Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Expressing certain symbols with math tags

I've been transcribing some equations for a work on Wikisource, and I need to draw a few symbols that appear in the equations: a semicircle (open, with the semicircle being the right half of the circle) and a rectangle (short and wide). I haven't figured out how to put them in, can anyone here help? Arcorann (talk) 05:54, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe try https://detexify.kirelabs.org/ ? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:03, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Without context it is difficult to know exactly what the symbols you're talking about are. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 03:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Are any of the following characters good for the rectangle? Right side is the decimal value.

▭: 9645

▯: 9647

▮: 9646

▬: 9644 Apersoma (talk) 13:51, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

U+25AD ▭ WHITE RECTANGLE is basically what I want but you can't put Unicode characters in LaTeX directly (it gives an error), so it doesn't work in math tags either. Arcorann (talk) 02:24, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Using decimal to identify Unicode is awkward; most readers familiar with Unicode will expect hexadecimal and some will interprete, e.g., 9656 as a reference to U+9645 际 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-9645 rather than to U+25AD ▭ WHITE RECTANGLE.

Searching found pages where people claim that U+25AD ▭ WHITE RECTANGLE can be handled in LaTeX by \fbox{~~}. However that fails to parse in the lobotomized version of LaTeX implemented by Wikimedia. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Is there wiki LaTeX support for U+25AC ▬ BLACK RECTANGLE, U+25AD ▭ WHITE RECTANGLE, U+25AE ▮ BLACK VERTICAL RECTANGLE and U+25AF ▯ WHITE VERTICAL RECTANGLE? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:01, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

$\blacksquare$ and $\Box ,\square$ seem to work here, but yield squares. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 18:48, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Usually in LaTeX you could also use \fbox, \framebox, or similar, but I don't think any comparable thing is supported in Wikipedia's version of LaTeX. –jacobolus (t) 19:34, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes you can hack together pieces of rectangles by combining vertical and horizontal rules; it's not ideal, but it can be made to work. An example is the notation $\vert \!{\underline {\,n}}$ appearing in the history section of factorial. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:22, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Vital articles project needs editors knowledgeable in mathematics

Hello everyone,

Vital Articles Level 5 has bumped into the current quota of 1,200 Mathematics' articles. With the quota full, we could use help sorting through Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Mathematics to begin sifting the list to find potential swaps/removals. Discussions about quota transfers are dead in the water until we can get the list cleaned up, and it is much easier to propose additions then removals. It takes experts to really look at a list like this and find the stuff that is really in the weeds and identify stuff that should be included but has been omitted. Statistics in particular seems to be a bit thin, and I believe some concepts in other sections could be trimmed to flush this section out. I hope some editors here might be interested.

Thanks for the help! GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:38, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

You might take a look at what "priority" articles have in the math wikiproject, and also the view counts. Such ratings and rankings aren't always consistent, but can sometimes give a useful signal. For example, here's a list of high-priority math articles sorted by yearly view count. If you could somehow add a "vital article level" column to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Popular pages that might be useful to compare. To be honest, sifting this list seems a lot less useful time for time vs. picking some articles from the list which are currently stub, start, or C class and working on them. If we covered mathematics carefully at the level implied by some of the entries here the list would probably end up 5x as long, but it would be tough to get anyone to agree on a list. You'd probably want to assign more granular article quotas to various topic areas and then poll experts in those topics to narrow down what they think is important. From an immediate glance here are some that I might kick off the list if it were up to me:

• Division sign
• Percent sign
• Infinity symbol
• Knuth's up-arrow notation
• Rectangular function
• Coplanarity
• Size
• Zero-dimensional space
• Minkowski's theorem
• Trinomial
• Multiple (mathematics)
• Feigenbaum constants
• Exponential integral

–jacobolus (t) 02:28, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Minkowski's theorem is the foundation of the geometry of numbers, and important because of that. I don't disagree about the others, though (even the one that I brought to Good Article status). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:09, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I would definitely keep zero-dimensional space, because of the importance of such spaces as the default setting of descriptive set theory. I think the ones we should really consider getting rid of I enter into this discussion a bit reluctantly are the ones that there's really not much to say about, like if and only if. Just because it's basic doesn't mean it's important to have an article about it. --Trovatore (talk) 04:56, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough, but we don't include such articles as (randomly found browsing around): General linear group, Invertible matrix, Jordan normal form, Geodesic, Gröbner basis, Discriminant, Covering space, Cohomology, Heron's formula, Slope, Cyclic group, Bernoulli number, Hypergeometric function, Centroid, Barycentric coordinate system, Hypotenuse, ... –jacobolus (t) 15:42, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Moment-generating function isn't quite what I'd call "vital". It's just a way of doing stuff with moments. The latter is level 5, and the former would be "level 6", i.e., one step down and thus not really within the scope of the Vital Articles project. XOR'easter (talk) 19:50, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Looking through the list for set theory, I feel similarly about a bunch of articles that could frankly just be sections in some other article. I would lose element (mathematics) and complement (set theory); this is mostly just explaining terminology. I wouldn't keep symmetric relation, reflexive relation, transitive relation separately; it's enough to have equivalence relation and partial order. We also don't need all the separate ZFC-axiom articles, though powerset, replacement, infinity, and choice should stay. On the other hand we should definitely add large cardinal and probably determinacy. --Trovatore (talk) 05:16, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

How about making some of the articles sections in a new Nomenclature (mathematics) article? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:42, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The existence of the articles is just fine. We're discussing here what should be listed as "vital articles", not which articles should exist at all. –jacobolus (t) 15:44, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

In that case, I don't see why any article about nomenclature should be a FA. Infinity, yes, but Infinity symbol? Integral, yes, but Integral symbol? Multiplication, maybe, but Multiplication sign? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:41, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Whether articles get "good article" badges depends on whether they meet some basic criteria about sources, formatting, organization, etc. and then go through a peer review, not how important the topic is. You could get any of the articles listed through the process if you wanted to. –jacobolus (t) 17:34, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Right, but I think Chatul's point (which I agree with) is that it is not as important whether nomenclature articles meet those criteria as it is whether substantive articles meet them. --Trovatore (talk) 17:54, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

If Chatul had written VA in place of FA, this point would make sense. Perhaps it was a typo. As for Chatul's suggestion of "a new Nomenclature (mathematics) article": we already have three, Glossary of mathematical symbols, Mathematical notation, and History of mathematical notation. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

DeepSeek

Following up on this discussion from last month, the article DeepSeek also needs evaluation for proper sourcing. XOR'easter (talk) 05:07, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Use of pseudo code and examples

Gauss–Seidel method and Successive over-relaxation both include a substantial amount of pseudo code and worked examples. Does this violate WP:NOTHOW? 76.14.122.5 (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

The implementation of SOR in common lisp violates WP:NOR, and really, if you're doing linear algebra in common lisp, you're doing something wrong. Tito Omburo (talk) 22:20, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

High-level pseudo-code is better than detailed implementations in various languages. It can be okay to have pseudo-code, code, and worked examples in Wikipedia articles, but it takes some discretion: the goal is to explain to readers how somthing works, not to give them something to copy/paste into their project or show off the Wikipedian's code skill. –jacobolus (t) 14:49, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Polyhedral surface = polyhedron?

"The polyhedral surface is the surface of three-dimensional solid which is known as polyhedron". Is that morphologically true? I'm confused. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 07:14, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Some people define polyhedra as being solids. If you do that, you need a different word for their boundaries. Some other people define polyhedra as being piecewise linear 2-manifolds (or immersed 2-manifolds, or the like). If you do that, you need a different word for the volume they enclose. Because there is no scholarly consensus on the definition of polyhedra (see Polyhedron § Definition) we need to find ways of writing things that make clear which definition applies to them. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

@David Eppstein So what is polyhedral surface according to you? Is the term "polyhedral surface" actually the same as polyhedron? What I am pointing out here is that the usage term: "polyhedron" seems easy to understand, but "polyhedral surface" is another level, unfamiliar term to me. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 10:41, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Eppstein's comment is fine, but the problem of the article is that this is not in the article. More, Polyhedral surface redirects to Polyhedron, where the term was not defined. So, I have introduced "solid polyhedron" and "polyhedral surface" in the lead. I have also fixed the second paragraph that confused the two concepts ("surface" in the first sentence and "solid" in the remainder of the paragraph). D.Lazard (talk) 11:49, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Ah thank you. No wonder many sources I have found does not explicitly says anything about those terms. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:35, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Far too many sources assume that the notion of a polyhedron is so easy to understand that it does not need a careful definition. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

When I last edited the redirect to include a link anchor, the article used to have a section heading about the subject, which was later removed [1]. fgnievinski (talk) 01:38, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Brahmagupta matrix

The issue with this article is that only one reference is provided throughout the entire text. Additionally, the external link to Eric Weisstein's work mentions the Brahmagupta matrix. However, the concern is whether this concept is documented in any reliable articles or if it is explicitly mentioned in Brahmagupta's original texts, as no other sources besides these two references discuss it Augustus indicus (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

The page is plagiarized from the MathWorld entry, as can be seen by comparing a snapshot of that entry in February 2006 with how the article looked when it was created that April. So, it should be deleted straightaway. Moreover, the one source given does not actually say that Brahmagupta used the "Brahmagupta matrix" [2]. Instead, it says we define the Brahmagupta matrix as a way of re-expressing something that Brahmagupta did. On top of that, searching for any other literature that uses the term finds very little. This is another example of MathWorld being sloppy and adopting a term because, basically, one guy said it one time. XOR'easter (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Oh, and the page creator was banned in 2012. XOR'easter (talk) 19:10, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

I've deleted this for now, but if the topic should ever become more notable and if it can be rewritten in a way that does not arouse reasonable suspicions of copyright infringement, perhaps such a page can be recreated.

To say that Brahmagupta defined this matrix seems implausible. To say that his work inspired it may well be true. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:23, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

The paper (which is the source of the terminology) says as much -- the matrix wasn't what Brahmagupta used but it's an alternate approach to getting the same result. - CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:54, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

List of Johnson solids

So a reader ask for taking back the table from the older oldid. @Jacobolus somehow even propose to merge List of Johnson solids into the article, but it is already in TFL. Thoughts? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 00:58, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Fermat–Catalan conjecture

Someone added several solutions to Fermat–Catalan conjecture, but they are OR. I checked the first two and they are correct. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:48, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

They are WP:OR, still. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I know, but they do check out. It is sad that we can't help un-frustrate the contributor. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:33, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

The condition on the exponents is met, but the triples aren't coprime. 70, 105, and 35 have common factors of 5 and 7; 194 and 291 are multiples of 97; 756 and 945 are multiples of 189; 66 is twice 33; 1011 and 1348 are multiples of 337. XOR'easter (talk) 06:52, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Ah, good catch. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:14, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I made a note on the talk page at Talk:Fermat–Catalan conjecture § New unpublished solutions, to at least save the content of the reverted edit somewhere. –jacobolus (t) 07:27, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Comment: Isn't it feasible to try all numbers a,b,c up to 1000 and m,n,k up to 10 (say) and check the conditions by a conventional computer? There are just 1.0e12 combinations, and several obvious ways to prune the search space apply (wlog. a<=b; coprimal numbers can be precomputed; etc.). - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

A prototype implementation in these bounds obtained the first 5 solutions from Fermat–Catalan_conjecture#Known_solutions, and no others. The approach can be scaled up by a few orders of magnitude, and I'm going to explore that. However, the last 5 solutions are beyond feasibility for such computer search. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:53, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Unsolved problems

In the List of unsolved problems in mathematics, we do have hundreds of questions regarding the problems and conjectures, and in fact many unsolved problems are not listed there. Are there any criteria for this, and how can one add up an unsolved problem? Or if I have to put it blatantly, for example, can each of the five problems by Shephard be included somewhere in Wikipedia with {{unsolved}} [3]? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Since the paper you link says it presents 20 problems, maybe there should be one article about those 20, which would have a single link from the List of unsolved problems in mathematics, included within the early section whose title begins with the plural word "Lists". Michael Hardy (talk) 19:56, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

The only thing I could utilize Shephard's 20 problems is by including some of them in the article Polyhedron, or Convex polyhedron, which I will break off and have its article. nvm about this one.

For now, I could assume that every problem or every conjecture in the article has proposed solutions (but not officially as the real solution) as in Lonely runner conjecture and Inscribed square problem, further problem in Reversible cellular automaton, special cases and generalization in Kissing number problem, and do not have all of them in Szilassi polyhedron or Perfect cuboid. In these cases, I might say every problem can be included in Wikipedia, as long as they meet WP:NOTABILITY. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:33, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Nominated Cleo (mathematician) for GA

Hello! If anyone could put in the time to GA review an article that I created in light of the recent identity reveal of the notorious Math Stack Exchange user Cleo, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you! GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 16:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, but heavy reliance upon YouTube and Reddit (i.e., unreviewed, user-generated content) is not suitable for biographies of living people. XOR'easter (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for reviewing! I didn't directly use YouTube and Reddit as sources - as I understand it, since Wikipedia is a tertiary source, if a different source (Meduza and multiple others) uses those as sources, then isn't using Meduza to confirm the statements fair game? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:20, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Only if those other sources like Meduza are themselves reliable. Anybody can watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, skim a Reddit thread, etc., and mindlessly repeat what they found there to draw clicks to their own website. None of them seem to have done in-depth reporting here, just aggregation. (The number of websites that recycle glurge from social media to pass themselves off as "news" is stupefyingly high.) Meduza overall might be reputable enough to be usable, but the other two look extremely iffy. Maybe ask at the Reliable Sources noticeboard to get wider input on that. XOR'easter (talk) 17:28, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Leaving aside GA, I'm not sure this meets Wikipedia's "notability" standard. The only source is one podcast interview. Maybe it could be a small section of an article about Math Stack Exchange, or maybe even that is pushing it.

(Aside: internet sources claim that the identity of Cleo was recently figured out, and confirmed by the person behind it.) –jacobolus (t) 17:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Well, the previous version of the article that I had written up [4] had several more sources, but they were removed for being aggregates. What are your thoughts on those sources? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:44, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia should be Doxxing people, and these revisions should probably be deleted from the database. (But the whole article getting deleted as non-notable would also solve the problem.) –jacobolus (t) 17:49, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I’m a bit confused. Is it doxxing if the person behind Cleo confirmed it on their own Stack Exchange profile? They admitted that they created Cleo and confirmed it with McCann, and several sources have published it as well. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

In that case we probably don't need to get too aggressive about scrubbing it immediately, and can let normal processes take their usual time. I expect this article to end up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. –jacobolus (t) 17:57, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Are the Russian/Uzbek sources along with the Scientific American interview not sufficient for GNG? I specifically waited for the sources to be available before I tried creating the article. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 18:03, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Well, they can only contribute to notability if they're reliable, which they might or might not be. XOR'easter (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I removed the GA nomination to gain clearer consensus first. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:55, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the article easily meets SIGCOV. In fact, I found out about this reading the sciam article, and only then checked out the Wikipedia article. The sourcing is problematic for GA, as others have noted. It strikes me that this is an article whose goal should not be GA. Actually, that would be a disimprovement. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. What are your thoughts on including Cleo’s true identity in the article? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:29, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Really? The "significant coverage" here is a single podcast interview with a random prolific stackexchange participant. "Has ever been the subject of a podcast" doesn't seem to me like what the standard suggests, but maybe I haven't contributed to enough notability deletion discussions to have a good sense of where Wikipedians typically come down on the question. –jacobolus (t) 06:06, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Interviews are almost never considered to count as significant coverage for notability in deletion discussions. The problem is that WP:GNG notability needs multiple sources that are independent of the subject and each other, reliably published, and provide in-depth material about the subject. Interviews are not independent because it is the subject saying stuff. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:01, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

In this case, it wasn't the subject being interviewed though. Tito Omburo (talk) 13:30, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to characterize the interview as with a "random prolific stackexchange participant". Multiple academics were interviewed: Ron Gordon is a former physicist, Anthony Bonato is a mathematician at Toronto University, and Jay Cummings is an associate professor at California State University, Sacramento. Plus, Cleo themselves were not the subject of the interview, so this source is independent. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 16:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

While unusual for a mathematics article, I'd view Cleo (mathematician) as similar to our GA Celebrity Number Six (AfD, talk page discussion), insofar as it summarises traditional media reporting of events on 'social media' (Stack Exchange and YouTube). While the sourcing is thinner (SciAm and Meduza instead of NYT, the AV Club, and Wired), I'd view it as adequate for V, though not for GA status unless we can find more reliable sources. While we should be careful about stating the true identity of Cleo (BLP broadly applies), I would support expanding the Identity section to note the Feb 2025 claim that Cleo has been re-identified, sourced to Meduza — analogous to Satoshi Nakamoto#Possible identities. Preimage (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

"Somebody watched a YouTube video and made a post on a random website with unclear and perhaps nonexistent editorial standards repeating what the video said" is not the ideal basis for a biography article in an encyclopedia. XOR'easter (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Regular icosahedron/Archive 6

Can someone help me in archiving these discussions. I think I numbered the wrong one. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2025 (UTC)