Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Oleg Alexandrov (talk | contribs) at 20:26, 17 July 2006 (→Request for feature enhancement of Mathbot: continued at Misplaced Pages talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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AfD thing isn't working

The Old AfD thingy says I "don't have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server." --Rory096 00:07, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Dummy me. I changed the permissions to my ssh directory so that other can't stick their nose in there, and because did not type the command correctly, I changed the permissions to all directories, and ended up denying everybody the services provided by mathbot. Fixed now, thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

???

diff. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jitse. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe it was some server error which my bot did not react well to. Maybe the package I use for submitting stuff to Misplaced Pages has a subtle bug, or maybe the bug is in my code. Such a pathology happens, although rarely, and I don't know how to reproduce it. For now I reverted to a previous version and clicked on the link to refresh the data, and the pathology did not reappear. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Poor Mathbot, so cute wagging his little mechanical tale while he pisses on the floor ;-) Paul August ☎ 15:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

But it's so cuddly...:)--CSTAR 15:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Cuddly or not, it needs a bit of Proverbs 13:24, as it neglects to update Talk:List of numerical analysis topics#D: Potential searchable categories. Bad bot. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

That thing is broken, because they again changed the format for categories. I am aware of that. These days, after I finish with WP1.0 I plan to rewrite the script which updates talk:List of numerical analysis topics which will use a few fancier subroutines I developed in between and which will fix the "new categories" problem and hopefully also the "???" problem.

As far as the rod is concerned, this is not in the bible, but "the gift horse is not searched in the mouth." :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, you know where not searching their gift horse got the Trojans ;-) Paul August ☎ 14:14, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Rfa Removal

I see you removed Foxearth's RfA nom as badly formatted and unaccepted. (Technically the canditate did accept it (albeit in a badly formatted/unsigned way, which got pushed down under comments by another user) However, it does remain badly formatted, which is grounds for removal from the RfA list. However, as it appears that the nominee is a relatively inexperienced user, (which would explain the formatting issues) would you mind dropping them a quick note as well? I've previously recommended to them to withdraw the RfA, so don't want them to get all the bad news from one person in case they take it the wrong way. :) Cheers, MartinRe 16:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I dropped the user a note, thanks for reminding me, I should have done that to start with. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

No worries :) I just feel sorry for the nominee, while in good faith, the confusion surrounding his RfA is messy (I did drop a note to User:ReyBrujo that it might have been better to let the editor himself chose whether to re-add it. Too late now, I know, but I hope the users in question (nominator and nominee don't get too discouraged about this) Cheers, MartinRe 16:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot

Hi, I was wondering if maybe your bot could help us with something? At WP:AfC, we have a bit of a problem with archiving, we lost the bot that did it for us. Perhaps Mathbot could help with this? (Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests#Archiving_Wikipedia:Articles_for_Creation. Thanks either way, since Mathbot is just cool! --Lord Deskana 08:03, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I will look into this, should be easy enough to write an archive bot. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a problem with that. My bot cannot move pages, the package I use for uploading stuff to Misplaced Pages does not have that feature and I don't know how to implement it, as moving a page requires two clicks and would be rather complex to do with a bot I think. Maybe somebody using the python framework could do that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Oleg. Thanks for looking at the request. The page move step has been the critical problem for every bot-maker that we've approached, including ones that use the python framework. The only bots I've been able to find that perform moves are Crypticbot and Uncle G's 'bot, but neither of their owners are around. It may be time to make a secondary bot request simply for a page-moving routine. ×Meegs 17:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Pmform not parsing links anymore?

Hi Oleg, I was getting back to work on the PlanetMat project when I noticed that your conversion tool: Pmform, doesn't seem to be converting <a>, </a> tags (used to do PM internal links). Whats up? Paul August ☎ 18:09, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Paul. Thanks for the note. That is the curse of interface changes. Links which used to be

<a id="tex2html1" href="http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/Identity2.html" name="tex2html1">category</a>

became

<a name="tex2html1" href="http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/Identity2.html" id="tex2html1">category</a>

Fixed now. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:57, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks ;-) Paul August ☎ 19:00, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Shohé Tanaka deletion

Dylan Lennon/Warel nominated the article on Shohé Tanaka for deletion, and it was deleted. This rticle should not have been nominated, and certainly not actually deleted, since Tanaka was a significant figure as a music theorist, and a physicist and interesting historical character besides. I want it undeleted, and I think this shows there is something wrong with the deletion process. Why was n one who knew something about the subject contacted before the article was deleted? This is a sign of a broken system. I'd be interested in getting a list of everything Dylan Lennon nominated for deletion, and reviewing all that he has done in this department, which seems to at least skate close to vandalis, if not over the line. Gene Ward Smith 01:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, Dylan/Warel was not a pleasant person to have around. You may find their/his contributions with special:contributions/DYLAN LENNON and special:contributions/WAREL. I doubt he nominated anything else for deletion, as his primary job was edit warring to add suspicious stuff in. Most of those have been reverted, and a few of us studied his contributions rather carefully and I think not much damage done by Dylan is left.

As far as the deletion system is concerned, nothing is perfect, and I have had the impression that it works well most of the time. See Misplaced Pages:Votes for undeletion if you want to do anything about that. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Apparently it wasn't Dylan/Warel who nominated it for deletion; it was nominated for deletion because of association with Dylan/Warel. However, the request was withdrawn.

I still think the process might be broken, as this looks very bad. No one who actually knew anything about the topic decided on it, and when User:Hyacinth restored it, it was promptly deleted again. I'd like to be considered for administator, so I can review the deletion log and find out what's been going on. Gene Ward Smith 04:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

WAREL/Dylan Lennon

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For your extraordinary patience with the Dylan Lennon/WAREL incidents, I award you The Barnstar of Diligence. Isopropyl 02:24, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Nah, exactly when I got more lazy as far as Misplaced Pages participation is concerned, barnstars started dropping down (Lethe's a few weeks ago, and now this one). Meteor shower anybody? Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

uncentered vs. unscented Kalman filter...

Concerning the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/Cholesky_decomposition, "Applications" section discussing ________ Kalman filtering as an application of Cholesky decomposition.

I have been reading up on this rather extensively recently; the application is "unscented Kalman filtering," NOT "uncentered Kalman filtering." Read the "Kalman filters" page on Misplaced Pages for more info (I thought this would be a slam-dunk change), or check out: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/wan01unscented.html (with specific, explicit references to performing the Cholesky decomposition for arriving at the Sigma points used in unscented Kalman filtering), http://en.wikipedia.org/Unscented_Kalman_filter (the wikipedia page), http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Papers/Julier_Uhlmann_mar04.pdf (also with reference to using Cholesky decomposition as stable means of finding sigma points; page 406, footnote 6).

Any evidence that "uncentered" is the correct term? I am making the change again, to "unscented," and please justify a further change with citations, etc. The only Google result I found for "uncentered Kalman filter," for example, was this erroneous Misplaced Pages entry.

Appreciation, insignificant1

I believe "unscented" is correct. Engineers make this stuff up. Go figure! --KSmrq 07:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Insignificant1, I am sure you are right. That was your first edit, without any edit summary, so I assumed the worst. Thanks for the clarification. KSmrq, thanks also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Portal graphics template

Hi Oleg. No worries. I didn't notice the late discussion about the issue. Cheers -- Szvest 19:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

May I request an enhancement

Hi Oleg, your mathbot is excellent in finding all the classifications in the WP:Chem wikiproject. I regularly maintain the list of grouped classifications (focussing on the projects goals instead of just listing them) in the project's worklist, and therefore find the log file of the mathbot very useful. Now, yesterday, I thought that perhaps mathbot didn't run, as there is no notification on the logpage, although I assume that it did do the scanning. Hence my question:

• can you make it so that it does report to have done work on the logpage, even if it doesn't find any changes. Perhaps just the date header and a line 'no changes found'? Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC).

Done. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice, thanks! So I have another question, if I may: can you add a some counting statistics on the large table, viz.

• Number of FA-Class articles
• Number of A-Class articles
• Number of B-Class articles
• Number of Start-Class articles
• Number of Stub-Class articles
• Number of nonassessed articles, but with the {{chemistry}} template
• Total number of articles with the {{chemistry}} template

Even if this can't be done, thanks for your attention. If it can, I'll use that info for the WP:Chem statistics. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 15:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC).

Contined at User talk:Mathbot/WP1.0 where the other discussion takes place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Just Curious

Hello, Oleg Alexandrov. I was wondering, was your decision to message me brought about by an instance where I botched up while editing an article somewhere, perhaps? Thanks for the tips! -vedace 01:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I just welcomed you. :) So it does not mean you botched anything. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Logarithm - definition of b^n

Hello, Mr. Alexandrov. I do not think your removal of my change to the logarithm article is as useful as my change itself was. Although I agree with you about not using unnecessary wording, the part I added was not entirely unnecessary. Rather, it corrected an inaccuracy in the definition of b^n. Now a further user has changed it again to something still not as accurate as what I put in (see below). I will not change it again on the main page, to avoid repeated back-and-forth. However, I would like to make the case here to suggest you change it to something more accurate, suggested below. Here is the edit I had put in:

... b^n means multiplying b by itself a number of times, using it as a factor in this multiplication n times ...

You changed it back to the original to say

" ... b^n means multiplying b by itself n times ...".

This is not correct, as I pointed out on the talk page associated with the article. If you multiply b by itself one time, you get b*b = b^2, not b^1. If you multiply b by itself 2 times, you get b*b*b = b^3, not b^2. It may be that the English is subtle here, especially for a non-native English speaker. However, this version is clearly inaccurate.

Michael Hardy has now changed it to

" ... b^n means b is multiplied n times ..."

This, I think, is unclear, and still able to be interpreted as inaccurate in the same way the original was. If b is multiplied two times, it could easily mean b*b*b - that has two multiplications, whereas b*b only has one.

If you still object to my initial language, I propose this, shorter than my original change, but still more accurate than either revision of what I put:

" ... b^n means multiplying b by itself, using it as a factor n times ..."

Please consider making this change, or proposing a better one that does not have the original problem I pointed out.

Thanks, Ken Cliffer (I am a scientist, with a Ph.D. in anatomy, but now work as an educational consultant, currently developing math videos. This issue came up in our presentation of exponentiation. I was happy to see that the Misplaced Pages article on exponentiation did not have this problem.)

Good point, that n times can be ambiguous and I did not realize that. Let us continue at talk:logarithm. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

∇ & del

Thanks for your comments on ∇ & del, guess I was just getting lazy, but will do better from now on! --Iantresman 16:02, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Why use mathbot to generate lists from categories

Just curious, why have a bot which creates a list to duplicate a category? Just zis Guy you know? 08:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you be more specific? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 13:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

That's probably prompted by a question I asked on his talk page, about your both creating pages like List of mathematicians from the already-existing category, and the same for List of mathematics articles. What's the benefit of having the list when the category already shows you the same thing?

The one thing I do think is very useful is your "Recent changes in..." pages, but I think they should be put under the Misplaced Pages namespace, not the main namespace. -- Hirudo 14:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

But it is not just one category. The list of mathematics articles is generated from the lists at the list of mathematics categories. There are 700 mathematics related categories at the moment, and growing. Are you saying that looking up additions/removals/changes from 700 categories is just as easy as doing it on a list?

About having it in the Misplaced Pages namespace, I don't know. I think the lists are fine where they are. There are plenty of lists in the main namespace, and I don't see a good reason to move the math lists from there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

on rotations

Hi Oleg,

About compositions of rotations: you wrote

If however one performs rotation around a point (axis) followed by rotation around another point (axis), the overall movement may be a translation rather than a rotation.

I think our editing reverts have been because we agree but have opposite points of view: you want to point out that two rotations may be a translation (or rotation), but I want to point out that two rotations in general do not represent a translation or rotation.

Thus, perhaps

If however one performs rotation around a point (axis) followed by rotation around another point (axis), the overall movement may be a translation rather than a rotation (but in general is neither).

216.232.222.122 15:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC), formerly MrMoto, but this account seems to have been eaten up. :(

Can you prove that the composition of two rotations around different centers in the plane may be something else than a rotation or a translation? Because I can prove that it is either a rotation or a translation. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, I think I am wrong. (As always, best ideas come in the shower :). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh. ok :) You are correct in the context of planar rotations, but in R3, for example, the axes of rotation should intersect. 216.232.222.122 15:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

If I may interject, rotations are direct isometries that leave a point fixed. In 2D we have only two choices for direct isometries (aside from the identity): rotations and translations. The latter leave no point fixed. In 3D we get a new option, screws. These can always be cast in the form of a rotation around an axis parallel to a translation. In 4D a rotation generally does not have an axis, and leaves only a single point fixed. Translations and screws still exist, of course. In a vector space we always rotated around a fixed origin, with no possibility of translation or screws. Most folks forget that this is not the only option, since it's the most common way to describe rotations. With a fixed origin, rotations form a group; without one, they are not even closed under composition.

Perhaps it would help readers to see explicit examples in 2D and 3D. I'd suggest pictures and words and matrices, to make the point memorable.

${\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}0&-1&x_{1}\\1&0&y_{1}\\0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}0&1&x_{2}\\-1&0&y_{2}\\0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}1&0&x_{1}-y_{2}\\0&1&y_{1}+x_{2}\\0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}}$

${\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}0.8&0&-0.6&x\\0&1&0&0\\0.6&0&0.8&z\\0&0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}0.48&0.8&-0.36&0\\0.6&0&0.8&0\\0.64&-0.6&-0.48&0\\0&0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}0&1&0&x\\0.6&0&0.8&0\\0.8&0&-0.6&z\\0&0&0&1\end{bmatrix}}}$

The fixed points for the leftmost 3D rotation have the form (x−3z,y,3x+z)/2, while the composition of the two rotations is a screw unless z = −2x. --KSmrq 18:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you KSmrq. Would be nice to have this somewhere. Maybe not the full formulas in the general purpose rotation article, but at least the ideas. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Continued at talk:Rotation. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

fine topology

I have created a new page on fine topology (as in classical potential theory), but as the title "fine topology" already seems to be taken by a page about general topology (i.e. 'finer topology' rather than "THE fine topology"), I have called my page "classical fine topology" - seems like there ought to be a better solution - any ideas? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Madmath789 (talk • contribs) .

I myself don't have any ideas of what a good name is, but I will ask. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for Clarification

Hello Oleg,

Sorry for occupying you but I am quite new to this so your guidance is greatly appreciated.

You have recently deleted our external link on the fractions wiki page with the explanation that is is an irrlevant link.

While I respect your opinion, I am trying to understand what the criteria are.

In essence Skillage.net is a pilot program. I have tutored many students of various age and grade levels and have discovered that thay are lacking some very basic math skills. With skillage.net While there are thousands of sites out there that provide the ability to practice (or purchase practice help, tutoring, etc) we are seeking to build a framework that provides a comprehensive skill building curriculum with a common look and feel.

To make a long sory short, what I am wondering is what your criteria are for deciding to keep Kwiznet as an external reference you rate skillage.net non-suitable.

Thanx for any guidance you can provide.

Regards,

Achim

I did not find the link http://www.prosys-llc.com/skillage.net/Courses/CoursesMain.asp terribly relevant in division (mathematics). I am not saying it is useless, and I am not saying that other external links in various math pages are more useful, but from a cursory look at your web site I did not think it will benefit much people visiting division (mathematics).

Of course, any such judgement may be biased, but I don't much like it when people link to their own websites from Misplaced Pages articles, especially when doing that in many places. I may make an exception for extremely good external links, but yours was not of that kind, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Gene Ward Smith

Hi, I understand why you might be upset with Gene but could you lay it down? Both of you are making constructive comments on real number and it looks silly when you two make shots across each other's bow. I think if you stop, he will stop as well. Thanks. -- 127.*.*.1 13:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

In all honesty I meant that one as a constructive comment, and there is nothing I am upset for. But yeah, you have a good point, keeping focussed on content is the way to go. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Good to see all is ok then. -- 127.*.*.1 15:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Path integral

For your information, re your revert on path integral: This text has been added before, and I removed it at that time. No idea what's going on here. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Derivative

Hi!

This is me who added symmetric derivative thing.

Actually I wasn't talking about definitions, but about correct calculating of derivative . I didn't find anything about it on wiki, so I think it should be added something like that:

If:

1. There exists left-derivative;

2. There exists right-derivative;

3. They are equal,

than derivative can be calculated more precisely with following formula: ${\displaystyle \lim _{h\rightarrow 0}{\frac {f(x+h)-f(x-h)}{2h}}}$.

How about that? --anon

I really don't think that information belongs right in the section where the derivative is defined. It is distracting and too offtopic, I think. That information should be better off somwhere at finite difference. Let us continue this conversation at talk:derivative. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:37, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Surface Normal Changes May 20 2006 - Revert

I have to admit the Inward normal picture was not good-looking. I thank you for admitting that I had a point. I also thank you for inviting comments.

As an Engineer, my concept of a surface, closed or not, is a barrier, the outside is at which I am directly looking. The normal coming toward me is an outward normal on the outside surface. The normal going away from me but terminating at the "outside" of the surface is the inward normal.

The invisible (to me) side of the surface is the "lnside" of the surface. The normal starting at the inside and going away from me is the other "outward" normal. If the outward normal I am looking at satisfies the "right hand rule" for an orientable surface then the "other" outward normal must satisfy the "left hand rule". The "inward" normal on each surface is the exact negative of the "outward" normal.

If normals penetrate the surface, the "inward" normal on the "outside" surface changes to an "outward" normal on the "inside" surface. All definitions are then jumbled up.

Thank You user:subhash15

Let us continue this at Talk:Surface normal. In short, while I understand your intuitive view of things, your changes to that article were incorrect. Surfaces are a bit more complex than one may think, and KSmrq explained that nicely at talk:surface normal. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:39, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

MathBot on Good articles

Hi Oleg,

Could you please stop Mathbot from updating the good articles talk page with a list of missing articles?

The lists no longer seem to contain any useful information . Possibly because of a change in the format of the good articles page. Plus most maintenance of the good articles page is now done by the GAAuto script.

Your bot did precede the GAAuto script so thank you for your early work.

Cedars 05:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed the section used to update the bot. That's the only think needed for the bot not to update that page anymore. Good you have a custom script to do work there now. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Who is watching which articles? Are they coverred?

I was wondering about how the administrators can tell whether an article is being protected from vandals and foolish editors. Is there a way to determine how many editors are watching an article and how many of them are active. Or even exactly who they are? Can you find articles which have less than three active editors watching them? If not, perhaps Mathbot or something like it could search for such articles and make a list. JRSpriggs 04:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is any way you can tell if an article is being watched over. The sad truth of life is that Misplaced Pages is a complete chaos, and a huge number of math articles are not being watched, and even if they are, only for vandalism and such. Not much to do I am afraid. :( Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

There was a time when administrators had the right to see which pages were not on any watchlists at all. I can't find this feature now, maybe that right has been pulled. Even when it was around, it wasn't perfect, since lots of pages are on only very few watchlists of editors who may be inactive. Edit: I guess it was Special:Unwatchedpages. Maybe that still works, I don't know. But for some reason, there is no mention of it in Help:Watching pages or Help:Administration. Edit2: Misplaced Pages:User access levels still mentions it, and the page itself says it was last updated May 20th, so I guess it's still there. Now the question is whether Mathbot can pull the math pages from out of there. I will note that there may be some controversy about making such lists publicly viewable. Edit3: It seems like it only goes up to the first 1000 unwatched pages. Gets up to 1917 in art. -lethe 04:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've seen discussion on WP:VP about the merits of having the developers add such functionality. Some objected on the grounds that publicising such information might allow vandals to target under-watched pages. Not sure if I buy that argument. Paul August ☎ 05:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of having the page be visible to users with the protect permission was exactly that. The query only goes up to 1000 as it is a bit expensive to produce. Titoxd 05:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

MathBot Question

Just curious:

Did you created MathBot? If so, how did you do so? Thanks in advance.

MoleculeUpload 02:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I use the WWW::Mediawiki::Client package to download wikitext from Misplaced Pages and upload processed text back. That is a Perl module with a few dependencies. The text processing is done locally on my computer using Perl.

That is a short answer to your question. I could give a longer answer but I am not sure what you want. You would need to know some scripting language, say Perl or Python to create a bot. If you prefer Perl on Linux, I could help setting one up. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I know Visual Basic (version 6.0, 5.0, and 4.0) and know how to do Internet programing with them. I think you answered my question.

Again thank you. - MoleculeUpload 02:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

"High Intelligence" theories

Very funny the link beneath your page ;)

There are some people that have not yet understood (or they have forgotten) that the purpose of science is to provide efficient and utterly compatible informations to interact with the reality. What model do they propose instead of gravity ? That of a Supreme Intelligence, who Works in a Mysterious Way. What a very useful model ! ;) That's not science, just teleology.

Almeo 09:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Bot

Hello, its me again.

What type of bot do you feel Misplaced Pages needs? I am interested in doing whatever I can, but I want to make sure that the Misplaced Pages community is O.K. with any bot I run.

Thank you! - MoleculeUploadBot 15:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Try to see Misplaced Pages:Bots and its talk page, as well as Misplaced Pages:Bot requests and its talk page, they may give you some ideas. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion. - NoUser 15:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

How does this sound:

A robot that searchs for innapropriate words, and tells me. I realize that Misplaced Pages allows -in some cases- crude language. However, finding crude language could lead to finding vandilism and fixing it.

Thank you for your time and input. - NoUser 15:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

You may propose it at Misplaced Pages talk:Bots and see what people say. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Eikonal Equation

Thank you for the new Eikonal equation which was much needed. I did some fixes on it, and fixed a bug or two. Wonder if you could take a second look at it and see if it all looks right. How about writing a signed distance function article? :) Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The new article looks great. Thanks for working on the mathematical notation, and also moving it to singular form.

I don't have enough knowledge to write an article on the topic you suggested - you are more qualified to do so anyway, seeing that you are a PhD student in math! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elb2000 (talk • contribs) .

Bot Details

I work with Windows XP computers. How can I write a bot with the computer as it is (or with only a few updates)? I already have Microsoft Visual Basic (5.0) installed on it. I hope I am not bugging you to much about WikiBots, but I have never done anything quite like it. Thanks! -MoleculeUpload 12:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know at all how to use bots on Windows, and especially written in Visual Basic. Try to ask at Misplaced Pages talk:Bots, somebody may know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:05, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. -NoUser 20:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

mathbot - redlinks

It seems Mathbot has blanked his pages of mathematical redlinks for some reason. I'm not sure if there's a reason, or if he's just spitting sparks and spinning in circles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Originalbigj (talk • contribs) .

The script updating those pages need to be more robust. Once I fix it, I will put in the redlinks back. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

done. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments in Lar's RfA!

Hi Oleg, and thank you for your thoughtful comments in my request for adminship! With a final tally of (109/5/1), I have been entrusted with adminship. It's been several weeks since the conclusion of the process, so hopefully you've had a chance ... Please let me know what you think! Thanks again, and thanks as well for your efforts with MathBot. Too bad about him not making Admin though! I look forward to working with you on WP 1.0 and other things in future... ++Lar: t/c 03:25, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Perl

I just downloaded a version of Perl for Windows XP. Where could I find a decent guide for learning the langauge (I am thinking of writing my bot in Perl). Thank you! - MoleculeUpload 19:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Start at Perl, follow links. In particular, you might try our own page at http://en.wikibooks.org/Perl Once you know one computer language, learning another isn't hard. -lethe 19:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Note that it may be more efffort than what you estimate to become proeficient in Perl and to install the necessary packages for the Misplaced Pages bot. I can help, but I am not familiar with Perl packages installation on Windows. So, you're in this for the long run, I hope you have enough motivation. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

welcome back

I don't think we would have lasted much longer. -lethe 22:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh. :) Seriously, on one hand I know just as well as everybody that the whole Misplaced Pages is chaotic and it requires constant supervision. However, in spite of all the chaos and the fact that many articles are not watched over, Misplaced Pages still manages to be a good source of info. That's a contradiction. So somehow the system works. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

definition of b^n

I wrote another proposed definition on talk:logarithm, but I thought since you were involved with that, you'd want to take a look before I screw things up. Fresheneesz 23:10, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I commented at talk:logarithm. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:23, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

That old Boundedness stuff

Reviewing my User talk: page, I realised that I never responded to several edits from over a year ago in a discussion that we were having then. I don't even remember why I stopped corresponding then, but I suppose that it's only fair to warn you that this happens to me on the Internet sometimes when Real Life becomes too pressing, and online activities get pushed back further and further and ... well, I'm sorry.

I don't think that I have anything to criticise you about on this now. But for the record (not that it'll be a very precise record after a year):

• I think that I thought that you had done something disingenuous, either in the redirection or the disambiguation, or both. If I was wrong (and I assume that I was), then my words in this edit were inappropriate, so I apologise for them.
• Probably you did do something wrong regarding the mechanics of Wikimedia, either in the redirection or the disambiguation, or both. Probably you have long since figured things out, so I won't bother trying to recreate this.
• You were absolutely right about Urysohn's Lemma.

Well, better late than never, as they say; I was rude to you, and I'm sorry. -- Toby Bartels 21:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Back then I confused a few things I think, and that caused your upset comment. Thanks for your message. You did not have to write this, but appology accepted. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

I'm not sure whether this is the third or fourth time that I created an article and forgot to categorise it, and you fixed it. It's great, though! Thanks for catching them, and I promise I'll try better to remember about categories :-)

RandomP 21:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. :) By the way, I would not be as pessimistic about Misplaced Pages as I saw on your user page. Yes, there is some entropy, but I think more good stuff gets created than what gets run down. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Question about importance column on WP:WVWP lists

Hi Oleg. I'm testing out using MathBot for physics articles, and I know that some WikiProjects also use the importance column, e.g. Misplaced Pages:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Chemistry_articles_by_quality. Does MathBot sort by importance in some way, or does it simply maintain those labels once they're added by hand to the tables? -- SCZenz 04:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

For now it just maintains the labels added in by hand, and does not sort by importance. That will be soon worked on, after I finish with another request, see Misplaced Pages talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects#Category-based importance ratings. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a rough estimate as to when this functionality might be introduced? I'm trying to figure out whether to start tagging things under the current system, or just wait. Thanks, SCZenz 07:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I should have that done in a week, at most, perhaps earlier. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thanks very much. -- SCZenz 15:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Oleg. thanks for your guide!
ses

Adding new projects to the 1.0 listings

Oleg,

I am putting together a guide for using Mathbot for WP:1.0 work. As I understand it, projects can simply add a new subcategory tree at Category:Misplaced Pages 1.0 assessments without telling you, and Mathbot will faithfully generate tables, a log and statistics to order. Is this correct? Or do you need to know that a project is adding themselves to the list? It seems that several groups have already added themselves in quietly, is this OK? If the bot can handle all this without needing to know that would be wonderful. If people need to ask your permission, please let me know ASAP, as we are going to be contacting WikiProjects again very soon. Thanks again for your wonderful work! Walkerma 04:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the bot does everything automatically, I don't need to be in the loop. See also the text I wrote at the WP:1.0/I (index of subjects).

Maybe you can hold notifying the wikiprojects till I implement the importance thing (we discussed at the talk page of WP:1.0/I. Can you wait say three-four more days? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds all right. Ironically, I had created a template to add the functionality to other templtates, so that can be a basis for future work. Oleg, can you make sure everything I wrote there makes sense? Titoxd 04:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure, we will hold off for now. Yes, I have a window open for WP:1.0/I, this new page just steps people through everything in simple stages. Technically challenged people like me need such things! Thanks, Walkerma 04:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I got confused by the Template:Class parameter. In particular, subst'ing it does not seem to work, see User:Mathbot/Page4. Oleg Alexandrov (talk)

Try it without the hyphen (or should there be a redirect there?) Titoxd 00:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Now works, thanks. I need to study it more. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Speaking of this, am I doing something wrong at Category:Tropical cyclone articles by importance? The bot should have picked it up, but it hasn't, and I don't know if I've made a mistake or not... Titoxd 05:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Must sleep now (wife says :) Will look at that tomorrow. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I figured it out now. The bot, being in Category:Tropical cyclone articles by importance was expecting to see inside of it High-importance Tropical cyclone articles rather than High-importance hurricane articles. But now I tweaked it into just looking at High regardless of what follows it.

By the way, you have some reduntancy in there, High-Class importance hurricane articles as well as High-importance hurricane articles which I guess you did to test my bot. Now the bot will accept both, but I think you may need to trim that category to just one uniform format. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, we originally had "High-Class importance hurricane articles" as the entries for the tree, but as there was a 113,000-page job queue when I switched to match other trees, I had to leave them there until all the categories were depopulated. I'll go ahead and delete them at any time. Titoxd 18:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• I might as well hijack this thread - it seems the appropriate one. With the tropical cyclones importance assessment there were a lot of articles sitting in Category:Unassessed importance hurricane articles until we got to them (It's empty at the moment). Mathbot was logging all of them as going from No-Class to Unassessed-Class every day (check the log) filling the logs with nonsense.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:57, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot

Sorry I missed this User:Jaranda/Requests for adminship/Mathbot, I would have had a few choice words to add. Paul August ☎ 16:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I missed it too, I commented a month and a half after it took place. I believe the voting is still open, so feel free to vote and comment. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I will. By the way whatever happened to all your nice awards on your user page? Paul August ☎ 18:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I buried them with a link at User:Oleg Alexandrov/Contribs. :) When I had just one, it was very precious. Now that I have three (with one more at bot's page) I am experiencing inflation. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Picture licenses

Hi, I was wondering if you knew anything about picture licenses, and what licences a picture must have to be on wikipedia. Another user just told me that Image:SkyTran Seattle2.jpg doesn't have the right permissions to be on wikipedia (although it does have permission from the owner to be on wikipedia). The guy that brought this to my attention said that "the image would need to be relesed under the GFDL, creative commons attribution, creative commons attribution-ShareAlike or released into the public domain". I have doubts about this requirment, and I would think that many fair-use pictures on wikipedia don't adhere to that. What do you think about this? Fresheneesz 23:22, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know more than you about that. See Misplaced Pages:Images, may provide some hints. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

page move request

Someone moved Kronecker limit formula to Kronecker Limit Formula in the middle of my attempts to write the article, and my attempt to revert this cleanly didnt work; it seems to require deleting pages. Could you sort this out please? Thanks, R.e.b. 14:29, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I moved it back, and it seemed to work. What was the problem? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! The problem was that I was half asleep at the time and misread the instructions for undoing moves. R.e.b. 15:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Soil

This is a new wikiproject covering about 250 articles, almost all of which seem to be in a stub or start stage. Project formation was prompted by {{WPCD}} tagging. See here for the project's article assessment format. It includes rating of importance to the project. Any pointers or advice you can offer would be appreciated. -- Paleorthid 16:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite know how to say. I have been involved on this WP:1.0 project, but only on the technical side. I see you also asked Walkerma, he will know how to answer your question. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:25, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Help?

0<k<1 ;

${\displaystyle 1+k+k^{2}+k^{3}+k^{4}+.....=a}$,

than what is the value of ${\displaystyle (1+2k+3k^{2}+4k^{3}+5k^{4}+.....)}$?

Answer is ${\displaystyle a^{2}}$ but I couldnat get how...

All I got is ${\displaystyle 1/(1-k)=a}$; than?

Thanx —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.98.51.185 (talk • contribs) 20:25, June 11, 2006.

Take the derivative. -lethe 20:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Or, square each side of the equation. On the left side, using the fact that it is absolutely convergent in (0,1), you can change the summation indices from i in {0,1,ad infinitum} and j in {0,1,ad infinitum} to m=i+j in {0,1,ad infinitum} and n in {0,...,m}. Notice that m is the exponent of k and sum over n to get a coefficient of m+1. JRSpriggs 04:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It works thanx :) :

${\displaystyle 1/(1-k)=a,}$ and (${\displaystyle 1+2k+3k^{2}+4k^{3}+5k^{4}+.....)=}$ '
${\displaystyle }$ ${\displaystyle '=1/(1-k)^{2}=a^{2}}$

Mathbot an RfA template change

There was recently a change to template:RfA making the sections bold using "; Comment" instead of "'''Comment'''" (see WT:RFA for discussion) Since Mathbot needs to recognize which section is the comments section to place the edit summary thing, I have reverted for now, until it can support this. Let me know when it can do that, or just revert the template yourself. :) --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rory096 (talk • contribs) .

Thanks for letting me know, mathbot will supoort that alternative comment style now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --Rory096 04:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Inquiry about calculus of variations

I wrote some stuff on Calculus of Variations in May, and now discover that the tail end was deleted by an unidentifed user on May 23. I notice that you tried to contact this person, but I saw no response. Anyhow, this user claimed that my version of the inhomogeneous wave equation was incorrect, and accordingly deleted a section. Before getting into a tit for tat battle with unknown persons, I'd like your suggestions. Check it out: the wave equation I gave is generally accepted. It may be that my contibutions are opaque, but that is another matter. Donludwig 16:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

My objective is to provide an intuitive introduction to Hamilton-Jacobi theory. Donludwig 16:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know much about this stuff, so I don't know what to advise. Would be nice if you provide a reference for your equation, that may clarify matters. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

About Surface Normal

Surface Normal Outward Normal Left and Right hand rules

Re: Article Surface Normal

Dear Dr. Alexandrov,

The word "outward" was edited out of the caption of the image with the advice to stay away from that adjective. However S. P. Timoshenko, recognized as the father of Engineering Elasticity, in his book Theory of Elasticity uses the symbol "N" to represent "outward normal to the surface of a body" The images in the book showing normals are exactly identical to the image in the article.

If an outward normal is to be recognized, shouldn't an inward normal be also recognized? The inward normal vector represents a pressure

If one of the two normals is determined by the Right-hand rule, isn't the other normal, in the opposite direction, uniquely determined by the Left-hand rule?

I have also copied this to Smrq. Could you kindly respond? Subhash 01:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Subhash15/Trial2"

Outward normals apply only to closed surfaces. Not all surfaces are like that, and then that concept does not make sense. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Oleg, FYI this exact post also appeared on my talk page, where I responded at greater length. Time to schedule an education in Wiki protocol? --KSmrq 04:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I found your answer very helpful. Let us continue this at Talk:Surface normal. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:59, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Problems at Propositional Calculus

JA: Hi, could you help sort out the continuing tangles at Propositional calculus? First there was that improper name change last month, and I let it go because the user who did it seemed fairly competent and added some good stuff, but now the word "logic" seems to be inviting anonymous users to take the article out of the mathematical logic designation and add any sort of half-baked exposition that they can cook up. I don't know my way around the procedures well enough to keep dealing with sort of stuff. Much appreciated, Jon Awbrey 05:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I notified the math people at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Mathematics and put that page on the watchlist. Will try to keep an eye on it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot no longer active on AfD/Old

Hey Oleg, it seems that the link to the AfD script in WP:AFD/Old is no longer active. Is your account no longer active at that address? Thanks, Deathphoenix ʕ 14:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

After 14 hours of being MIA, it's back in action. If you did something, thanks for fixing it. If you didn't, thanks anyway for making such a useful tool. :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The computer network in my department was down, that caused the problem. Working now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Thanks for the info. --Deathphoenix ʕ 19:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Locus (mathematics) image

I re-added the attribution to Image:Locus_Curve.jpg on this page, because it is required according to the license. It doesn't seem like the best image anyway, so perhaps someone more knowledgable than I about the subject could create a replacement image that does not require attribution. --Gnewf 05:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. I was not aware of such a strange license. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

edit summary

Hi. Just a reminder, it is good if you use an edit summary when you contribute, it helps others understand what you change. Thanks. You can reply here if you have comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The preview button is a good thing too. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of both. I guess I made a mistake on some page, so I should have previewed? On what page? (Cj67 20:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC))

Never mind about the preview. You were making a lot of edits at Sobolev space but only later I realized it was in different sections. The edit summary comment is valid though. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Please include the Scouting Wikiproject

Hi Oleg, could you please include the classification results for the wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting, using the {{ScoutingWikiProject}} template with class and importance rating. The wikiproject is currently starting on the use of classification, and would gladly be included in your excellent mathbot counting. Regards, Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC).

Hi. The project should show up at Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects after you follow the instructions linked from that page. The bot will run tonight and update the lists. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks for pointing this out. We'll see this night whether we did the good things. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC).

• Oleg, I am the coordinator of the Scouting Project. Thanks so much for finishing this setup. What you've done here with the automatic, sorting, logs, etc is truly impressive. Many thanks. Rlevse 11:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary bar

Oleg, the edit summary line. What do we put in the edit summary bar? Just a phrase about the changes made?

Thanks, Billy Hathorn —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Billy Hathorn (talk • contribs) .

Yes, just a short summary of what you changed can go along way. :) Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

10,000

It seems we've finally broken past 10,000 assessed articles. We have—thanks, in no small part, to your programming skills and willingness to devote your valuable time to this project—achieved the first steps of what may become the semi-mythical article validation system that everyone always talks about. We—as Wikipedians—are in your debt. Kirill Lokshin 05:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words. I had fun programming Perl. :) Glad the project is moving forward. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Logarithmically convex function

Hello, I just want to say thank you for your help and speedy edit at Logarithmically convex function. The article has improved greatly in a few minutes, after both mine and your edits. ;) --Clearcontent 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Heh, no problem. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Novel articles by quality

Thanks you you amendment to our category - We "Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Novels" are gearing up to get envolved with the WP:1.0]] teams assessment approach - who do we talk to - and how do we proceed? I know you might not be the person but you obviously have an interest / envolvement so I thought I'd ask :: Kevinalewis : /_(Desk) 07:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The place to discuss things at is Misplaced Pages talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects. Bot specific questions go to Misplaced Pages talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Just seen that there are some automated pages in place - however I needed to correct the link to our discussion forum which you might like to know about - unlike what was there it should be Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Novels/GeneralForum#Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation. I changed one page only to notice it was on an obviously automatically generated page deeper in. Also that page had the project as Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Novel when it should read Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Novels. Ok - thanks for all you help. :: Kevinalewis : /_(Desk) 15:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The bot will propagate that correction Novel->Novels when it runs tonight. It can also be fixed by hand, but probably it is not worth it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

ok, though I miss the point

I'll use your edit summary bar, but aren't all edits recorded, that you can see the change I've done just by clicking a link? And surely someone could lie, or exaggerate, or be mistaken in the bar?

//// Pacific PanDeist * 02:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh hey, you're a mathematician - what's the name of that thing where 9.999... is proved to be 10? does that mean 1/(10-9.999) is division by zero? I've knocked that around in my head all night.

//// Pacific PanDeist * 02:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries are good as they show up on the watchlist and you don't need to click on links to see what changed. Besides, the intent of one's edits is not always clear from the edits themselves, or at least it would take more time that way. So, using an edit summary is a good practrice.

About the 9.999.. see proof that 0.999... equals 1. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok thanks.

//// Pacific PanDeist * 04:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Picture at Taylor series

It is not my work it is User:Ktims--Jaro.p 11:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, so he made the picture and you posted it. Thanks, I wrote to him. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

percentile

I created a chart of admins by percentile, but I'm wondering should I call group nine "admins between the 80th and 90th percentile" or "admins between the 10th and 20th" percentile? Are there firm rules about which direction you start from? Thanks, NoSeptember 15:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I actually have no idea. I know I am a mathematician, but this statistical kind of thing is not something I am familiar with. See if people at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Mathematics can answer. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

From what I recall, percentiles are normally done in increasing order - so I would certainly go with " ... 80th and 90th percentile ... " Madmath789 17:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ha, ha, stumped ya ;-). After studying all the examples in the percentile and percentile rank articles and some external links, it appears the low numbers are for new and bottom of the list items, so my group nine would be between the 10th and 20th it appears. NoSeptember 17:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

If your chart says "by seniority", the more senior admins should be in the higher n-tiles. The group you describe would be the 9th decile, if I'm not confused.

However, it's usual to sort by age, not by seniority, which would make it the 2nd decile; whatever you do, be consistent (as "age" is something that's used more often than "seniority", I think it's less likely to lead to misunderstandings).

RandomP 18:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The use of the term "decile" is a great idea, thanks. I think seniority makes sense here, used in the same way as with a legislative body. We are talking about length of service in the position of admin. Age could get confused with the person's age, we promote teens and adults all the time of course. NoSeptember 19:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

OR at infinitesimal?

Could you have a look at this edit, and perhaps other edits by the same editor? It looks like original research. I've a flight to catch (will be away for a week), so I can't do it myself. Cheers. Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Wrote to the guy. The stuff looks suspicious indeed. Thanks for the note Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

From a quick look, it's not as bad as it might seem, but not quite right either.

In Abraham Robinson's development of non-standard analysis, there is a careful logical development of infinities and non-zero infinitesimals, using the fact that we can make a model of the reals that obeys the usual axioms but has some weird things in the model. There is a "fuzzball" of infinitesimals around every standard real, and a derivative goes something like this: Find the ratio of the output change over the input change, where the change is infinitesimal; then take the standard part of the result (lose the fuzz). It's kind of a pain to do it right, and there are more recent attempts at using simpler methods of a related nature to teach calculus. But you still have to be more careful than this added material suggests. Check the "External links" section of the non-standard analysis article for some online stuff you can read.

We can also define "dual numbers", augmenting the reals (similar to complex numbers) with an ε which is defined to be nonzero, but with ε = 0. Our article has no citations or links, but this stuff gets some use in robotics (and a tiny bit of computer graphics), so a web search turns up things to read. Here's one example for calculus, but I have no idea how reliable it is.

The added material seems like a mix of both ideas. It could be that the editor has seen some of this stuff and is confused.

I'm not familiar with the use of "⊙" in this way, but mathematicians are dangerous if you turn them loose around a character set, so who knows.

Whether it's OR or confusion or something else, we'd like a citation or two. Hope this helps! --KSmrq 05:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Request for edit summary

Howdy, I am aware of the Edit Summary, but tend not to use it when I think it would not add anything. Also, I usually compare versions using the history, to insure that what is described is accurate. In the case that I think you are referring to (e), I deleted an external link that seemed, to me, to be inappropriate. Of course, other people might have different opinions on the appropriateness.

Which leads to my question: you reinstated the link ("Scales of e"). What was your reasoning?

Kind wishes, Daphne A 18:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I reinstated it because I did not understand why it was removed. The purpose of edit summaries is not to add something, rather to explain what you are doing. It is good to put edit summaries at all times, as what is obvious to you is not obvious to others, and it takes less time to read an edit summary than to check the article history. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Request for edit summary

When editing an article on Misplaced Pages there is a small field labeled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

Filling in the edit summary field greatly helps your fellow contributors in understanding what you changed, so please always fill in the edit summary field, especially for big edits or when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you. – Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Please use edit summaries when you contribute. Thanks, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

• Reply. The browser submit when accidentally pressing enter key. It committed to database before it could be stopped. — HenryLi (Talk) 01:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Happens rather often I guess. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Square root

Dear oleg, How can u delete that when i have given reference to it. If it is not formatted correctly some other wikipedian will do that. I think thats the way wikipedia works.Bharatveer 15:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

That information appears incorrect. It would take you a few moments to fix it as you know what is going on. Please do it. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No . the information is very much correct; I have taken the quote from a journal sponsored by INDIAN NATIONAL SCIENCE ACADEMY , New Delhi .

Pls explain which information is incorrect.Bharatveer 16:12, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The chapter and section info is not clear. Let us continue on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Tnavbar reverted TfD

Greetings Oleg Alexandrov, I've just noticed your reverted Tnavbar TfD and from that I discovered your commentary addressed to the user who was somewhat blindly applying it. I've responded to that user myself in light of my own concerns in this regard. Thanks for reverting your TfD. :-) ←Netscott→ 18:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Joseandricardo again

Eskog feels that January 2007 and July 15, 2067 are not speedy candidates. As one of the admins taking actions against other dates by User:Jose and Ricardo, I was wondering whether you want to further comment. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the prod tag you put. If this does not work, we will do an afd. This user keeps on creating silly articles. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

FATS

You edited the article about FATS (foreign affiliate trade statistics) saying it wasnt about statistics.

You don't know the topic. This is about statistics. --unsigned

I left in Category:National statistical services which was more appropriate than Category:Statistics. Also, the article has no statistics content whatsoever. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a new form of statistics, which isn't (yet) taught in school. It is being worked on by international agencies, including an inter-agency UN/OECD working group, and other agencies such as ISTIA are helping to teach about them. The only really good examples, are from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis website from the document "Survey of Current Business" - and they aren't called "FATS" there - FATS is the new OECD name for these statistics. I tried to make links to FDI (which is the establishment basis for which FATS statistics have relevance) and you cut-off that link - so really FATS makes no sense anymore. Back to the point - if I put up the US Statistics, they wouldn't make any sense - furthermore, the way they are presented in the BEA document doesn't provide a simple explaination to novices. As Executive Director of ISTIA, in Geneva, Switzerland, I work on this topic, to help developing country governments to improve these and other statistics, so that have better information for policy decisision. So in short, putting up a bunch of numbers would be meaningness, because even most economists haven't heard of this term - unless they've been following UN Statistical Commission meetings, or meetings of the OECD working group. I did put up some graphics, depicting what they measure, but they were removed, for copyright purposes. They were copyrighted, citations were made, and therefore they should not have been removed.

I just read your id page. That's terrific that you are a mathematician, but these are indeed a form of economic statistics. New ones, having been defined in the year 2000, and having been collected under other names. You didn't learn about them during your PhD program because they are new and aren't taught yet at universities. FATS is as much as an economic statistic as GDP. Placing the term under "national statistical agencies" is erroneous and ironic, considering that most national statistical agencies don't know about them. That's part of ISTIA work, helping them to learn about them and collect them. Thanks for allowing this to be in Misplaced Pages in correct form.

--istia 01:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Would be nice if you expand that article. It is really unclear what it is about from the paragraph already there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I had a nice graphic up there, and some genius wiki-editor decided it had no copyright (I cited it - I created it) and took it down. You guys are a menace sometimes, you know. Otherwise, I will update it, but I'm quite busy now, founding an international agency, raising money, and hiring staff and giving classes - I'll get to it, but not today. As for the trimming of my categories - I didn't see what you took out, but could you please stop that? Those categories are indeed relevant. FATS are part of Globalization statistics. They are indicators for international trade, using WTO-GATS legal guidelines for GATS Mode 3. They are national aggregations of corporate financial data, i.e. corporate financial statistics. Go read some of the links descriptions, and you can see that. But please stop doing that. This area is completely interdisciplinary, and multi-categories are appropriate.--istia 09:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

And what is with the editing of transnational corporations data? What gives? You can't possibly have experience with it. How would you like it if you wrote an entry on your thesis topic and some wiki-editor came and annotated it?

--istia 09:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I just made the name in bold, that's style. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop messing with my categories. This needs to be linked to international trade and FDI. Else it doesn't mean anything. Thanks :) --istia 15:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Pade Approximant Page Invitation

Dear Oleg,

if I have time, I might try to include more stuff on Pade Approximants.

Thanks for the invitation

Regards

DerHannes 11:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

From your recent edit summary at topology ...

..."I like she topologists." -- Oleg.

If you like, I can set you up with one.  :-) --Chan-Ho (Talk) 16:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

But I like she applied mathematicians even more. :)

Of course, that she is an applied mathematician is not the only reason I am happy with my wife, but hey, I am sure that played a part. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, if Chan-Ho is setting up blind dates with topologists, I want in! -lethe 16:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Class=x and Class=X

Could you change the program a bit to include noncapitalized classes in the lists. For example class=b and class=B both work on the discussion page but only class=B works on Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Film articles by quality/1. The same goes for class=start and class=Start and class=stub and class=Stub. Andman8 17:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Should work now. Let us see after the bot finishes running (in a few hours). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Hate to say it but the fix didn't work. My knowledge of programming stops at editing my myspace so have no suggestions on how to fix it. Andman8 05:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you give me a specific example of an article where it does not work? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not a limitation of the bot, but rather MediaWiki's template code. See my sandbox for an example. Titoxd 05:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Why wouldn't you put the formal definition down?

The natural numbers ARE the union of all inductive sets. So what if it's a complicated definition, it's THE definition and you shouldn't dumb it down for the masses. Misplaced Pages is supposed to be an encyclopedia after all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 167.127.24.25 (talk • contribs) 21:24, July 7, 2006 (UTC)