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Talkback
Hello, David Eppstein. You have new messages at Faizan's talk page. Message added 10:18, 4 July 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
See your nom page for this. Needs one thing. PumpkinSkytalk 12:11, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Article: Weak Ordering
Hello Administrator David Eppstein,
I was notified that the tags I placed on Weak Ordering were reverted. I respect your decision; could you please tell me why they got reverted so I do not put them in the future? Thanks. --JustBerry (talk) 01:14, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
Frankly, they looked like vandalism, and if you hadn't placed other good tags on other articles I would have thought they were vandalism and left you a warning for it. One source, when there are 16? Original research and additional citations, when pretty much everything is footnoted? Reliability of the sources, when all are in reliably published books, scientific journals, and newspapers? I couldn't figure out what you were thinking, or what you might have thought was actually problematic with the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:04, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
I have looked back in my browser history, and it seems to me that I flagged the wrong article. I apologize about that; thanks for the reversion. --JustBerry (talk) 10:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK for Circle Limit III
DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
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Kieran Healy
Hey there. I just thought I would drop you a note thanking you for your edits to Kieran Healy. It's a lovely article, particularly given the dearth of coverage academic figures are usually provided. Regards, Hakamiso (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the nomination — I had been thinking of nominating it myself, but hadn't yet formulated a good hook, and now you've saved me the effort. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
O-notation: theory of graphs section.
Hi. I think your opinion ("I agree with the removal of the graph algorithm section; it's redundant with the computer science section, and mostly about other notational conventions. Do we need separate sections for each different kind of algorithm? I think that's a bad idea.")
is misplaced: it should be included in the talk section of the page. My own opinion is that this section is misplaced and should be improved. Since I am not a specialist in graph theory (are you?), I am not going to do it myself. But if you suppress the section completely, there is no way this improvement will ever be done. Sapphorain (talk) 07:25, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
My opinion is that a section on which variable names to use for graph algorithm analysis, and another section on which variable names to use for string algorithm analysis, and another section on which variables to use for computational geometry algorithm analysis, and another section on which variable names to use for sorting algorithm analysis, and ... (all of them separate from the section on algorithm analysis itself) makes no sense at all, especially in an article that is neither about algorithm analysis nor about variable names. I think the section absolutely should be suppressed. It is off-topic and out of balance with the rest of the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:43, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Ok. I guess in this particular case you are probably right. But still this is my own (modified) opinion, others might not agree. So next time you feel the irrepressible urge to suppress a page section, could you please submit the issue to the talk page before doing it? This particular section had been on the page at least since 2006 (i didn't check before that year), unchanged, and nobody objected until now. Sapphorain (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK for Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model
DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
You are invited to "Come Edit Wikipedia!" at the West Hollywood Library on Saturday, July 27th, 2013. There will be coffee, cookies, and good times! -- Olegkagan (talk) — Message delivered by Hazard-Bot at 03:27, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
Michael G. Crandall picture
David,
This is not a violation of the www.ams.org copyright. Please visit their website and review the policy before removing images. I have provided legitimate sources that trace the image to the site:
http://www.ams.org/about-us/copyright— Preceding unsigned comment added by Altairs assasin (talk • contribs) 18:02, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
The page you link to says nothing about releasing their images under a Creative Commons license, which is what is required to have the picture here and on Wikimedia commons. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:04, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
The article of whom I am writing in Wikipedia Dr.(Prof.) T.C.Rao is a renowned scientist in India. He is known as the father of Mineral Process Engineering in India. His contributions led to an exceptional change in the field of mineral engineering in India. He introduced new technologies and new mathematical models in Mineral Processing Technology. He is a very good administrator and produced very good engineers.
Providing information of such a person to the public is not a bad thing. Also I have not finished uploading this article yet. Editing the article upon the suggestions of experts. Also I am thankful about the change you made for the title. As I am a new user I am not well aware of all the rules of wikipedia, but working out according to the expert reviews. Kindly suggest me if changes have to be done. But I request you to visit the links I provided or Google his name in the web so you could know about him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KiranKumarPediredla (talk • contribs) 10:13, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
Edits to Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr
Just wanted to let you know you were correct to revert Internetmeme's edits to the article. There is no raster/video involved in the game, the beam is directly manipulated via EM controls by the player in a vector manner resulting in a single vector dot moving about the screen. The reason the game is important, is because as cited it's the first usage of a CRT in an arcade game (what's classified as an EM or electromechanical arcade game).--Marty Goldberg (talk) 08:24, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK-Good Article Request for Comment
Did you know ... that since you expressed an opinion on the GA/DYK proposal last year, we invite you to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the matter? Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Regards, GilderienChat|What I've done22:53, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
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Weber]] in 1909.<ref>Weber, Alfred, 1909, Über den Standort der Industrien, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr) — English translation: The Theory of the Location of Industries, Chicago, Chicago University Press,
:<math>\sum_{i=1}^n w_i\, \|x_i-y\|),</math>
* Weber, Alfred, 1909, Über den Standort der Industrien, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr) — English translation: The Theory of the Location of Industries, Chicago, Chicago University Press,
Ok, thanks for the heads up, I'll try to get over there some time to express my opinion. And regardless of my disagreement with your initial edit, thanks for taking this effort to improve the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK question
Hi David. I'm afraid some of the instructions got left off the template for Template:Did you know nominations/Town Range - it needs one reviewer to state whether they "perceive any conflict of interest or promotional concerns about the article under review". Could you please do this? Prioryman (talk) 07:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Just a quick update - the other reviewer has taken care of this. Thanks anyway for your help with the review. Prioryman (talk) 19:11, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK for Quadrisecant
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My False Proof of the Four Color Theorem
...was based on a simple observation: lines are of two kinds: open and closed. The former need no more than two colors, regardless of the number of segments; and the latter no more than three: also regardless of the number of their segments. The background would add yet another color, increasing the number to no more than four. Then all that's left is to notice that in order to add a fifth color, one has to connect at least two such segments with a line; but when this is done, a separation occurs, which permits a recoloring of the graph's remaining section, thus reducing the number of necessary colors to no more than four. Yet, as logic as this might sound, it is apparently wrong, for some reason, and I still haven't figured out why... And graph theory is impenetrable to my humble little mind. If you'd ever find the time and the desire to clarify this dilemma for me, in layman's terms, it would be greatly appreciated... Thank you. — 79.113.221.193 (talk) 08:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
Hamming distance
You undid my edits about hamming distance on a chessboard.
That's fine, but it's still ambiguous. A Hamming code refers to the coordinates of the corners of an N-dimensional cube. As you know, the Hamming distance is the number of moves in each dimension to get from one code to another.
If your dimensional model isn't binary - if for example it's not a unit cube but a 5x5x5 cube - then what's the hamming distance?
For example, consider a code where each individual bit is repeated 5 times. Each digit of the code is taken to be the "sum" of 1's received at that position, and may be any number between 0 and 5.
In this case, the Hamming distance is not the number of "dimensions" needed to go from one code to the next, but also accounts for the length taken on that dimension.
The chessboard is an inappropriate model for Hamming's simple definition - either it's a unit square, in which case the 8x8 chessboard is confusing, or it's a 2-d figure of measure 8x8 in which case the Hamming distance is more subtle.
It may be more appropriate to just not mention chessboards at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.181.76.252 (talk) 16:28, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
In a 5x5x5 cube, Hamming distance is (and can only be) how many of the three coordinates are different from each other. So it is 0, 1, 2, or 3. Even in a 100x100x100 cube, the Hamming distance can only be at most 3. As for the chessboard vs unit square: Hamming distance is most commonly defined over discrete spaces like the chessboard. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:32, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Rule 30 ECA Wikipedia article
I have made a comment on the Rule 30 discussion page concerning the citation to a paper claiming a statistical failure finding, please let me know if you would like to have that conversation here or over there. Thanks 80.216.37.78 (talk) 16:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Over there is more appropriate, thanks. That way it is more likely for others to see and join in. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Minimum polynomials
Hi David,
You are probably a wrong person to forward this information to, but since you are the only English-speaking mathematician wikipedian that I know, here it is: I did fr:Polynôme minimal des valeurs spéciales trigonométriques, which covers more or less the same as Trigonometry angles at Mathworld. This subject is not covered yet on the English Wikipedia. Would you forward this information to whom might be interested? Sorry for the trouble. --MathsPoetry (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for having forwarded this at the right place. I am kind of noob here... --MathsPoetry (talk) 11:57, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Hopf fibration
David, you are very welcome to correct my grammar, but you should not make the statement wrong,
even if it sounds better.
These circles do NOT lie on a common torus.
I hope you will correct it.
--Tosha (talk) 02:00, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia Meetup
Help build the Wikipedia community in Southern California at "Come Edit Wikipedia!" presented by the West Hollywood Library on Saturday, August 31st, 2013 from 1-5pm. Drop in for some lively editing and conversation! Plus, it's a library, so there are plenty of sources. --Olegkagan (talk) — Message delivered by Hazard-Bot at 02:11, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
What's the real problem?
Hello, David
Let me ask it straight: What's the real problem? I had never before encountered this unusually high degree of hostility from an administrator (who are normally very lovely) and especially not from you. User talk:Ohconfucius's equally aggressive reaction is too alarming. What's going down here?
Seriously, did anyone tell you I have eloped with your sister? I swear I did not!
Hello, David Eppstein. You have new messages at Nbarth's talk page. Message added 11:28, 25 August 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Geometric lattice: clarification about atoms in graded lattice
Hello David Eppstein, you removed my clarification request in the
matroid lattice" links to "Geometric lattice", and matroid lattices are in fact explained in the article. According to the text they are not necessarily finite. Moreover, in the "Definition" section, a graded lattice is defined in a way that doesn't imply finiteness, and (as I'm still convinced) that doesn't even imply existence of atoms. It is therefore confusing to speak about "the atoms of a graded lattice"; some clarification should be done about this. Maybe, a rank function should be defined to map to N rather than to Z; maybe it should be said that only lattices with atoms are considered (I'd favor this alternative); maybe (as your remark seems to indicate) it should be said that only finite lattices are considered (but then what about matroid lattices?). Regards Jochen Burghardt (talk
) 09:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
It still has to have finite rank, and therefore atoms. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:00, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
With the current version of the definition of "graded", every dense order is graded by e.g. the constant function mapping everything to 0. Maybe, strict monotonicity of r, formally: ∀x,y. x<y⇒r(x)<r(y), should be required (as Birkhoff did) to prevent such cases. If in addition the existence of a bottom element was required, that would imply the existence of atoms. Jochen Burghardt (talk) 07:01, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I suppose you're correct. Strict monotonicity seems like a straightforward enough way to prevent this sort of pathology. I don't think the existence of a bottom element needs to be stated as an explicit requirement: instead we can state that the bottom element (if it exists) has rank zero — it will be forced to exist by strict monotonicity and the later assumption that there exists an atom. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I made an according update, as a suggestion. Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, it looks good to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:49, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards
.
If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Wikipedia's
Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
.
Do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive until the dispute is resolved through consensus. Continuing to edit disruptively may result in your being blocked from editing. Sincerly, camerontregantalk 06:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
I suppose I should template you in response, for repeatedly restoring unsourced content in violation of our requirements for
pointy, so why don't we take that as read. Please try harder next time to focus your editing on more constructive activity, and not on protecting useless cruft. —David Eppstein (talk
) 06:14, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
At least give the original contributor of that section a warning and follow it up with them.
Sincerly, camerontregantalk 06:18, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Apparently you didn't take it as read, since you have restored the unsourced content, so I have templated you after all. At this point, you are the one adding this content back — the editor who originally perpetrated it is long gone. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
That last contribution to the discussion is very strange. Reads totally like an experienced AfD contributor but the only person whose arguments it resembles in spirit or language are mine (and I didn't post it) -- odd that someone would do an SPA for a discussion that they could have contributed to from an established account. Not sure what to make of it. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert(talk) 14:14, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I noticed that it looked like an experienced user when I tagged it as a spa. As you say, odd, but I don't think anything needs to be done about it. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:09, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Hi,
Please do not remove the BLPPROD template until a (reliable) source is added that NAMES Jack Whitlock. None of the sources currently on the page contain his name, and this is an essential part of BLPPROD. Please see
WP:BLPPROD
for clarification.
Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Aschoff Solar
Dear Mr. Eppstein,
why did you delete the article about our company "Aschoff Solar"?
Yes, that's why I added "emeritus" to his named chair title. "Emeritus" is the academic word for "retired". —David Eppstein (talk) 19:39, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
I am also guessing that the Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets, which he used to direct, is no longer funded. I could not find it in an award search on the DOE webpage. given that it is first funded in 2007, and these centers are usually on five year cycles, the end of the funding cycle seems to coincide with his retirement. of course, no one announces the end of a center, just the start of one. Frietjes (talk) 19:52, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and then the old web pages just stick around unmaintained until the machine they are hosted on goes away. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Santiago B. Villafania
Please participate in the RfC for this article. Cheers! NoyPiOka (talk) 04:29, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, but I don't have a lot of understanding of what makes a poet notable in that part of the world. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Help with Academic papers?
Hi David, For whatever reason someone has started an article on my brother: Michael Cates to which I have added a few prizes where he was already listed on the wiki page as a recipient. However the article has one not very special publication listed whereas there are a very large number: [1]. Aside number of citations is there any particular way to choose more appropriate ones to list? If we do use citations is it Google Scholar or something else? I guess I feel if we have an article we should do it properly. --BozMotalk 09:55, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Unless I know a subject well, my usual rule of thumb is to pick the top ones on Google scholar and any that have won prizes (such as best paper awards), aiming for fiive or so total. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:55, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Hi David, this is just to thank you for the nice work you are doing with the Hans Lewy entry: consequently, since
I haven't yet find a cheap copy of his selecta,
I'm not aware of other important biographical/scientific sources on him and his work,
I've decided to remove the entry from my watchlist but nevertheless follow your work on it. Again many thanks, and good work. :-D Daniele.tampieri (talk) 06:28, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. The article still could use a lot more material on Lewy's contributions to mathematics, but I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with that side of mathematics to do it justice. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:17, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Algebraic closure
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contains a copy of the field of order ''p''<sup>''n''</sup> for each positive [[integer]] ''n'' (and is in fact the union of these copies.<ref>{{citation|title=Infinite Algebraic Extensions of
is again separable, there are no finite separable extensions of ''K<sup>sep</sup>'', of degree > 1. Saying this another way, ''K'' is contained in a ''separably-closed'' algebraic extension field.
Thanks,
talk
) 03:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Notability of people
To continue our discussion from PROF, feel free to disregard if you don't want to discuss further. I guess the question comes down to why we have notability standards in the first place. I don't mean these questions as a rhetorical trap, but to gain insight into your logic: Why do you think we have notability standards? Would you be in favor of getting rid of them entirely? Gigs (talk) 14:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
At least in the context of PROF, because we'd be overrun with linkedin profiles of people with no discernable permanent contribution to the world otherwise. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:57, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
Why would that be a problem? (Getting a little socratic) Gigs (talk) 18:44, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
It's obviously not a problem for sites such as linkedin to exist. But they have a different purpose. On such a site, one spins one's own accomplishment in order to further one's own career. Here we're supposed to be neutral and objective and catalogue all important human knowledge. It's not really possible to do that with articles that no neutral editor cares about. So to be a good topic here, the subject's significance has to rise to that level: someone whose article neutral editors will take the trouble to maintain, in enough numbers to offset the spin that's sure to come from the non-neutrals. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
I agree there. If that's your view though, why do you not seem to have more of a problem with the current people notability standards, especially prof, based on things other than secondary source biographical coverage? If there are no other sources that give biographical coverage (other than primary sources like a staff CV on a university site, which are often self-published), doesn't that indicate that there really aren't enough neutral people out there that care enough to maintain an article here, if no one anywhere else has done it? Gigs (talk) 18:34, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
Please explain the regular K5 associahedron's irrelevance
I already described the high significance of this regular K5 in the edit summary. Its regular hexagonal symmetry indeed induces for all its 14 vertices to lie on one sphere, all vertex latitudes and longitudes are multiples of 30°, in every vertex only 3 edges come together → not too small angles for the planetary map printing in a vertex, … → So that this regular K5 yields indeed specially well visualisation of every rotating spherical objects surface if a spherical shape of the visualizing model should be avoided (e.g. like described in http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Dither/ProjPoly/Foldout/Dodecahedron). Furthermore
WP:CALC allows further own pure mathematical conclusions. It is hence not justified simply to delete this whole chapter? --MathLine (talk
) 14:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
The existence of multiple published papers on realizations of the associahedron makes it clear that this goes well beyond the sorts of calculations allowed by
original research. In addition, "regular" is the wrong word for something that does not have all of its faces regular, and it's not clear if/how this generalizes to higher dimensions. —David Eppstein (talk
) 16:11, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Spaces into <math> tag
Hi: I know that spaces into <math> tag have no effect on the presentation. But there were something wrong in the formula (see: preview here) and I put it in a suitable way to verify. Thanks. --Ferran Mir (talk) 10:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
Sitchin
129 other similar edits, asking for mass rollback at ANI. Some of the BLPs already have cats that BLP forbids.
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