing question

Hi, Michael. I have a question about binary tests. I am familiar with the terms specificity, sensitivity, PPV, and NPV. However, I had never heard of the phrases "Snout" and "Spin", meaning "sensitivity allows you to rule out a diagnosis" while "specificity allows you to rule in a diagnosis". In fact, it seems to me these rules of thumb are just wrong. Yet, they are given on many websites of respected medical places. Here's why they seem wrong to me:

Suppose

P = population = 1,000,000 a = TP = true positives = 1,000 b = FP = false positives = 1,000 c = FN = false negatives = 0 d = TN = true negatives = 989,000

Now, the sensitivity = a/(a+c) = 1,000/(1,000) = 100%, perfect! while the specificity = d/(b+d) = 989,000/990,000 = 99.8%, almost perfect! and the NPV = d/(c+d) = 989,000/989,000 = 100%, again perfect!

Yet, the PPV = a/(a+b) = 1,000/2,000 = 50%, far from perfect, and not very assuring to a patient who receives a positive test result.

So, in this case, the "Spin" rule of thumb seems wrong; the specificity is 99.8%, yet if you are a patient and you are told you have a positive test result, you can only be 50% sure that you have the disease, no better than flipping a coin. Obviously, the reason this situation occurs is because the

prevalence = (a+c)/(a+b+c+d) = 1,000/1,000,000 = .1%

is extremely low.

I ask this question because of an article on HIV testing which made the following conclusions: base on the following data:

a = 14 b = 1 c = ?? d = ?? a+b+c+d = ~130,000

they concluded that HIV testing was highly accurate in low-prevalence populations. They used the raw false positive rate

Raw false positive rate = b/(a+b+c+d) = 1/130,000

and considered it the most important number available. They did report a and b, making it possible to calculate the PPV, but they did not consider this number relevant, nor did they account for the fact that the prevalence was extremely low. As a patient, I would want conclusions based on more than just 15 positive patients. It seems this is a positive population too low to make any real conclusions about. There were other problems with the study, involving whether Western Blot is a very accurate gold standard itself, but that's another issue. Thanks. Revolver 01:18, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Here is a link to the article: [2]

[edit] Least squares

Thanks for catching my gross error. I was sure I read somewhere that linear regression means matching against ax + b and thought at that point: how odd, that is different to the distinction between linear least squares and nonlinear least squares. However, I cannot find now where I read this. Certainly, the Wikipedia article on linear regression makes the point clearly. I did remove your stark warning though, because it does not appear very encyclopaedic to me. I hope that the reader realizes this himself now we are using the quadratic model as an example for linear regression. -- Jitse Niesen 15:41, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Epiclesis

I noticed your correction in the article epiclesis. I was obviously a bit careless in leaving the sentence as it was after removing the incorrect information. Thank you for correcting my oversight.

I am concerned, though, by the message you left on my talk page. I am not sure I would use that particular wording to express myself. In particular, you said:

You deleted the words "formerly in", saying you were correcting inaccurate information. But the sentence as you left it was absurd.

Without the "formerly in" clause, the sentence was awkward, but not unintelligible. "Absurd" implies that the sentence made no sense, which is not true. Absurd can also be read as an derogatory term.

I was more concerned with the edit summary. You said, "(Someone's way of "correcting inaccurate information" (see the edit history) is absurd.)"

Was this really necessary? It would have been more helpful if you had described what you actually did, instead of belittling the previous editor for what was actually a simple mistake, probably caused more by lack of sleep than anything else. As it stands, your edit summary helps no one, and is, in my opinion, not the most civil way to communicate information—in fact, it communicates no useful information at all.

I would like to point out from the Wikipedia Edit Summary:

Avoid using a "judgmental tone in edit comments" as per Wikipedia:Civility#Examples. Examples include "fixed sloppy spelling", "snipped rambling crap".

I would also point out that your assumption (to change "Latin-Rite Catholic" to "Roman Catholic" thinking that it would include all other churches in communion with Rome) is incorrect. There is a reason for separating Eastern-Rite Catholic from Latin-Rite Catholic. Properly speaking, ER Catholics are not Roman Catholics at all. They are Ruthenian Catholics, Melkite Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, etc. Although "Roman Catholic," as is commonly used in the U.S.A. can refer to all churches in communion with Rome, this is not proper usage; it is perceived by many in the Eastern Catholic communities as at least marginally offensive, thus better avoided. The sentence as you left it did not quite make sense, though the grammar was improved.

Would you reconsider how you word your commentary? I hesitate to bring this up at all, but this doesn't seem to be the first time that this issue has come up. Examples are plentiful on this page, not to mention the Bureaucrat vote page. The reason I bring this up is because of a suggestion made on the Wikipedia page on dealing with conflicts. InFairness

[edit] Scalar field

Hi Michael. Would you please comment a bit at Talk:Scalar to what I wrote there? I find the recent edits of MarSch of that article rather confusing, and from what I see you too. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 03:36, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Pythagorean.png

Thank you for uploading Image:Pythagorean.png. Its copyright status is unclear, so it may have to be deleted. Please leave a note on the image page about the source of the image. Thank you.

Oh and btw, you really need to archive this talk page and shorten it to contain somewhere around last 10-20 topics... its almost impossible to preview my comment because of the huge page size.

--Spundun 07:25, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why the page history identifies me as the creator of that image; I did not create it. Michael Hardy 23:40, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

Hi Michael. You are doing an admirable job at creating lists, the most recent one being the list of set theory topics. I hope you continue on doing that, as it is a good thing to have the articles listed. But I am just curious, what is the motivation behind that? What do you think lists provide that categories don't? Maybe you will get me more interested in creating them. :) Oleg Alexandrov 05:42, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(1) Lists can be organized; categories cannot. See the list of lists of mathematical topics in its recently organized form. See the list of geometry topics. See the list of probability topics.

(2) Lists can be moved without editing every article that they link to.

(3) Lists can contain invisible links to talk pages, so that when you click on "related changes", those will be included.

(4) Lists can contain red links for requested articles.

Michael Hardy 22:50, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks. If you plan to create more lists, I could help by spitting out the contents of given categories in a list format. Oleg Alexandrov 23:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RABot... editting

Are you having fun editting User:RABot/Requested articles/Social Sciences and Philosophy?

That is a local, not presently updated copy of Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social Sciences and Philosophy. It was used in the testing and development of the RABot script.

Dragons flight 20:34, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Democratic Peace Theory

Hi Mike, there is an insane discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Mathematics about statistics; maybe you can comment. linas 00:45, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I hope I'm not insane; I believe there to be a point to the following, and I've been spending too much time with the social scientists to express it clearly:

Using a set of data to determine the parameters of a theory, and then validating the theory by applying it to the same set of data is a weak form of proof. Normal statistical tests presume the theory is independent of the data. Septentrionalis 16:13, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I admit my field is group theory, but I have done some actuarial work; and it was true then. Septentrionalis 01:28, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 45th Parallel ?

There are supposedly markers in both cities. One is at Golden Valley Road and Wirth Parkway [3]. The other is just north of Roselawn along Cleveland. [4]. Draw a segment between those two points and I think you will see they are exactly east and west of each other. Wahkeenah 10:24, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Second Vatican Council

I'm afraid your lowercasing in Second Vatican Council was incorrect.

1. Autumn is a proper noun. It is the name of a season. (Don't Americans write Fall?). When one is writing specifically about a season, eg, Summer, as opposed to generically, eg, summer, the seasons are uppercased.
2. In the Vatican Council, as in parliamentary procedure, session is used both as a proper noun and as generically, depending on the context. Second Session is a formal name used to describe all the meetings occurring in a particular session of the council, as was First Session, Third Session, etc. FearÉIREANN\^(talk) 28 June 2005 21:20 (UTC)

I thought I saw the word session used with a lower-case initial s in the first sentence of one of those sections. I think Summer, etc., is often capitalized if used generically as the name of a season, of which there are only four, but if one writes "the summer of 2003" (one of far more than four summers), it's lower-case (but I will check this out). Michael Hardy 28 June 2005 21:42 (UTC)

That is correct. Things like Session as opposed to session are quite confusing. Normally in parliamentary language one can see references to the Autumn Session but today's session. The reason why the capitalised version was used in the heading was because it was referring to the specific grouped meetings, all of which were numbered when talking about overall named meetings, hence Third Session, etc. But one could talk about "today's session of the Third Session . . ." The seasons are similarly confusing. One would write about how "In Autumn the leaves fall" but "over the ten autumns the average rainfall increased by one-fifth." But some users of British English capitalise the seasons in all cases. (Maybe it gets less confusing that way!) I would write "the summer of 2003" but I know some English users would go ballistic to see it that way and would instinctively capitalise the s." Oh the insanity of English!!! :-) FearÉIREANN\^(talk) 28 June 2005 22:24 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics Suggestions

Does it make sense to create a definition for the Beta-Binomial?

I am often confused when I see the word overdispersed used in the statistics literature. I'll see it in reference to starting points for an MCMC calculation, and to describe a distribution. Is it just a "wider" distribution than the one specified by the model or data?

There is no entry for Generalized Estimating Equations.

There is no entry for Data Augmentation, should there be one that points to imputation(statistics).

For "beta-binomial" I've just created a redirect page pointing to conjugate prior. Maybe later it can be an article; maybe I'll write it if no one else beats me to it. Definitely the initial b in binomial should be lower-case. Michael Hardy 30 June 2005 22:16 (UTC)

[edit] G Theory

Just thought I'd let you know that I have begun working on changing the links of the page redirects that were created when Ed Poor redirected the page. Jtkiefer July 6, 2005 01:11 (UTC)

[edit] Question about the correctness of Matrix

Dear Michael Hardy:

Why the category of Householder transformation is Matrices and QR decomposition is Matrix_theory? Are they correct? Are there really differences between Matrices and Matrix theory?

Because I am not very interested about that, you don't need to answer me detailly. I don't want to waste your time. Just let me know that you have done and I will check them to know.

Thank you

--Jacob grace 7 July 2005 12:52 (UTC)

[edit] Defective (Titles)

My apologies if I have misunderstood the titling convention. If you move the pages, I'll repair the links (there are quite a lot of them and I would not want to cause you work to fix all my mistakes. -David91 8 July 2005 05:27 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Marcionism

Your input is requested at Talk:Marcionism. From the history looks like you added the statement that the Ethiopian church claims to be the only one free of Marcionism and you referenced a website, but it looks like the website has changed and that claim is no longer present.

[edit] Something to make you smile

Hey Michael, I finally got around to fiddling with the etymology for iridescence, and have a funny story I'd like to lay out for you. I think that you must have hurriedly checked the etymology and assumed that stem was a definition of ιρις, rather than the part of speech. Don't worry, you're still one of the smartest people I know on WP :). I'm betting you were using the OED as that's the dictionary I found where the stem is confusing. Although there is a botanical definition for iris, stem is a red herring. --Chinasaur 20:00, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

You're right: I should learn how to read the dictionary. Michael Hardy 22:41, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RP speech

       RP speech is non-rhotic, meaning that the written 'r' is pronounced as a soft 'r', unless followed by a vowel.

What do you mean by "a soft 'r'"? Non-rhotic speech is called non-rhotic because the 'r' is not pronounced at all except when a vowel sound follows it. "Cart" does not have the sound of 'r' (as in "ring") in non-rhotic dialects. Michael Hardy 23:21, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Three R sounds (possibly four/five if you include French and German uses) exist. A soft R, as in car (which is not pronounced 'ca'), a middle R (as in 'ring'), and a hard R (rolled, mainly used in Gaelic accents, but you do have it crop into southern and northern accents, usually as a formality). New Englanders often cut the R out of a word (hence 'ma'ket place'), whereas in English a 'motor car' is pronounced as such, with the soft are applying. It is not as simple as cutting out the R entirely, nor is it a middle R, or even a rolled R. Nick Kerr 01:30, 17 July 2005 (GMT)

[edit] &times;

Hi Michael,

it seams you like (?) to replace e.g. "*" with "×" etc. and it seams you do this manually.

I hope this simple cut'n'paste tool ( mozilla js ) may be helpful for you:
http://home.arcor.de/wzwz.de/wiki/tools/times_v01.htm

best regards, wolfgang Wzwz 21:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics

I deleted article from "academic disciplines" because I think it's better in a subcategory. But no biggie. Maurreen 00:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Which subcategory and why? I would think the fact that most universities have a department devoted only to that particular discipline would count for quite a lot. Michael Hardy 00:20, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Like I said, it's not a big deal to me. You put it back in the category, OK, I'm ready to move on. I only wrote to you to answer your question and avoid being rude. Maurreen 00:26, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spectrum (dab)

Hi Michael. I saw your comments about the spectrum (disambiguation) page, and I'm inclined to agree. You can see I was rather aimlessly talking to User:Smack about it, but I lost interest when he decided that the FFT was about as notable to the sigproc community as your average handheld calculator. He's done some good work on the page as you say, but it needs repair. Smack's done some decent work in making a lot of uses of spectrum point to spectrum (disambiguation), but he doesn't research thoroughly enough and he could put much better, properly dab'd links in. I decided I ought not to prowl his contribution history to do the job better, and it'd be hugely tedious too.

From Augean Stable I don't understand what you mean in your edit summary.

While I'm on the topic, there's problems with spectral density and frequency spectrum meaning the same thing, saying different things, and frequency spectrum really just being discrete fourier transform. I've been meaning to get around to this, but was reluctant to discuss it with Smack after he came up with the handheld calculator analogy. There's not much need for discussion of a merge in a dry, technical area though, so perhaps I should walk the walk rather talk the talk... -Splash 22:06, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Taking your name in vain

When you looked at Democratic peace theory some time ago, you made some comments on the PoV nature of one Of Ultramarine's edits. He came up on RfC [[5]]. I commented at some length on his behavior on DPT and cited your comments on his PoV. I thought it only courteous to let you know. Septentrionalis 00:33, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nepnoc number

Current on VfD. Obviously original research, but I'd like your comment in the VfD discussion. Looks like patent nonsense to me. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:07, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: anathema

Thanks for your comments on my User Talk page. You are quite right of course and your tidy-up is much better than what I was doing. I should say that I did not originate the ambiguation in question and was just trying to sot is out. Gaius Cornelius

[edit] P Prime Prime

Hello Michael ... I notice that you changed the name of the P Prime Prime article to "P prime prime" (lower case) . Are you planning to change C Plus Plus likewise? (Just kidding -- but I did model the name on C Plus Plus, which the naming conventions (technical restrictions) cite as an example.) For such a proper noun, shouldn't the initial caps remain, according to the naming conventions? --r.e.s. 23:23, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's been almost 2 weeks, and you've neither replied nor reversed the changes you made. Wouldn't it be reasonable to do at least one or the other? Or perhaps you now agree that the changes were not in accord with the conventions, but without comment just expect others to reverse them? --r.e.s. (Talk) 15:31:50, 2005-08-03 (UTC)

Hello. Sorry to take a while to attend to this. To me "P prime prime" does not seem like a proper noun at all. The "P" should be capital since it's case-sensitive mathematical notation. But why the "prime"? "C Plus Plus", on the other hand, may well qualify as a proper noun. Note that in Wikipedia we write "Smith's theorem", "Smith's law", "Smith's principle", "Smith's criterion", "Smith's axiom", "Smith's hypothesis", "Smith's equation", etc., etc., with a lower-case initial letter. Michael Hardy 21:04, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. It seems to me that (which I'll continue to write P′′) and C++ are essentially the same case, as each involves math notation as a proper noun (each is the name of a particular programming language), which is then rendered into English as a proper noun phrase, each word of which should be capitalised. The fact that in some program the three characters "C++" might be used to increment a variable C, has no bearing on the name of the language being a proper noun -- similarly, the symbols "P′′" might in some usage denote, say, the second derivative of a function P, but that likewise has no bearing on the name of the language being a proper noun. (BTW, the particular language P′′ was referenced by this same name in at least two published papers.) I find this reasoning persuasive; however, I will defer to your judgement on the matter. --r.e.s. (Talk) 01:21:45, 2005-08-04 (UTC)

[edit] Page refresh issues

Hi, I noticed from the history on WP:RfD that you seemed to have had a problem with getting a page refreshed properly. Do you know about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=PAGENAME&action=purge

which will often clear these kinds of problems? (Of course, replace the PAGENAME with whatever's appropriate - "User_talk:Michael_Hardy" or whatever.) Doesn't always work (e.g. it's no use with the "template Y has been changed to no longer reference page X but pages which use Y still show up on what-links-here for X" bug), but it helps. Noel (talk) 14:18, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 0.999... equals 1

I'm sorry, but I don't see how this is possible. They're two different numbers with two different numerical designations. --[[User:Merovingian|Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! -->]] (t) (c) 21:26, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you don't see how it is possible, then read the article carefully. If you have specific questions about the argument, you can ask me (or any mathematician). Of course, every number has many different "numerical designations". Michael Hardy 00:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I do understand it in the algebraic and fraction terms. It just seems out-of-place somehow. I guess I'll let it stay, but might there be a better title? --[[User:Merovingian|Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! -->]] (t) (c) 00:42, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what you have in mind about the title, but by all means if you know a better one, say so. Michael Hardy 01:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Red links

Hi Michael. I know you contributed to the list of mathematical topics since prehistoric times, :) so I have a question. Would you mind if I remove all the red links from there? Some of them are a bunch of tiling articles which got deleted and never removed, some others are articles which were not completed for a long time. More importantly, if the red links are out, my bot will have an easier time noticing when those articles get created, since they will be posted to the list of changes to the math articles.

I talked to Jitse about this, see User talk:Jitse Niesen/goim#List of mathematical topics issues and he agrees. So, what do you think? Oleg Alexandrov 00:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Enlisted jobs copyvio...

I noticed you corrected the capitalization of this article. A google test(pick a random phrase, search in quotes on google) quickly identifies it as a copyvio. Please check for copyvios with such oddly-titled articles. Thanks for all your contributions to Wikipedia! JesseW 22:07, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category Combinatorics

Hi Michael, I was wondering if there was some sub-category we could create to hold all of the articles that deal with stirling numbers and binomial coeffs (e.g. Vandermonde's identity. It would be nice to have these in a specific place, rather than in the generic Category:Combinatorics. What do you think? what would that cat be called? linas 16:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New TeX user...

Michael, thanks for a small TeX lesson. I beat my laziness and take a look in reference. As a sw developer having experience with languages like Perl I have found it funny to use it right way (speed / average speed section).

I also went through some of your pages and I wonder how you can manage all this?!

Finally I want to say that I think I understand people who do not like your enhancements in "their" articles. I do not like too much "academical" approach to Wikipedia too and do prefer more human aspects if do not interfere with the purpose. One of the basic human aspects is "not to be perfect" what as I believe do not interfere much with purpose of Wikipedia in general. This aspect also supports diversity, which I love ( perfect things make up very poor subset of possible).

Anyway, I appreciate any enhancements you do in "my" edits, because I do not take them as "my" in fact...

Thanks again, Michal

Eltwarg 19:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Finally I want to say that I think I understand people who do not like your enhancements in "their" articles. I do not like too much "academical" approach to Wikipedia too and do prefer more human aspects if do not interfere with the purpose. One of the basic human aspects is "not to be perfect" what as I believe do not interfere much with purpose of Wikipedia in general.

I don't understand the point above at all, since it is completely non-specific. Could you please give some examples? Sometimes I don't like people's edits to article's I've started, but I know they're not "my" articles. Do you mean that correcting spelling or punctuation is not "human" enough? Or changing an erroneous assertion to a correct one is not "human" enough? The purpose of Wikipedia is to make information available. If you can point out some edit of mine that was does not support that purpose, please do. Certainly you can find some errors among my many edits, but I doubt that's what you're trying to say. Also, no one has expressed to me that they regard any article as "theirs" and dislike my edits for that reason. Has someone indicated that to you? If so, I wonder why they don't say that to me. Michael Hardy 01:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Michael, answers follow in the same order as question marks occured in paragraph above:

• The original intent was not to be specific. Please apologize my disliking to be more specific in this point...
• Correcting spelling or punctation is not a common hobby of human beings. However I know that your contributions to Wikipedia are not limited to this kind of edits. But - have you mentioned that your second question is a pure sophistry! ;-)
• I guess a thinking human being likes searching and fighting for truth. To oppose: There is a big difference between a model and a real world. There are people having no idea about a formal theory and still having an opinion regarding a term (or better said a 'word') that theory uses. Maybe most of people understand it "the wrong way". In english (unfortunately I do not speak english well) mening of words is defined the way how people use them and dictionaries are based on that - so even more "human" is (or should be? ;) to search for consensus. Do not ask me to be more specific - if I said a statement about real numbers you would not ask me to be more specific as well...
• Noone directly indicated to me that he dislikes your edits because of that. But believe me or not, it is a "common human reaction" to dislike changes in what he created, once he feel it was the best he could create (again - not speaking about punctation and unconscious mistakes).

People often feel like they are attacked by such change or comment. However, often there is just a kind-hearted human being wanting to help you on the other side :-)

[edit] Using monospace text for math formulas

Hi Michael ... When/if you get a chance, please take a look at lambda calculus. After some hesitation, I recently changed a large amount of "formula text" to monospaced, because it is so much more legible. But considering your recent edits on bijective numeration, I would like to know your opinions on when not to use monospace (specifically, using <tt></tt>). If you compare the old and new versions of the lambda calculus article, I think you'll see what I mean about much better legibility. It seems to me that math formulas are a case where monospace is a lot more likely to be a judicious choice. What do you think?--r.e.s. (Talk) 08:49:22, 2005-08-18 (UTC)

[edit] Probability Distribution standards

Hi Michael - I saw your edit of the Zeta distribution article and was about to revert it, with examples of other discrete distributions as evidence, and I see that there is a serious lack of consistency in the discrete distribution articles with regard to PMF and CMF notation. I have made a first cut at some standards for probability distribution articles into the Wikipedia:WikiProject Probability page. Can we get a consensus on this? I would like to start standardizing the discrete probability distribution articles, at least the PMF and CMF names, and method of handling parameters. MarkSweep has suggested the talk page for this project Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Probability as a good place to discuss these standards. PAR 13:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Continuous Functions

Hello I recall your correcting an error of mine a while ago and have noticed many other interesting contributions, so I wonder if you would care to chime in on Continuous functions? A chap User:JahJah changed the page to say that rational functions are continuous and it's going back and forth between our talk pages. Regards Pdn 17:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Thnks. I must yield on this; you say that 1/x on the real line excluding zero is continuous. But the statement that JahJah made that all rational functions are continuous seems to assume that the "user" first determine all the zeros of the denominator and then exclude them from the domain. This concept could be worded in some way like:" All rational functions are continuous on the domain that excludes the zeros of their denominators." Cumbersome. Finally, consider this passage from the page on continuous functions:

"An example of a discontinuous function is the function f defined by f(x) = 1 if x > 0, f(x) = 0 if x ≤ 0. Pick for instance ε = 1/2. There is no δ-neighborhood around x=0 that will force all the f(x) values to be within ε of f(0). Intuitively we can think of this type of discontinuity as a sudden jump in function values."

According to the rest of the discussion, if we excise the point x=0 then the function becomes continuous. OK. Surprising, but you guys in math have your reasons. Thanks again Pdn 04:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I think you're making this complicated; I prefer to keep it simple. All rational functions are continuous (on their domains). There's the SEPARATE question of what their domains are. There's no need to mix the two questions with each other.

And yes, the function you describe is continuous except at 0. That doesn't seem so "surprising" to me. Michael Hardy 20:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I always thought that rational functions had poles at the zeros (roots) of the denominator. I guess it is simpler to excise those points, but the poles get trampled. Pdn 00:57, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

It is counter-productive to nullify what is known about poles (and perhaps branch cuts) by excising them. I suggest that "Continuous Functions" be renamed "Continuous Functions on the Real Domain" or the like and people be referred to what I suppose must exist in this august encyclopedia about poles, Laurent expansions, etc. Pdn 05:26, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Random assistance

Thanks for the pointer on style / capitalization in headings in Teller-Ulam design. I'm trying to reduce the trail of minor repairs people have to follow me around and do after I add content; it's been a lot easier to learn how to add content than it has been to pick up all the clues on how to add it cleanly and entirely correctly. Polite pointers much appreciated. Georgewilliamherbert 07:28, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for the style tips. Supten 04:23, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Sigma-algebra

Hi, couldyou read & comment on notation question at Talk:Sigma-algebra ? linas 13:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sqlboy

Are you in any way connected to User:Sqlboy, I see that you both have the same contents on the user page. :-) bogdan | ^Talk 16:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of that user; there's no connection. What "user page" are you talking about? Michael Hardy 23:12, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I see: he copied my user page. Thanks for pointing this out? Michael Hardy 23:13, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on user page

In regards to your comment, you're dead on about the second point - I do have a habit of doing that, and I shouldn't. However, I'm not sure which new article you're referring to with your first point:

• Start an article with a complete sentence, not a dictionary-style definition, and highlight the title word or title phrase at its first appearance, like this.

The only article I've created recently was Oxandrolone, which was correct with respect to that point (the only possible problem being my capitalisation of Oxandrin, which even so is probably acceptable as it's a registered trademark). GeeJo _{(t) (c)} 01:25, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see where the misconception came from. I was sorting through Cat:Stubs earlier as part of my work for Stub sorting, and at the time was more interested in trying to pull the number of articles in there back down to one page than at looking at the quality of the articles within them. I didnt create any of the articles so stubbed. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} 01:49, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia article sampling

Since you seem to be the resident statistics expert (and my statistics knowledge is ancient history), I was wondering if you could answer a question that I had. I've seen several people on their user pages do samples of the Wikipedia by hittin the Random article link and then tabulating the types of articles that they found. I remember enough about statistics to know that a sample size of of 10-20 articles can't be representative. How many articles would it take (assuming the Random article link is really random) to get a representative sample from the Wikipedia? BlankVerse ∅ 16:15, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

What sample size is "representative" depends in part on what you're trying to find out from your sample. If there were some binary classification of articles as being on either "the sciences" or "the arts" and you wanted to estimate the percentage in each of those two classes, you might not be doing so badly with a random sample of maybe 30 articles. If you wanted to estimate the average length of articles, at least my gut reaction is you'd want more because the distribution of lengths would presumably be skewed. For some other purposes, you might need a much larger sample. And a big caveat: just how reliable is the "random article" button on Wikipedia? Michael Hardy 20:59, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for replying. Most of the article surveys that I've seen have tried to capture some sort of snapshot of the types of articles that can be found on the wikipedia. Sometimes the measure is the size of the articles. For example, the divisions might be stubs, single screen, and multiple screens of text, or using some other measure of size.

The other sampling has been for the type of article, often divided into some rather arbitrary categories (e.g. User:Rambot-generated articles with little or no addition, Rambot articles that have been more heavily edited, fancruft, pop culture, academic subjects, etc.

As for how random the Random article link is, they are probably using the random function in whatever programming language they are writing in, which means that it is probably not random enough for serious statisticians, but probably not seriously flawed. That means that it should be good enough for a basic "snapshot" of the Wikipedia.

I'd probably want to look at both size and the types of articles (using the same sample, but two different comparisons), but use a better method of classifying the articles. BlankVerse ∅ 21:32, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sklar's theorem

I'm curious. Can you tell me what was the first name of the "Sklar" immortalized by this theorem regarding the cupola? I've always seem him (her?) cited in finance textbooks and the like simply as "A. Sklar." What does the A. stand for? --Christofurio 02:47, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

I'm about 90% sure it's Abraham. (If I were certain of that I'd have answered immediately.) Michael Hardy 00:30, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Wait!! ........ maybe it's just Abe. Michael Hardy 00:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

There was an Abe Sklar in my class (PhD) at Caltech, 1960, in math. (I was a TA in Math but remember only "Abe Sklar"). see also [6] Looks like he is named or likes to be called "Abe" Pdn 05:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, he likes to be called Abe. It is in his work that the term copula first appeared in mathematical work. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 17:27, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] On squaring the circle

I left this comment, and would appreciate your comment on where you think I'm mistaken in the conclusion I've reached over the last couple of months that everything left by this particular editor can by default be assumed to be of negative value (I'm happy to elaborate, if you like). -- Egil 01:39, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Degrees of freedom (statistics) isn't very understandable (to a non-statistician)

Hi. I've been looking at the page on degrees of freedom, and, as a non-statistician (trying to read a little about stats), I find the page a bit confusing.

For example, the sentence: "The probability distributions of residuals are often parametrized by these numbers of degrees of freedom."

I have difficulty understanding this: How does one parametrized (parameterize?) a probability distribution? Does it involve altering the equation? Do probability distributions come in a form such that degrees of freedom are a variable or constant in the equation? For that matter, what are these "numbers of degrees of freedom" anyway? How are they determined for a particular experiment?

Perhaps an introductory explanation, explaining what degrees of freedom are, how they are derived, and how they are used (in a very broad, and non-statistical way) would be helpful. This could lead into the detailed statistical treatment of the subject, while making the page more accessible to non-statisticians. Some examples of degrees of freedom being used in distributions would also be quite helpful, I think.

Thanks

Well, the article is really quite stubby as it stands, even though it's not a "stub" in the sense that would justify the "stub" notice. I'll probably return to it within a few weeks and add more. Michael Hardy 18:54, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Could you take a look at...

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algebraical quantity and Algebraical quantity? Dpbsmith (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ioh and Ioh, while you're at it? Dpbsmith (talk) 00:14, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cerebellar hemispheres

Dr. Hardy, I just saw your recent participation in Cerebellum. You edited the sentence,

"The cerebellum is divided into two large hemispheres, much like the cerebrum, and contains ten smaller lobules."

and changed the link for "hemisphere," adding the following rather uncharitable edit summary: It is absurd to link to hemisphere and expect it to be an article on cerebral hemispheres.[7]

I'm not certain who it was that originally placed the link, but it seems perfectly sensible to have linked to hemisphere; the intention must have been to define the term "hemisphere" for those who might be unfamiliar with it. In the following clause, mention is made that this hemispheric division of the cerebellum is similar to that seen in the cerebrum; readers interested in the cerebrum can follow that link. In fact, it will be confusing for a lay person to have the first link go to cerebral hemispheres—the impression is given that the cerebellar hemispheres being spoken of in the article refer to the cerebral hemispheres, when this is certainly not the case. The target for hemisphere is a disambiguation page that needs cleaning up; I'll do that and revert the edit. I thought your remaining edits were very helpful. Kindest regards—encephalonὲγκέφαλον 19:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• And here I was just going to comment that popping in and calling a deliberately thoughtful decision "absurd" without considering teh rationality behind the original decision was a bit rude. Anyway, Encephalon is correct on this one: linking to the cerebral hemispheres would run directly contrary to the intention of wikifying that link.Semiconscious (talk · home) 20:05, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I was hasty. I see lots of cases where someone links to something like "field" that would obviously have to be a disambiguation page, when they mean it in a specific technical sense, and thought at first that this was such a case. Michael Hardy 20:20, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• No problem at all, Michael; that's perfectly understandable. Your other edits to the page were very helpful, and this particular one has if nothing else resulted in a better disambiguation page! Best—encephalonὲγκέφαλον 20:52, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Capitals

Hello. Please note that in External links, the "l should not be capitalized; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style on section headings. The first letter of a section heading is capitalized; the others are not unless there is a reason to do so. I've fixed this in vernal equinox. Michael Hardy 17:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my typo. -- PFHLai 18:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bell number(s)

Actually,I was convinced the move was non-controversial when I found Euler number. The request was not in proper form, and it looked to me like another case in which someone was calling for admin assistance for something he could in fact do himself. I will make sure that WP:RM indicates that it is controversial, and join the discussion. Septentrionalis 19:26, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/⅝

Feel like commenting? Dpbsmith (talk) 19:55, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] inferential statistics

Hi Michael. The article on inferential statistics should be merged into statistical inference. I don't know how to do it. Can you help ? Bo Jacoby 07:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree: they should be merged. I'll think about details, but it may take a while. (Generally I prefer to work on articles with narrower topics.) Michael Hardy 01:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tautology and Back-formatioin

i edited the wrong article. thanks! --x1987x 22:27, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hi and help

how do you archive your talk page?

thanks

jonah

Why do you need to archive a talk page to start with? Look, this page has been unarchived since New Year 2003, and it is not as if the sky fell down. Get over it, man!

Well, if you really, really insist, let me give you an example of how Michael himself would proceed if God forbids he decides on an itch one day to archive his talk page. He would first write a redlink, like this: User talk:Michael Hardy/Archive1. Then, he would edit his talk page, cut a huge chuck of text, click on the red link, paste the text in, save, and ...

...., ...., ..., ...,

... done! Gosh! That was cool!

Then, that link will not be read anymore, rather blue, so it can be kept on this page to point to the archive.

So, if you want to archive your own page, do the same, just using your own user name. Oleg Alexandrov 05:15, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Math punctuation

I understand your concerns, but my concern is that the period is very close to \cdot, which is confusing when thrown at the end of a formula. The typographical features of web browsers are rather lacking.—Kbolino 00:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects, Radii Of Curvature

Hiya Mike, I'm a newbie Wikipedian, so some stuff I'm probably off base, but a lot I think I'm on target.

> (Please don't make internal links look like external
> links. The full URL is not needed.)

I'm not trying to pass off internal links as external, but rather doing an "anchor redirect", which--in itself--is an example:

[[Help:Redirect#A_redirect_to_an_anchor Anchor Redirects]] just redirects to /Help:Redirect, but

[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Redirect#A_redirect_to_an_anchor] redirects right to /Help:Redirect#A_redirect_to_an_anchor

Look at the "Contents" box: Those are all anchor redirects using URLs! P=)

> This is not "radius of curvature" in GENERAL,
> but a particular case.

Oh yes, I'm well aware of the different arcradii. P=)
I'm not sure if you are referring to "6367" or "6372" as being the "particular case", but as I noted in the hidden comments, "6367" only considers the average north-south meridional arcradius, not the complete transverse meridional range: If you pulled a piece of string from the geographical equator ("GE") straight up, along the 0° great circle, to the transverse equator ("TQ", which is 90° away from the originating point on the GE, along the great circle), both the average arcradius and radius would be the exact same "6367" value. If you found the average arcradius and radius along the 30° great circle, though slightly different, they would both be about 6370; along the 45° great circle, about 6372; the 60°, 6375; and along the 90° great circle--the geographical equator--both the radius and arcradius will equal "a" ("6378"). If you average them all together, you will get "6372"!
So, particularly for the clueless "Joe Sixpack" who just wants the spherical, "great circle" radius, "6372" seems to be the ideal spherical value. ~Kaimbridge~ 13:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Capital letters in martingale

Hi, this is the reply to your "Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Please note that by Wikipedia conventions outlines in Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a section heading should say "General mathematical definition" with lower-case initial "m" and d rather than capital letters. I changed this in martingale.

Happy editing. Michael Hardy 00:12, 4 December 2005 (UTC)"

I am a new contributor. I thank for your suggestions about capital letters in the sections titles. Since the Wikipedia server was experiencing troubles during my composition (it warned me), I saved the text several times. I did not understand that I was creating some confusion in the history of the paper, in that way. Moreover, in order to avoid to lose what I wrote, I copied the text to clipboard, and then pasted it in the wikipedia compose-box. That's why you had to edit the capital letters more than once. Finally, I got it and now the "General mathematical definition" section should work. I have to add a some remark about my addons in the discussion page, I suppose. Thank you again Mauro gala.martin