Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Main pageDiscussionContentAssessmentParticipantsResources

Attention needed at Brahmagupta's function

I came across this article in the new pages queue, but I don't have the technical knowledge to evaluate it properly. I can't tell if it overlaps at all with Brahmagupta's formula, and the two provided book references don't have page numbers. Any attention from project members would be appreciated! Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 04:53, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If it is independently notable at all it is not under this name. Google Scholar search for "Brahmagupta's function" did not match any articles. And we have no evidence Brahmagupta had any connection with this function, which is connected to modern number theory. I would almost suggest that it is a hoax, except that the function itself is a piece of actual mathematics. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I have draftified the page pending the addition of sources to verify Brahmagupta's connection to the function. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 18:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

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)

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.

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)

Sergio Albeverio page needs cleanup

Would anyone feel like de-CV-ifying the article Sergio Albeverio? XOR'easter (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Waring problem

May someone look at the last comment in the talk page? thanks. 176.206.33.66 (talk) 13:34, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

You mean the discussion of $g(4)$? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:44, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

yes. thanks again 176.206.33.66 (talk) 14:01, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Algebraic normal form

There's a long-standing proposal to merge Reed–Muller expansion and Zhegalkin polynomial into Algebraic normal form, on the grounds of overlap and/or context. It would be helpful if someone with a little mathematic knowledge had a go at either completing the merge (given that it is currently unopposed), or objecting. You can contribute to the discussion at Talk:Algebraic normal form. Klbrain (talk) 16:46, 5 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)

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)

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)