User talk:Charles Matthews/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Charles Matthews. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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List of publications in mathematics

Hi,

I noticed that you added A Mathematical Theory of Communication to the list of important publications in math. This paper is indeed important but already appears as an important publication in computer science. I think that it is more appropriate to consider information theory as a subfield of cs and not of math. On the other hand, one looking for important publications in math might not be looking in cs too.

I'm not sure what will be better - removing the publication or copying the cs paragraph. What do you think?

Thanks for your help, APH 10:28, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, it is arguable that computer science didn't really exist at that point. Information theory is anyway probably more accurately classified as a field of statistics, being an aspect of the 'statistical theory of communication'. So, in the end, perhaps neither mathematics nor computer science will have it. Probably it is best to put everything in one place for the moment, and cross-reference to the other (can be done with anchored wikilinks, if you follow me).

Charles Matthews 12:47, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm not that familiar with wikilinks. I know how to put a reference to the article but I think that it is better to put the information itself and not a link. I know that it will lead to redundancy (what is funny in the context of information theory ;-)). Is it possible to open a "frame" that will show the actual data from another article? APH 14:50, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not as such. What I meant is a link like this: [[list of important publications in computer science#A mathematical theory of communication]], which allows one to jump straight to the heading in the middle of the page.

Looking at it: the classification problem is not going to go away, here. If information theory is where it is, by analogy with algorithmic information theory, then this isn't quite right.

Charles Matthews 15:06, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Biographies

I'd prefer it if you didn't delete the done sections, it is best to keep them for archiving purposes.--[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 10:02, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What it says at Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics is

If Wikipedia articles exist on some of the topics, create redirects to them and remove them from the list.

The entire list is of course available in the page history; I prefer to cut out anything done, since otherwise scrolling down the page takes no less time, even when there is little left to do.

If you feel strongly about this, I suggest you start a discussion on the talk page of Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics, to clarify what others think should be policy.

Charles Matthews 10:10, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Infinite Loops

Well done for spotting that it could be redirected. I just deleted the bugger... -- Graham ☺ | Talk 13:56, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Children of Albion

Hi

I've been working on a longer article on this anthology since I noticed you'd wikified it in British Poetry Revival. I'll stick it in my namespace soon and invite your comments before editing your article, if that's OK.

Bmills 10:32, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. I mentioned in what I wrote there that Horovitz got some stick for it; but I'm sure you'll have a more informed view. Actually I bought a copy of it when it came out; but didn't get much out of it then, except some appreciation of Lee Harwood. (Well, I was about 15 ... ) Charles Matthews 10:34, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's here: User:Bmills/Children of Albion, if you care to have a look. Bmills 11:09, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fine - I've linked the Alvarez book, which I'd already done. I might well do the Donald Allen book, as it's on my shelves somewhere (double-stacked, like much else). I've suggested a few bits of punctuation. Golliard/Goliard?

Charles Matthews 11:14, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Goliard, of course. Thanks for the improvements. Just back from a weekend in Cork with Tom Raworth, only to find an e-mail telling me Carl Rakosi was dead, so I feel like doing things. Bmills 11:20, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

By the way, I've created a poetry anthology category, as I seem fated to type more of this in. Cork - it's even longer ago, but I remember visiting cousins there, Sean Lucy's children. Charles Matthews 11:26, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed your anthologies: useful to have. Cork has a more or less yearly 'alternative poetry' festival and this year Tom, Trevor Joyse Maggie O'Sullivan, Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk, Maurice Scully, Stephen Rodefer and others were there. A good weekend, but the city is one big roadwork in preperation for being European Capital of Culture next year. Bmills 11:30, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Have you done, or are you planning to do, The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry ? Bmills 08:16, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's already at Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. You can track what I've done at User:Charles Matthews/New pages#Poetry, by the way. I may add some more Faber anthologies (e.g. the Auden Modern American Verse) and maybe a few more American books. I don't know what is really 'encyclopedic' - for example Penguin have many, of which the Lucie-Smith 'Poetry since 1945' might be worth it. Charles Matthews 08:27, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think it would, as would their Poetry of the 30s and Poetry of the 40s anthologies. These did a lot to keep Barker, Gascoyne, Sykes Davis and others visible to my generation. Bmills 08:52, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How about a List of poetry anthologies? Bmills 10:09, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't be much work; at present I add the category 'Poetry anthology'. In a sense, I wanted to avoid having to discuss whether there is a worthwhile distinction from the list of poetry collections! One way would be to have just that one page, but segregate it into sections - after all Four Quartets is rather different from the Faber Book of Modern Verse. Charles Matthews 10:28, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I just went ahead and did it. I tend to think that the list of poetry collections should be reserved for original works like Four Quartets, Lyrical Ballads or the Pisan Cantos. Anthologies are a different beast. If anyone disagrees, they can argue their case. Bmills 10:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How does one create a category? I'm thinking of creating Irish literature. Bmills 12:32, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Just edit in [[Category:Irish literature]], say at the top or bottom of a page. It will come up as a category tag, but in red rather than blue. Then click on that, to edit the category page. If you add, say, [[Category:Literature]], to that page, Irish literature will be added as a subcategory of Literature; it is possible to make it a subcategory of several things (e.g. also Irish culture). Once it exists as a subcategory, Irish literature will then be a 'blue link' category in good standing. Charles Matthews 12:40, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Bmills 12:45, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Categories: Linear Algebra vs. Matrix Theory vs. Numerical Analysis

Hi. I am currently working on matrix stuff LU decomposition, Triangular matrix etc. My current angle is numerical analysis. I am now a bit confused as to which Category those pages belong to and how to write the introduction for a page.

For example the Triangular matrix page. Should the introduction be

In linear algebra, triangular matrices are
In matrix theory, triangular matrices are
In numerical analysis, triangular matrices are

In the same vein what category should the page be in

Categories:Linear Algebra
Categories:Linear Algebra:Matrix Theory
Categories:Numerical analysis

Should the Category be mentioned in the introduction ? Perhaps you can shed some light. MathMartin 13:58, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For the categories, all three, certainly - no need to penny-pinch. For the intro: linear algebra is uncontestable, and includes implicitly matrix theory and numerical linear algebra, I suppose. Charles Matthews 14:17, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks and a request.

Charles, thanks for adding to the Fundamental Theoerem of Projective Geometry page - only nine minutes after it was created! Could you briefly look at projective frame as I'm not as hot on this stuff as I once was, nor as good at wiking as I hope I will be. Rich Farmbrough.

Hello, Rich. On projective frame, the phrasing of where the points are isn't so clear. The Rⁿ⁺¹, if we are working over R, will have a basis like e_i, for 1 ≤ i ≤ n+1; and then you want to have the final e_i defined as the sum of all these. However I suppose the point of the definition is to take the (n+2)-tuple of images of these in the projective space. One can say that in a few ways; one would be that we take [e_i] = equivalence class of all non-zero scalar multiples of e_i, and the frame is the tuple of those. Charles Matthews 15:54, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes that looks better now. I was using two sources which took different approaches, so I was worried that I was confused. Rich Farmbrough 16:48, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Doubts on topology

Hi,

I am a regular contributor to wikipedia and I am aware that you are a prominent contributor in mathematics. I just want to clarify some points with you and react as a reader on a specific subject, hope you don't mind. Right now, while searching for information on mathematics, geometry and topology, I found it quite difficult to understand the concept of topology. As I had understood it earlier, it had something to do with the properties of surfaces (something like the 'development concept' which can be used for model making wherein a surface can be folded to form different forms). However when I read many topology related topics in wikipedia, I could only see some abstract terminologies and was not able to understand much. Is there any way of explaining this concept in a more physical and spatial manner an then introduce the mathematical qualities? Or is my understanding of the topic wrong? BTW, the pages on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries were very clear and spatially explained and were the best in terms of my internet search on the subject. Thanks KRS 10:18, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Topology was one of the biggest growth areas in 20th century mathematics; so it is not surprising that it is now hard to survey. We now have some good pictorial material, e.g. Klein bottle. Abstractly, this is just a unit square with its sides glued up in a certain way; do that in other ways and you might get a torus or a projective plane (and those three spaces are the possibilities). Right then, the torus is in a simple way 'spatial', but the other two are not; they live outside 3-space in the abstract, and we can only see them immersed. They are also not orientable. Topology has to handle these questions indirectly, through machinery built up starting from the fundamental group, and developed ... into blue-sky research. If you could intuit why the fundamental group of the Klein bottle is a cyclic group of order two, that would be a good first step. Charles Matthews 10:29, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You almost certainly meant to say the fundamental group of the real projective plane ... sam Mon Aug 16 16:36:40 CDT 2004

Thanks, From the Klein bottle link I could manage to conclude that what I had thought was right, will follow the links and delve deeper. Still, I feel that some amount of dumbing down is required in the main intro to the subject:-)(even your explanation is a bit too much for me as a general reader:-)) KRS 10:43, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, we have to write this as an encyclopedia; the wikibooks project does textbooks. There's a constant effort to improve access and get the top-down view right. In the end we need good authors. The topology page is old in WP terms, and overdue for a rewrite, I'd agree. Charles Matthews 10:49, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sort → Sorting request

I'd like to move Sort algorithm to Sorting algorithm as the latter is the more common term and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs) says to use the gerund form of verbs. Unfortunately, the latter already exists as a redirect page, so I need an administrator to carry out the move. Can you help? Gdr 14:25, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)

Done quick-and-dirty (I'm no expert) - I have 'sorted' the double redirects. Charles Matthews 15:21, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you (I would have been happy to fix the double redirects). Gdr 15:29, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)

Reeh-Schlieder Theorem et. al.

Thanks for cleaning up after me! I hope I can improve my writing in the future, to minimize the need of this. Pjacobi 12:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No problem - it's much better, and what WP is particularly good at, if people with insights just write them when they feel inspired to. Charles Matthews 13:42, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Dedekind cut

(William M. Connolley 14:03, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)) Hi Charles. If you can face the pain, take a look at Fw's recent edit (and the comment tag) to Dedekind cut. I doubt he is right, but haven't waded through it yet. I used to know this stuff you know...

It's a bit of a slow day for me, ISP-to-WP wise, and probably brain-wise too. Yes, a somewhat odd claim which if true should be phrased in some other way, if at all. Just now I'm worrying about who Windus of Chatto & Windus was, when he was at home. Charles Matthews 14:58, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

HSD

Thanks for spotting the original spelling error and for recovering the content. A mystery indeed. Bmills 13:46, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I believe the page history is just gone. If you mind about the author's credit, why don't you paste it all back in again?

Charles Matthews 14:25, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Done. I'm going to look at expanding this, as per your comments on the talk page.Bmills 14:51, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I came across some web page alluding to his 'debunking' of the Lucy poems of Wordsworth - as the kind of thing he did in the 1960s. Not that I believe everything I read on the Web, I hasten to add. Charles Matthews

editable page ratings

I have also been giving this idea alot of thought. I think there should be a hierarchy of quality not unlike the current wikipedia:featured articles but multi tiered. Something like a series of 5 steps, 1 being vfd candidates / extreme POV articles in need of a rewrite/cleanup etc.., and 5 being "worthy of 1.0" articles which are indefinitely protected, w edits only made after consensus in the talk. These could be the sorts of articles capable of things like the disks and maybe even paper copy encyclopedias Jimbo keeps talking about. Each page could have its rank (maybe a number of stars or whatnot?) placed conspicuously upon it, along w a small link to where the voting on raising or reducing its status could take place. The exact mechanism of all this isn't my forte, but I am quite certain it is generally a rather good idea to have some notice of level of quality placed upon the articles. Comments if you will, Sam [Spade] 17:23, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually anyone, right now, could invent a 'Five-star article' category, and so on. No one will do this, I suppose, if it's just going to irritate people. And if the 'system' that emerged was just used for petty point-scoring, then it would get a bad reputation. But it does look as if it could all just happen, given social action behind it. Charles Matthews 17:59, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

k1

Thanks! Refdoc 12:17, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have raised it at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/--K1 Refdoc 15:02, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Al-Khwarizmi text

I'm trying to clean up the confusing of edit histories i & others did, by merging those that redirect to Al-Khwarizmi.

Your contribs offers no hint of what the

...page redirected here... of your talk edit was, and where the text came from.

Perhaps not even worth the time i've already given it, and i think i've double-checked all the redirs to Al-K, finding only 3 with meaningful text in their histories, and that it is not in the history of any of them. Do you remember what page this was about?

Thanks in any case!
--Jerzy (t) 02:21, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

Well, I'm puzzled by this too. I guess I may have been trying to salvage text from a redirect made by someone else; but I can't now see what happened. Charles Matthews 16:39, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for trying. At one point i looked at the amount of detail about the rulers, and wondered if it was an extract of an article about the period rather than him. But i think i've seen you around here long enuf that you're not someone who'd use "redirect" as a synonym for "copied into a new place".

But as i say, no biggie. Thanks!
--Jerzy (t) 04:13, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't have done such a thing recently. I see I did edit algorithm in June 2003, when I knew less, and this might just be a matter arising from that. Charles Matthews 02:36, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Many-worlds interpretation

I think I may need some mediation on this article. What should I do? CSTAR 23:34, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alexandrov - disambig. needed?

Hi Charles,

I have created an Aleksandrov (mathematician) to disambiguate between P.S. and A.D. Aleksandrov. I wonder whether a disambiguation is needed for Alexandrov as well - right now Alexandrov sends unconditionally to the town Alexandrov.

What do you think? BACbKA 19:34, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have added a short note. Charles Matthews 14:16, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Revert war

Charles, I have found myself in the middle of a bad revert war at quantum mechanics (Talk:quantum mechanics, history). what should i do? can you help? I think maybe the page should be locked until a consensus can be reached. I also feel that unless the consensus happens to be agreement with the anonymous editor, he will never stop making this particular change, and may have to be banned. - Lethe | Talk 09:26, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

OK - I think just stay cool about this: it is a limited change, not vandalism, by someone who doesn't understand WP norms (or doesn't want to). Try not to get too involved in reverting! Charles Matthews 14:16, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Finished mathematics ?

Hi Charles, have you ever heard of this term before? Does it have wide usage? Paul August 22:08, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, this is someone's personal sociological term. Charles Matthews 09:14, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Never heard of it either. VfD? Gadykozma 18:19, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI: I've VfD'ed it. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Finished mathematics. Gadykozma 14:15, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Zassenhaus lemma

I initiated this article and meant at some point to include a diagram explaining the lepidopteral etymology. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia though, and don't know how to convert the .pstex diagram I have to .png. I don't know why, but the WikInformation I've gleaned on the subject hasn't been to helpful. Do you have any knowledge on this matter you could share with me? Please reply to my talk page. Thanks, mat_x 16:39, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fourier series

Charles, if you are going to continue edit Fourier series, note that I intend to rip out most of the "convergence" section and make it into a separate article. I started working on that article offline. Gadykozma 18:20, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK - I wasn't going to spend much time there, in fact. Please note that the gap between what an engineer might need, and Carleson's work, is quite big!

Charles Matthews 18:24, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this is precisely my point... I added most of the stuff in this section and now I realize that it's out of place and makes the article uneven and unfocused on its audience. Hence the rewrite. Gadykozma 23:28, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Balloon problem

I'm inclined to list Balloon problem on VfD, but I see that you put in some effort to clean it up, so I thought I'd check with you first. Even cleaned up, do you think the article has any value? It's an orphan except for the link that its author inserted in Big Brother television program, a link that should probably also be deleted (once the format of the show is explained, the link to the balloon analogy adds nothing). JamesMLane 11:57, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Balloon debate is something well known, I think. So, if you object to balloon problem, why not merge it into the former?

Charles Matthews 11:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Could do with your help

Could you have a look at the anon additions of some guy's link to an alternative treatment(?) of the mean value theorem there? (external link at the bottom). It smells badly of crank but I don't think I'll be able to make a 100% accurate judgement on it right now... and you've definately got the smarts for it... ;) Dysprosia 09:00, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not encyclopedic, anyway. Charles Matthews 09:16, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kidoke, I'll remove it. Thanks Dysprosia 09:23, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

John_Gabriel's_Nth_root_algorithm

thanks, now it looks even better --Deelkar 08:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome. Charles Matthews 08:39, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Hausdorff paradox

You probably know better how to solve the problem with link in Talk:Hausdorff paradox, or mybe you can suggest whom should I ask for help. Tosha

Perhaps just give this link

http://134.76.163.65/agora_docs/28887TABLE_OF_CONTENTS.html

and ask people to click themselves by the Hausdorff paper. Charles Matthews 19:33, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I did this way but it probably should be a better solution...? Tosha

William Watson

Thanks for pointing out my error with the William Watson image. I checked the original which said his date of birth is 1715, so most likely it should be at William Watson (scientist). I've noted this on the image description page and removed the image from the article. Angela . 13:03, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Notability

The article isn't notable - it's just that I deleted the notable template following consensus on templates for deletion. For good measure, I deleted the article too. Snowspinner 15:36, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Computer games Category

You added Evil Genius (game) to the "Computer Games" category. This had only 1 item, which was said game. I have moved the game to the "PC games" category, which is much more populous. --TIB (talk) 22:34, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

Sparse matrix

I did some work on sparse matrix recently and plan to expand the page futher in the next few days. I have redirected and merged some of your pages (such as Sparsity, sparse graph) to sparse matrix as I think those topics are closely related and should be discussed on the same page, at least for now. I do not know if sparse matrix is a good name for the page but in lack of better term I will leave the name as is. Feel free to rename the page or change the structure of the page. And thanks for the spellchecking you did on my recent edits.MathMartin 13:49, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I suspect that sparsity is a broad enough concept to require a free-standing page of its own, one day. I can't myself add much content on that right now; so let's leave it for the moment.

Charles Matthews 14:45, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please advise on polynomial basis

I just finished writing up a gentle introduction to polynomial bases and although I had previously checked to see if "canonical basis" existed, I didn't check to see if standard basis existed. I believe both standard basis and polynomial basis are talking about the same thing (at least from the first sentence), and in crypto the terms are equivalent. The second paragraph is greek to me, so if you can confirm that they are the same thing, then you or I can merge the articles.

Also, I plan on writing similar intros to the currently redlinked primitive polynomial, normal basis, and change of bases, so don't worry about them too much. Cheers. CryptoDerk 00:42, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

There is something about normal basis, in the sense that I'd understand it, at regular representation. What you've written is the finite field case (for extensions of the prime field). It all seems to be compatible. Charles Matthews 07:04, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please RV move of Analytic tableaux

The french plural "tableaux" is very much fixed as the preferred term for these things amongst researchers (eg. the two conference/workshop series); also I checked relative incidence on google for logic relevant hits which strongly favours tableaux.

Please move Analytic tableau back to Analytic tableaux ---- Charles Stewart 08:28, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, is there a real problem here? Analytic tableaux redirects. I've seen a large number of Google hits for 'analytic tableau' too, so it's clearly a current term. We usually use the singular as the WP title, unless there is a very good semantic reason otherwise (as in the case of orthogonal polynomials). Unless you tell me that it fails in some way to make sense without the -x, the move seems to be normal practice to me.

Charles Matthews 08:54, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, having looked again at the article, I think it could be clarified. Perhaps method of analytic tableaux would in fact be a better title all round.

Charles Matthews 09:07, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Analytic tableau" does occur in the literature, but it is an oddity; the plural really is preferable (4680 vs. 277 Google hits, FWIW, with the latter mostly adjectival occurrences of tableau, eg. in analytic tableau calculi) . "method of analytic tableaux" is OK, but if we go down this route, perhaps "tableau methods" or "tableau calculi" is better; hopefully it introduces no risk of ambiguity. ---- Charles Stewart 11:55, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Right - I've moved it; if you want to improve on that, go ahead. Charles Matthews 12:14, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, it needs cleanup now. I've no time now, hopefully soon. ---- Charles Stewart 12:28, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)