User talk:Cronholm144/Archive 4

It might have helped to hide it if you had called it "User:Cromholm144/Mmorpg" :P and hadn't said "my sandbox". As it is, I just looked at Special:Allpages/User:Cronholm144/. I'm sorry to have caused you embarrassment, but for a sandbox article under construction it actually looked pretty good to me.  --Lambiam^Talk 14:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the compliment :) and the info (I learn something new every day). Cheers--Cronholm144 15:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also found it, but I used your contribs. Good work! I sometimes use sandboxes myself, but I think in general it is better (and more fun) not to be shy, and get it out there into the main space.

Geometry guy 15:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I am a very shy person/contributer so sandboxes are my way of "being bold" (lowercase) without subjecting myself to criticism. For example, my recent talk with SteakNShake left me completely drained because I tend to take things to heart. I think Willow and I are alike in this regard. I am always trying to Be more Bold, but it is the hardest thing for me to do here at WP. --Cronholm144 15:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know what you mean. Particularly hard for me is when another editor is offended by something I do or say, even "editors" like SteakNShake. Anyway, you and Willow have something else in common: you are both very fine and valued contributors to WP! Keep up the good work ;)

Geometry guy 16:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks Everyone! :)--Cronholm144 17:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cronholm. I have a small comment about the "in construction" template on top of integral. It is not good if it stays on for more than a day or two, as it may prevent other people from editing it. If you have little time, one suggestion is to work section by section, without having it even on at all. Anyway, just a suggestion. You can reply here if you have comments. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:17, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was following the lead of Fowlerandfowler at Indian mathematics. The template has been there for a couple weeks and I thought that since Integral was the MATHCOTM it was appropriate. I will remove it straightaway. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 08:44, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like you beat me to it :)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 08:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just FYI, Fowler&fowler had a horrible edit war with a guy called Freedom Skies about a month or two before you burst onto the scene. The whole mess ended up with the arbitration committee, You can see the notice of their decision here. Anyway, the articles about Indian contributions to mathematics tend to get quite contentious, mainly because of Indian nationals who make unsupportable claims (we invented calculus in 5000 BCE! we're all as brilliant as Ramanujan! etc.). So Indian mathematics is a special case, since it will probably take a long time to reform it. DavidCBryant 13:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at that arbitration a week ago when I first stumbled across the article and rated it. Hopefully F&F can stay edit war free until he is done fixing the article. So far I think there have been 2 minor incidents since Freedom skies. Jagged85 and Makafaat, the former being resolved on the talk page and the latter being reverted once each by David Eppstein and F&F. F&F is making major headway, the article will be a strong FA by the time he is done with it. Anyway, I hope that Integral can make similar strides towards FA quality during this next month. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 14:14, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cronholm. Thank you for the picture at Stokes' theorem. And I have one suggestion, could you make the text a bit larger and the lines a bit thicker, perhaps. This way it is a bit hard to see things in the thumb. If you don't mind of course. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And if you could make the notation in the picture be the same as in the text, that would be awesome too. (These are minor things, the big thing is that the picture is there, but I thought I'd just let you know about these things.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure Oleg no problem. I just got to LA for orientation so it might take me a little while to find time but it will be first on my to-do list.--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 14:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering, what orientation, for school? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Freshman orientation at USC. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 20:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. :) If you happen to come around Westwood, and have time, let me know. I'd like to meet you, and perhaps go for a beer or something. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:28, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, I think that I might be able to tomorrow... but I won't have time to work it out until later this evening (after I finish planning my freshman year) :) .--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 14:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Busy guy in new town, heh. :) Please don't make it a priority to drop by here, only of course if you want to visit around anyway. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm tempted to fly over just to enjoy a beer in such fine company! I hope you guys do meet anyway!

Since I am going to be living not 20 minutes away from Oleg (albeit at his rival school) :) the meeting seems inevitable, whether we meet tomorrow or not is up to my spotty internet and our respective schedules. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 02:17, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi C. Getting to have a drink (non-alcoholic, of course) with a fellow Wikipedian was great, thanks! Geometry guy, if you're reading this, we said many good things about you. :) Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:19, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you toasted the fact that there are now more than 2500 rated articles!

Geometry guy 01:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Gosh, I manged to forget about that one! (And well, toasting with Sprite ain't that cool to start with :) You two are definitely doing a lot of awesome work however, so you'll go untoasted, but not unnoticed. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Too bad. Another time eh? Maybe 5000?

Geometry guy 00:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I had a great time too. Nothing like a little maternal drama to cap off a excellent meeting. :) She was only concerned for about 15 minutes, so no worries. Anyway, I am watchlist deprived so off I go to check it. I hope I didn't miss anything too exciting while I was gone. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 00:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

G-guy, what have you done to my watchlist!? So very many edits... It appears I have some serious catching up to do. :)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 02:29, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is perfectly understandable your mother was a bit worried since we came late by a half an hour. In retrospect, I think I should have introduced myself to her before I picked you up, or kept better track of time, or both. I am 30 now, and my mother still worries if I come late from somewhere (back when I visit home).

Geometry guy, when we hit 5000 articles you man better fly over here and we do a bash. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nice idea to bring hopeless looking stubs to the round table! The prospect of deletion is a very effective motivator! Am I right in thinking that between us, we have now covered A-D, K and Z? Anything else?

Thanks, It will be interesting to see how many survive. X, Y, and Oleg's list too. Cheers and see you at the round table.--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, yes, you told me about X and Y: I'm getting forgetful in my old age. So that is A-D, K, X-Z and

How do I get it to present that page automatically?--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 02:40, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I will take care of J and K tonight

What I do is the following: I save the list of Talk pages in a plain text file. Then I load this text file into an editor with a search&replace facility and replace Talk:foo<newline> by foo<newline>Talk:foo<newline>Talk:foo/Comments<newline> where foo denotes an expression without newlines in it. I use emacs for this, in which case foo is \([^<newline>]*\) in the search string (which means "store the next string of characters without newlines in parameter 1"), and \1 in the replace string (which means "expand parameter 1"). I think AWB itself can do search and replace of "regular expressions" like this, so you could save the text file in a sandbox, and let AWB have a look at the sandbox. Anyway, once this is done, just load the new text file into AWB, and off you go.

I figured out how to do the search and replace with AWB. Go to normal "find and replace" and switch off the "add to edit summary" option. Then ask AWB to replace Talk:([^\r]*)\r\n with $1\r\nTalk:$1\r\nTalk:$1/Comments\r\n and check the "Regex" box. See this diff for AWB in action.

Thanks for the explanation! I ended up using the multiple tabs approach to sign all of the articles, it seemed to go more quickly. I think I hit all of the J and K's that I rated.--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 00:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A joint message to you and

First off, thanks for your work rerating what I have missed/misrated. I have noticed the same trend (see Geometry guy's talk page (your mathematical antithesis and his encounter with Hardy)). I try to leave articles I am unsure of blank, but if I am unfamiliar with the topic (this happens all too often) I usually check the related articles to get a feeling of how it fits into the field. That said, now that I know that someone (other than me and G-guy) is going through those unassessed, I will be a little more liberal with leaving importance blank. Cheers and thanks again--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, will definitely look at the articles with blank assessments. This is the type of "known unknown", if you allow the expression, that is easy to find and thus help assess. Your work of unearthing the "unknown unknowns" by placing any assessment (blank or otherwise) on maths articles in a systematic manner is thus extremely valuable! Cheers again, Stca74 20:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't mind teaming up on the Calc. Book. Hopefully, since I'm out of classes for the Summer, I'll be more helpful than I was in the Partial Differential Equations book.

What exactly are you looking at?

Fephisto 18:44, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I replied on your talkpage on wikibooks--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Cronholm, I got your message on Wikibooks. Wikibooks goes through phases of interest and disinterest. At the beginning of this year there was a large inter-personal feud of sorts that has resulted in a relative lull in activity. I won't get into details about any of that here (it's basically irrelevant to our future work), but suffice it to say that we are slowly entering a new period of activity and interest.

Talk pages on wikibooks do tend to be disorganized and mostly abandoned. I would not consider that to be a failure on our part, but more an indication of the types of work that are done on wikibooks, and the manner in which they are performed. As opposed to Wikipedia where many hands make light work, Wikibooks has more of an environment of lone authors writing books without much interaction. Every author has their own niche, and the ratio of active books to active authors is very nearly 1:1. If the talk pages on the calculus book appear to be unused, it's likely because there is only ever one active author working on that book at a time. This is not the case for all books, however, as some of our larger and more popular books do draw larger crowds of authors.

The upside to this situation is that you as an author have the relative freedom to make any changes to the book that you see fit. The downside is that if you want help and assistance, you typically need to go out recruiting for yourself. For this reason, Wikibooks does seem to have a more grass-roots outreach mentality then wikipedia does.

On a personal note, I am very active on wikibooks, and am available to help you in any way that you need. If you need pages deleted, make up a list and send it to me, or otherwise tag the pages with {{

delete}} and an admin will get to it eventually (although admins are typically not in any hurry to empty the speedy-delete backlogs). You can feel free to send me a message any time, and I'll see what I can do to help. --User:Wknight8111 (WB:Whiteknight) 18:12, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

• The indentation (by an invisible initial colon) of the "displayed" TeX is required by Wikipedia conventions.

• Writing \max rather than just max in TeX not only prevents italicization but also makes the subscript appear directly below "max" rather than below and to the right, and results in proper spacing between "max" and what precedes and follows it. Its use is standard and just writing max without the backslash is universally considered incorrect.

• Using TWO adjacent TeX displays rather than just one results in very bad misalignment on the browser I'm using, and I have no doubt it does the same on most others.

• A sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with proper punctuation such as a period at the end of a simple declarative sentence.

• Some of your edits elsewhere prompt me to remind you of the differences between the following three forms:

${\displaystyle a_{1}+...+a_{n}\,}$

${\displaystyle a_{1}+\dots +a_{n}\,}$

${\displaystyle a_{1}+\cdots +a_{n}\,}$

Michael Hardy 15:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gee, sorry Michael, I am rather new to both Wikipedia and TeX. I have been learning as I go. I did request on the talk page of Siegel's lemma for someone to clean up my bad writing. I keep the WP:FORMULA up at all times when I am writing. My mistakes were not intentional, I just couldn't figure out how to get the TeX to parse properly. Thanks for the explanation and no it is not to much to ask. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 21:42, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct ellipsis choice is a common problem, so let's spell it out. For sums and products, the \cdots form is best. For lists with commas, use \ldots. Never use three dots/periods/full stops. Thus,

${\displaystyle (a_{0},a_{0}+a_{1},a_{0}+a_{1}+a_{2},\ldots ,a_{0}+a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots +a_{n}).\,\!}$

By the way, I see that Michael silently inserted a period inside the TeX markup to terminate the sentence (as did I). Tastes vary on whether to punctuate displayed equations; but if you do it, follow his example.

As for adjacent <math> markup, I can think of no good reason to do it (and several reasons not to do it). TeX often has better taste in spacing than authors, but provides positive and negative spacing commands for fine tuning. Going one step further, since we now have support for the \begin{align} environment, most multiline TeX is best typeset in one piece. Thus, we can state the quadratic equations (plural) as

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}x&{}={\frac {-b\pm {\sqrt {b^{2}-4ac}}}{2a}}\\&{}={\frac {2c}{-b\mp {\sqrt {b^{2}-4ac}}}}.\end{aligned}}}$

I'm constantly reminded that Don Knuth originally designed TeX for his own use; it's friendly for him, but less so for others. Hope these tips help. --KSmrq^T 20:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, it does help. :)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 21:42, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi C. Thank you for the picture at

I have a question. Why do your axes point in all directions? I'd think the x-axis should only point right, while the y axis only up. What do you think? You can reply here. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One more note, the commons images should be categorized, so that they are easier to find (I found some good images uploaded by others that way). I put your commons image in Category:Calculus. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:12, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Go ahead and change it. The same goes for all of my images that you want to change. I usually de-orphan my images later but thanks for doing it for me. I am trying to make spherical and cylindrical pics right now, take a look once they are done. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To show the nice things gnuplot can do (and to show a global minimum that's not at a boundary), I've added a new picture at the top and moved yours next to the examples at the bottom. Feel free to switch them (and their mention in the text) if you like. The essential bits of gnuplot used were:

1. Use a parametric function, to separate plot range from function range.
2. Choose a font family and font size.
3. Draw arrows.
4. Add labels.

I think the following captures the necessary input:

set terminal svg  fname 'Bitstream Vera Sans'  fsize 18
set output 'Extrema_example.svg'
set arrow 1 from 0.2, 4.87785, 0 to 0.1, 5.87785, 0 filled
set arrow 2 from 0.396918, -4.17152, 0 to 0.296918, -3.17152, 0 filled
set arrow 3 from 0.549485, 2.51954, 0 to 0.649485, 1.51954, 0 filled
set arrow 4 from 0.888656, -2.0057, 0 to 0.988656, -1.0057, 0 filled
set label 1 "global maximum" at 0.2, 4.37785, 0 left
set label 2 "global minimum" at 0.396918, -4.67152, 0 left
set label 3 "local maximum" at 0.549485, 3.01954, 0 right
set label 4 "local minimum" at 0.888656, -2.5057, 0 right
set parametric
set trange [ 0.100000 : 1.10000 ]
set xrange [ 0.000000 : 1.20000 ]
set yrange [ -6.50000 : 6.50000 ]
set xzeroaxis
f(x)=cos(3*pi*x)/x
plot t,f(t)

Anything that's missing you can probably figure out. There is a learning curve, but given all the capabilities it's not too bad. Sometimes typing is quicker than using the menus, but then you must remember what to type. Two limitations: the plots are piecewise linear approximations that may not look smooth if magnified greatly, and the minus signs used for the labels are hyphens. (With some effort, both of these can be fixed after the file is generated.) --KSmrq^T 23:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thats great! Thanks so much, hopefully I can do Willow's graph now. :) --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 23:28, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nice job, KSmrq. A suggestion though, could you either make the text bigger or the picture larger, as currently the text is rather hard to see in the thumb. If you have time, of course. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, since the SVG is just a text stream, it would be relatively easy for anyone to enlarge the font size. The only potential problem is that the enlarged text might bump into other parts of the image. I didn't worry too much about it, because the arrows are still visible (to me, anyway), and because it's deliberately presented as a thumbnail. The absolutely trivial adjustment is to ask for a larger thumbnail size; previously it was noticeably larger (too large for small screens and low bandwidth, I thought). --KSmrq^T 03:52, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please, do it, I am currently working on several things (LaTeX wikibook in French, ma PhD that is waiting for 6 years to be finished, ...) so I will not be able to do it right now.

Thanks for this.

Regards

cdang|write me 12:51, 22 June 2007 (UTC) (please answer on fr:)[reply]

Yes, I had a great trip. China is amazing -- new skyscrapers, canals, highways, everywhere. The one-child policy has to be one of the great political decisions of all time. They are more capitalist than the Republicans -- no welfare, no socialized medicine, no pensions, no restrictions on business, no political freedom, and more legal executions than any other country on earth. The people are friendly and hardworking. The children are well fed and well clothed. The families on holiday and the old men doing tai chi in the park all seemed happy.

The only downside: the constant, pushy, vendors and pollution so thick I still have a bad cough.

Rick Norwood 15:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds awesome, I had no idea that the political climate was so capitalistic. Where did you stay(countryside or city... both)? I daresay that you have missed quite a lot of interesting drama here at WP:WPM. Thanks mainly to Geometry guy, over 2,500 articles have been assessed using the WP 1.0 criteria. We had a run-in with

I wish I knew more about all of these committees you mention. Where would you suggest I start? Rick Norwood 16:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I wouldn't start with GA/R, the good article review, the math project had a run in with them and tempers are still somewhat hot (mainly over inline citation). G-guy is the acting liaison and is doing a great job and eventually I think these wounds will scar over. The math collaboration of the month is just what it sounds like,

WT:WPM all this and there are still articles to write(I think I have 5 under my belt) :). BTW, I don't know if you know this, but my edit at calculus which you responded to was one of my very first here, so I am still finding my place here. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:19, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

I didn't know you were new here. You sound like an old hand. Rick Norwood 21:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Cronholm has taken to WP fast! And he was the one who pushed me into wanting to rate about 5-6K articles, and has contributed significantly to the 2000 or so that we have rated together so far: he is just too modest to say that himself. Relations with GA/R are on the mend: the people there are actually pretty nice once you understand their point of view, and there is an effort going on currently to clarify the GA/R process.

Geometry guy 21:29, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply

]

Hi Cronholm, thank you for taking a bold and much needed step of archiving the 'latin vs idiom' discussion. It had gotten long past the point of ridiculous and transcended into absurd. On the other hand, 'complex and expansive problems' ought to be fixed, per Pmanderson's comments. Arcfrk 15:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience Rick is a very reasonable editor and a compromise should be easy to reach. I think he was just reacting to Cheeser with his revert. He certainly won't be opposed to positive additions to the article. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 16:12, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Re your comment about my reverting to an earlier lede -- my intent was to just change "power series" to "infinite series", per talk. But the lede I found, by 220.171.211.7, was so bad that I chose an earlier lede more or less at random. I've posted the lede I like on the talk page. Your comments are appreciated. Rick Norwood 16:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The lead was written by Arcfrk(thus the reason for the worry in my message, the first time you reverted the lede, it was Arcfrk, not Cheeser you were reverting), not 220.xxx(the anon just changed typefaces), it is part of the the ongoing discussion at the talk page, I believe that Arcfrk already posted both versions for comparison. I will give both versions a more thorough look--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The lede I reverted had something about algebra being about variables and calculus being about functions, which did not make any sense at all to me. Rick Norwood 21:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]