Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Should the LaTeX space in integrals be changed from '\,' to '\mathop{}\!' site-wide?

Among other various changes, User:Sbb has sometimes (I'm not sure how many pages were affected, I didn't investigate closely) changed all of the instances of \, to \mathop{}\! in integrals on some pages. For example, instead of writing \int e^x\,dx, that would instead be \int e^x\mathop{}\!dx. These two render identically:

$$\int e^{x}\,dx\qquad \int e^{x}\mathop {} \!dx$$

After reverting one of these changes, I made what I thought to be a polite comment on their talk page asking them to not make the same change to other articles:

[...] using a 2 mu '\,' space before the 'dx' of an integral is the common standard in LaTeX documents used by most mathematical authors (and most Wikipedia pages; we e.g. recommend this in every integral example on Help:Displaying a formula), and we don't need to re-invent the wheel here and we shouldn't make changes across Wikipedia. Your version, '\mathop{}\!', is both significantly harder to read in the source and also renders literally identically, to the pixel. [...] Please don't do this type of replacement. It just adds spam to people's watchlists while also making the article marginally worse.

Sbb does not agree. They explain their reason for this change:

I ignored this for the longest time because it is simply wrong [...] [saying \, is a common standard approach is] categorically false [...] [\mathop{}\!] serves as a semantic identifier or singly identifiable place to eventually search/replace when WP eventually allows editors to extend LaTeX markup with new commands / macros [...]

In my opinion a hope for future macros and a site-wide find/replace is not a reasonable justification for making large-scale changes that add a ton of clutter to article markup, when the hoped-for eventual macro feature might someday give us the capability to.... render exactly the same thing but with a bespoke command name instead of an explicit thin space.

Even if such a macro feature did eventually appear, and there was a consensus decision to adopt a macro for writing the space in integrals, it would be quite trivial to make a bot identify all such spaces using some set of pretty simple heuristics, and with some human spot checks it wouldn't be hard to almost entirely automate the conversion of integral spaces to some desired future format. So the "semantic identifier" argument does not seem very convincing to me.

I believe drive-by changes of '\,' to '\mathop{}\!', especially if undertaken at scale, to be disruptive, and think they should be reverted per WP:STYLEVAR and to avoid pointless watchlist spam and edit warring. (But I have no personal problem if individual article authors want to write new integrals on arbitrary pages using this syntax. I'm generally happy to defer to article authors about such trivialities.)

I'm here for a third opinion, since I don't think I will convince Sbb by myself. –jacobolus (t) 21:27, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

To be clear (and I think jacobolus pejoratively misrepresented my edits as "drive by"), those edits are always a small part of my article-wide edits for maths improvement (such as changing from colon-indent to <math display="block">, applying {{math}}/{{mvar}} consistently if the inline maths are trivial, removing <math>...</math> from captions (per standard because of Phab bug), etc.).  — sbb (talk) 21:54, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm here for a third opinion, since I don't think I will convince Sbb by myself.

The ending subordinate clause is an unnecessary aspersion. Please leave that commentary out, it is unfair, and completely ignores your misrepresenting of the context of your discussion with me.  — sbb (talk) 21:59, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

In many cases even putting a space is wrong if the integrand has an interpretation as a differential form. Being overly opinionated about this is definitely bike shedding. Tazerenix (talk) 22:21, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Drive-by gnome –DE

By "drive-by changes" I intended to be descriptive, not insulting: someone popping in briefly to make small changes (including things like twiddle with the markup or style of a page) and then moving on to the next page, not making significant substantive content changes or sticking around to work on a particular article extensively. Sorry if I gave offense. I myself make tons of what I would consider "drive-by" edits all the time, and don't consider that category to be inherently bad. But I'm happy to use some alternative name for such edits if there's a better one. –jacobolus (t) 22:17, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

It is completely bogus to call \mathop{}\! semantic markup. It is obfuscation of what should be a thin space, pure and simple. There is no good reason for it. Standard advice from mathematical typesetting books is to use a thin space here, not an invisible operator with negative space . —David Eppstein (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd also agree that \,dx should not be changed to \mathop{}\!dx. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 22:59, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

• "[saying \, is a common standard approach is] categorically false" → What? That's what everybody I know who types LaTeX does (except of course for those people who don't care at all about how their equations are typeset and don't even bother to include a space; and for the two or three people who have defined a custom command for the d that includes the spacing).
• " [\mathop{}\!] serves as a semantic identifier" → What? Semantically, this expression makes no sense whatsoever.

Malparti (talk) 23:15, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I have read the discussion above and at User talk:Sbb#Please_do_not_replace_'\,'_spaces_with_'\mathop{}\!'_in_integrals, and I agree with the view of most editors here so far. \,dx is a good, ordinary, effective style, which is and should continue to be acceptable throughout Wikipedia. \mathop{}\!dx is overcomplicated and has no upside, and it should not be used. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

+1. —Kusma (talk) 06:43, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

The integrals above do not render identically for me; the first has a thin space between the $e^{x}$ and the $dx$, while in the second the $x$ of the $e^{x}$ overhangs and practically touches the $d$. catslash (talk) 01:05, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Which math rendering mode are you using? You might be hitting a bug in the "MathML" renderer, which is generally an inconsistent mess and varies from browser to browser. Here's what it looks like with the current default "MathML with SVG image (server side MathJax rendering)" math rendering system (which you should pick in your appearance preferences if you want mathematics to look correct as authors intended on English Wikipedia), $$\int e^{x}\,dx\qquad \int e^{x}\mathop {} \!dx$$ and here's what the same thing looks like when you let your browser render it with MathML –jacobolus (t) 01:41, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Aside: I think this incantation perhaps originated with this stackexchange answer. Apparently the goal is to make a command for differentials which works in any context, whether in an integral or any other expression, without a need for an explicit space. Needless to say, this doesn't apply in our situation where we can't define commands and all minor tweaks are necessarily explicit and in-place. –jacobolus (t) 17:38, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Interesting bit of archaeology. It's still a gross hack but at least in that context there's a reason you might want to do it. Not here, I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:29, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Some mathematics pages that need major improvement

It's sometimes frustrating to see how poor many mathematics articles are. Here are a few that I've noticed recently.

• Power law. Until I changed it a few weeks ago, this page started with "In statistics, a power law is ..." as if power laws only occurred in statistics. I came across this because a student on a forum had got confused by it. The page is still almost all entirely concerned with the power law distribution in statistics. It's also badly written in lots of places, from the muddled first paragraph (see the talk page) and the odd language in the first property (which isn't a property) and onwards.

• Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion. This is the condition for a polynomial to have roots that all have negative real parts, important for stability. The conditions given in the article are just wrong, even for the quadratic case, as a result of poor over-editing and confusion over signs. I flagged this up a few months ago as 'factual accuracy disputed' and put a comment on the talk page, as a kind of experiment, to see if anyone would notice and fix it, but nobody has.

• Symmetric group. This begins with three unnecessarily complicated diagrams. The first is a Cayley graph, which suggests that you have to understand what this is before you can understand S_n, which of course is not the case. It also commits the crime of using notation like 4123 without first explaining what this means. The second and third diagrams are a complicated mess of blobs, lines, squares, numbers and colours.

• Stiff equation. Someone has recently completely re-written this article, saying "It is largely based on a survey article I published in 2015 together with two coauthors...". There are only two papers cited in the introduction, both by him, though the subject has been around since the 1950s. This kind of self-publicity is not appropriate for Wikipedia. The new article is poor and the lead section fails the basic Wikipedia principle of "clear, accessible style".

If anyone would like to have a go at improving these articles, please do, and post a comment here. Paul Matthews (talk) 22:09, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, many articles are in bad shape (in my field, this is especially true of articles aimed at a broad audience — maybe because they get edited a lot by many people from different background of with different ideas of how the article should be written?). But flagging things that are poorly written usually isn't going to have any effect, because writing well takes time and energy (much more than writing here); and the people who could do it usually have other more important/urgent things to do. For instance, I recently rewrote the lead of Probability distribution. Even though it's fairly short, that took me about 2 hours. So I can't/don't want to rewrite the whole article (let alone several of them).

So, if you see something incorrect and easy to fix, do it. And if you have the time, it would be good if you can pick a particularly poorly-written article and rewrite it (or parts of it).

Regarding Stiff equation, this is a tough one: I agree that WP:CITESPAM is definitely a concern here; on the other hand, it seems like massive work has been done on the article, and I'm not qualified to evaluate how good the new article is. If you are qualified and you think the new version is better than the previous (not necessarily good, just better), then it can probably be kept after removing the citation (the lead does not need citations anyway). If the citations happen to be relevant, maybe they could be kept (either to support specific statements, or as further reading). But I agree that they should likely be removed from the lead. Also, someone could write a message on Gustaf45's talk page to tell him that adding citation to one's publications, especially in such prominent position in an article, is typically not OK on Wikipedia. Could you do both of these things? It probably wouldn't take you more time that it took to write your original message here. Malparti (talk) 23:36, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

More briefly: There are hundreds of mathematics articles that need improvement. If there weren't, then we wouldn't all still be here. Dive in! :) Mgnbar (talk) 00:55, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I have looked at stiff equation, and the article looks like a big step backwards to me from the prior revision. I think the old revision should be restored, possibly incorporating some of the recent stuff. Sławomir Biały (talk) 06:09, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

@Sławomir Biały @Paul Matthews I've also had a look at Stiff equation, but note that I don't know anything about this topic (and that my background in analysis is quite weak and rusty).

I agree that in some aspects the new version is worse than the previous one — most notably the lead. However, the old article didn't strike me as particularly good: when reading it, it's not very clear where things are going. I think that overall the new version is better-written (except of course for the lead) and contains a lot of things worth keeping. So I guess restoring the pre-Gustaf45 version would not be a very good option.

However, one obvious concern with the current version is that it looks like its author (Gustaf45) heavily cited their own work (assuming that, as they claim, Gustaf45 is indeed G. Söderlind — which in my opinion is extremely likely): 8 out of the 28 cited papers are by G. Söderlind. Although I think this is not standard WP:REFSPAM (because Gustaf45's main motivation seems to have been to write a good article, and because -- at least superficially -- it looks like all of these reference are relevant), this does raise issues about the neutrality of the point of view expressed here.

I don't know the history or the current status of the field, so it's hard for me to evaluate how central Söderlind has been to it and whether one would expect him to be cited at vs one or two times at most vs almost 30% of the time... My understanding (based on reading the article here and on few Google searches) is that he is an important later contributor to the field, but not one of the principal architects of the classical theory of stiff equations — so for this kind of article I guess I would expect him to get cited once or twice, but definitely not 8 times.

I guess one good way forward could be to invite Gustaf45 to the discussion; explain Wikipedia's policy on self-citation and our more general concerns on the current state of the article, see how things go and decide what to do from there. Ideally, the three of you guys (Paul Matthews, Sławomir Biały and Söderlind) could figure out a good way to fix things, and I'd be willing to play the role of the "reader with a strong math background, but in a completely different field" to proofread the article. What do you think? Malparti (talk) 14:46, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Linking if and only if

Someone has been going around and linking if and only if. If memory serves, I think the consensus is against this, but I can't find it written down anywhere. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:43, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

It would also be nice if the link suggestions feature had a blacklist where this could be added... Otherwise, even if it's written somewhere that one shouldn't link it, new editors are going to keep linking it. Malparti (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

This has been going for a long time from multiple editors, as part of "new editor tasks". Not sure who encourages new editors to do that. When I see it in articles I am watching, I usually undo it and refer them to MOS:OVERLINK together with an explanation along these lines:

In mathematics, more advanced concepts build upon more basic concepts. Each article lives within a certain context and each article is assuming a particular level of understanding from its readers, and as readers progress in their understanding, they become better able to grasp more advanced articles. Each article has a specific audience level and can have links to other articles that are at the same level or one level down if it can describe it that way, but adding links to the extreme bottom level of the conceptual hierarchy is not helpful.

A good starting point is MOS:OVERLINK: A good question to ask yourself is whether reading the article you're about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from. and also [Note 2] from that paragraph:

A 2015 study of log data found that "in the English Wikipedia, of all the 800,000 links added ... in February 2015, the majority (66%) were not clicked even a single time in March 2015, and among the rest most links were clicked only very rarely", and that "simply adding more links does not increase the overall number of clicks taken from a page. Instead, links compete with each other for user attention."

PatrickR2 (talk) 21:22, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

As an aside: I don't think whether the links are individually clicked is the right metric. A niche article might have as many wikilinks as yearly views, and the typical reader might not click any wikilink at all. But it's often nice to have wikilinks available for terms used, and in aggregate those links are very helpful even if some of them are never clicked. –jacobolus (t) 22:19, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

The big problem I have with the new editor linking task is not overlinking per se, but the number of links that are outright wrong. The feature seems to work by searching through Wikipedia's text for exact phrases which match article titles, and then "suggesting" those as possible links. But a significant proportion of the time a particular combination of words is not used as a specific keyword, or has a different meaning depending on the context. The "newcomers" who take up these tasks don't tend to do any checking at all, and basically never have the technical background to easily evaluate the appropriateness of links in technical articles.

The end result is that these "newcomer" users are being used as a human proxy for a not very good bot (automated process). Cf. WP:MEATBOT. I'd personally like to see this feature disabled altogether for technical articles, since at best the links are of marginal value, and checking them all wastes a lot more editor time than any value the feature brings via the edits.

If we need a task for new editors, we should try to think of something better. –jacobolus (t) 22:16, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

My usual question is a little different from the one mentioned above from OVERLINK. It's something like, I see the phrase "foo bar baz" here. Is this a natural spot for readers to want to know more about foo bar bazzim in general? One reason they might is if they don't understand the phrase or its connection to the current article, but it might just be because it's something more specific than the current article and it's interesting to know about.

This doesn't work as well for things that are more general, especially if they're much more general. For example you wouldn't want to link "mathematics" in the sentence "the Stone–Čech compactification is important to mathematics because[...]".

For "if and only if" specifically, I think the test usually fails. Very few places in math articles are a natural spot to go learn more about biconditionals. --Trovatore (talk) 22:28, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

About this more specific question: I think it's worth linking if and only if the first time it appears in articles intended for a fairly broad audience (where we e.g. expect high school students to be a significant proportion of readers). In articles intended mostly for a specialist audience, it generally doesn't need to be linked at all. –jacobolus (t) 22:38, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Hmm grumble grumble grumble that might make sense (he says reluctantly). My other objection to linking "if and only if" is that the link seems to be there just to explain jargon, which is not what wikilinks are really for — most of the time they should be to facilitate learning about subject matter, not to explain the words used. (I feel especially strongly about this in the case where links are used to disambiguate; that must never never never be done, but that's not really at issue here.)

For this limited use case I guess I could live with it. I'd just hate to see the reasoning expand. --Trovatore (talk) 22:45, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

In my mind explaining jargon is one of the primary purposes of wikilinks. What level of explanation specific bits of jargon deserve depends on the context and expected audience. For the broadest audience we might skip the jargon entirely. A bit less accessibly, we can phrase things in plain language and also include the jargon term parenthetically. If we want to bring readers toward understanding the jargon term (e.g. this is an early section of an article that goes into more technical detail in later sections) we might add an explicit definition for a term, or at least a quick gloss. As the weakest kind of support we can throw in a wikilink. And finally sometimes we can just use the jargon word and expect the audience to figure it out. –jacobolus (t) 22:55, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Well I disagree rather sharply with that. To me the purpose is to point the user to content, not to explain language. --Trovatore (talk) 22:57, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I do agree on the other hand with the value of glossing terms. I think we should always be assuming that readers don't have access to the links (say, they might be reading a printed version). Links are an add-on. If the writing is unclear without the links, that should be fixed in visible text, not by adding links. --Trovatore (talk) 22:59, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Suggestion for a new section in MOS:MATH

It seems that there is a consensus that linking in mathematical article is rather specific, and, generally, people agree on what should be linked and what not. However, there is no guideline for explaining this. So, I suggest to create a section MOS:MATH#Linking that should contain (I leave to better English speakers the task of converting what follows in a convenient style):

• An introduction explaining why linking in mathematics is specific
• The extension of "Examples of over linking include ... everyday words" (MOS:OVERLINK), into "do not link a term or phrase that belongs to to the common terminology of readers having the background for understand the involved paragraph; examples: if and only if in articles that are clearly not for high school students; constant term in Discrete Fourier transform § Polynomial multiplication (a case that I have recently encountered).
• In particular, do not add a link if you do not understand the paragraph that include it.
• As, in mathematics, the meaning of many phrases do not result directly from the meaning of their components, do not link a part of a phrase that can be or could be linked in the whole: examples "Riemann hypothesis"; "division ring", "division ring" or, worse,"division ring".
• If a term or a phrase needs to be linked and you do not find a convenient target, ask help on the talk page: the convenient target may be difficult to find, even for an experimented editor, and requires sometimes to edit the target article. Example: the page Determinant contains the assertion that the determinant of a triangular matrix is the product of its diagonal entries. For linking "diagonal entries", the editor had to find that the phrase was almost defined in Main diagonal, but not explicitly; so, it had to edit Main diagonal and to create three redirects (Diagonal entry, Diagonal entries and Diagonal element (these redirects are useful for making linking easier for editors of other articles).
• When a term is linked this means generally tat one refers to the content of the linked article; when this is not the case linking can often be distracting and/or may make understanding more difficult. This is the reason for which there is no link in the first paragraph of Mathematics, and that, in particular the terms "field of knowledge" and "abstract concept" are not linked.

Clearly, there is more in the preceding items than in the preceding discussion, but I believe that it should be relatively easy to reach a consensus for creating MOS:MATH#Linking, and for a formulation of its content. D.Lazard (talk) 09:36, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I have also seen two different editors link the following phrase "generalized polygon inequality", which is obviously wrong. This seems to come from a "link suggestions" feature. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:47, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

If MOS:MATH#Linking would exist, referring to it in the edit summary would be easier than explaining why this is obviously wrong. D.Lazard (talk) 10:40, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Are you aware of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking? JRSpriggs (talk) 13:12, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

MOS:OVERLINK redirects to MOS:Linking and is quoted in the second item of my post. So I do not understand your question. D.Lazard (talk) 17:10, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be more fruitful to talk to whoever is in charge of the link suggestions feature and just ask them to turn it off for articles in the math wikiproject, or similar. –jacobolus (t) 14:41, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I started a village pump discussion, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Can the "link suggestions" newcomer task be disabled for mathematical articles? –jacobolus (t) 16:42, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for opening the discussion. If the proposal is accepted this will of a great help. However, if accepted, this will only partially solve the problem, since many of the controversial link additions are not done as newcomer tasks. We really need a section in MOS:MATH. D.Lazard (talk) 17:16, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm guessing the editors who add unhelpful links like those are not the same editors that read the MOS. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 22:16, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Certainly, but providing a link in the edit summary is more helpful and less disruptive than the very short explanationallowed by the revert summary. D.Lazard (talk) 07:40, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, and a problem of the MOS is that it is very generic. It gives little insight into what might be a useful link in a mathematics context. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:54, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for this. It would really help. PatrickR2 (talk) 19:58, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

FWIW: I agree that there's a lot of suboptimal stuff like "generalized polygon inequality" (I think I have reverted that three or four times on the article Triangle inequality?) but on the high-quality articles I've written (Affine symmetric group, Parabolic subgroup of a reflection group) I've found the links people have added using this tool are generally improvements -- certainly better on net than what CitationBot edits have done, for example. --JBL (talk) 22:05, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I have created section MOS:MATH § Linking with short cuts MOS:MATHLINK and MOS:LINKMATH. The shortcuts WP:MATHLINK and WP:LINKMATH work also.

For the moment, it contains only an introductory paragraph and a paragraph about if and only if and similar overlinkings, with shortcut MOS:IFF.

The section will be completed later. D.Lazard (talk) 14:13, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

What's there seems fine for now, and roughly in proportion with the rest of the page. If the goal is to be more helpful than the revert summary like you said before, you could always write an essay in your User space, e.g. User:D.Lazard/Linking in mathematics, and add a shortcut there. Then you could have the space to say what you want without layers of bureaucracy surrounding things like MOS. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 15:20, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

To editors Sławomir Biały and JayBeeEll: In Triangle inequality, the phrase "generalized polygon inequality" was used without being defined. So it is not a surprise that people try unsuccessfully to link it. I have edited the article for defining the phrase. It is a further example showing that linking requires often to edit the target article, even if, here, the redirect generalized polygon inequality does not exists. D.Lazard (talk) 10:27, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

By the way, the phrase "generalized polygon inequality" is confusing. I would have used either "generalized triangle inequality" or "polygon inequality". D.Lazard (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

It's not "people" that are "trying to link" something. It's a "machine learning algorithm" being run automatically which presents brand new editors (who have no Wikipedia experience and not necessarily any relevant background to understand either the article or the proposed wikilink) with a simple choice to accept or reject a new link, as a way of helping the wiki in a guided fashion. Many such would-be contributors just click to accept the change without thinking about it at all. The specific phrase here is somewhat besides the point: the same kind of thing happens to a variety of other phrases. –jacobolus (t) 17:20, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

I made some changes to D.Lazard's MOS:MATHLINK. Other folks may want to check up on it / make their own changes. –jacobolus (t) 03:07, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Madhava of Sangamagrama

Can we have an improvement on this article in a Neutral and add more reliable sources and also we need to treat this biography article as important for mathematics as it contains several important development of mathematics so it is better to improve the article.I had improved the section to reflect in a Neutral way by removing some Fringe claims and I think several improvement is required to make this article more accurate to read. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 06:10, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

Trigonometry

Hey,I am looking for an mathematican or mathematics expert ,who can review the history section of the article Trigonometry to constitute what does the history section of it constitutes trigonometry does Baudhyana sulbasutra geometric constructions involving right triangles and diagonal relations be included in trigonometry history section?? Since it seems to be geometry with no mention of angle measurement,ratio of triangles or chord tables and where do we draw a line to seperate trigonometry from geometry.

Encyclopedia brittancia definition of trigonometry is

trigonometry, the branch of mathematics concerned with specific functions of angles and their application to calculations. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 20:18, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

If someone is reviewing the scope of this history section, please could they also think about where it should end. At present, it seems to confuse trigonometric series and power series. JonH (talk) 00:05, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure it confuses them so much as the last two sentences of that section fail to connect to each other or to anything else in the section. fn33 also seems like a terrible source for this purpose. --JBL (talk) 00:18, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

The biggest problem with the history is that who is going to want to read such a long section about history as the first thing they encounter in the article? Most readers looking up trigonometey are likely looking for something more topical, especially since history of trigonometry is thataway. Also the length of that section relative to the rest of the article seems very unbalanced. Sławomir Biały (talk) 03:58, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

So what is the solution?. My suggestion is to trim the history section and talk about the important advancements in trigonometry from Sumerian and babylonian angle measurement,greek invention of modern trigonometry,classical india half chord and modern definition of sine and cosine,islamic advancement, european advancement and let it stuck in a trigometry way as advanced concept can be explained in the history of trigonometry article and its focus should only being on angle measurement and chord rather than geometrical constructions or diagonals.Any other suggestions for it Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 11:38, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

I think it could be moved to the end of the page. An alternative would be to summarize the appearance of trigonometry in many civilizations, for tasks related to astronomy, architecture, engineering, etc, without trying to do a compressed timeline. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:10, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately both the history section of Trigonometry and the entirety of History of trigonometry are quite mediocre, and have clearly been cobbled together by amateurs. They lack a coherent narrative structure, and they are excessively focused on a few miscellaneous identities as taught today while ignoring the context (mostly astronomy), leading to a very anachronistic and limited presentation. They also only tell the first part of the story, neglecting everything after about 1600. I wouldn't recommend someone try to learn about these topics from these articles. Unfortunately doing a good job with them seems like a very large and difficult project, but if anyone wanted to try, I think the place to start would be by trying to find a few shortish sources written by professional historians, and copy the list of topics from there. –jacobolus (t) 15:57, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Globally hyperbolic spacetime

A concern has been raised at the AI noticeboard (WP:AINB#Globally hyperbolic spacetime) about whether a recent large revision of Globally hyperbolic spacetime is LLM. The article is extremely technical and I am finding source/text verification infeasible. Can someone with more expertise have a look? Thank you! (I have also asked the Physics and Astronomy Wikiprojects.) M kuhner (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Major improvement in biography articles of indian mathematicans

wikipedia needs an improvement on articles related to indian mathematicans like Bhāskara II where the Mathematics section is filled with inaccuracies and no citations.I have tried to improve by adding reliable sources and improve it but it needs more improvement (especially in calculus and arithmetic sections) in scholarly level so I need a mathematician to review these articles on Mathematics section and make it improve. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 09:57, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Except for "featured articles", "good articles" or articles where one currently can't improve much because of lack of sources as of now, every other math articles on Wikipedia need a lot of improvement! Even the ones about basic concepts, such as Functional or even more basic ones, from elementary calculus or linear algebra... There are articles about major mathematicians that are in a really poor state too... ~2026-47741-66 (talk) 00:39, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Steven R. Finch is now live

FYI. Cheers! BD2412 T 21:27, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that One-form (differential geometry), which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 September 2026 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Information page for "Multiplicative graph"

The page image (in information page) for this article displays File:Category SVG.svg. This image was used for comparison with the ordinary category, but since multiplicative graphs do not require either the compatibility axiom nor the associativity axiom, I believe it is inappropriate to display it as a page image. Perhaps, is it better than not displaying anything at all? I know how to hide the image. (See mw:Extension:PageImages#Can I exclude certain page images?)--SilverMatsu (talk) 01:59, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to learn what is an example of a multiplicative graph (however, reading the Example section didn't help me). Hence, I'd appreciate a page image depicting in some way such an example. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:27, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

I can't think of any specific examples of multiplicative graphs, but since there aren't enough examples, I've added a section for inverse morphisms. Since a morphism of multiplicative graph can have several inverse morphisms (that is, inverse morphisms are not unique), I'm not sure if it's appropriate to call the image a diagram.--SilverMatsu (talk) 02:35, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

I added a "reflexive quiver" to quiver. But, quiver seems to be a term from representation theory rather than category theory. So, it might be better to add this under the section heading "reflexive directed graph" to directed graph.--SilverMatsu (talk) 02:49, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Possible duplicate

I found in Wikidata, under the name Peter B. Rhines, two entries Q130667788 and Q24091075. It is difficult to compare as the parameters are mostly without references. Can somebody investigate to see if it is the same person and a merge is needed? Pierre cb (talk) 22:27, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Same middle name, same employer, and looking up the mathgenealogy entry for the "mathematician and physicist" one finds that the research interests appear the same as well. I have merged them and restored the "oceanographer and geophysicist" short description. This sort of duplication on Wikidata is quite common. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:28, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. With so many VIAF id between the two, I could not decide. Pierre cb (talk) 13:02, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

ChatGPT and Navier–Stokes equations

You may be interested in Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#ChatGPT and Navier–Stokes equations. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:09, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Relatedly there seems to be a lot of spam-adjacent behavior happening with recent OpenAI press releases — see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Twelve13 . Some of this has been reverted but more eyes on it would be good. --JBL (talk) 01:05, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Looks like ChatGPT writing advertisement for ChatGPT. Tercer (talk) 19:54, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Fermat's Last Theorem is currently full-protected for related reasons. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 08:31, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Placement of display math and chem formula

Discussion of changing the local CSS to so that display equations respect the long term consensus of left-alignment with indentation once T271001 is rolled out seem to be going nowhere fast. So I've opened a discussions at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Placement of display math and chem formula to reassess consensus.

Your input there is welcome. Salix alba (talk): 22:40, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

RfD on Counit and Co-unit

At Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 September 11 § Counit. Talk page watchers' input would be appreciated. J947 ‡ ^edits 01:18, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Underpopulated categories

Category:Unary operations, Category:Binary operations and Category:Operations on numbers seem to be quite underpopulated (though it is also not entirely clear whether any function qualifies as an "operation"). I have also adjusted some categories of Category:Exponentials, and it might be useful to have a separate Category:Exponentiation for the more classical concepts, also including things like Eighth power down to Fourth power, Cube (algebra) and Square number. 1234qwer1234qwer4 14:07, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to work on this if you want, though I'm not sure anyone other than the people diligently creating and populating them interacts with categories at all. –jacobolus (t) 19:27, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at RSN that may be of interest

This discussion at RSN concerns sourcing related to Category:Lists of things named after mathematicians and may therefore be of interest to some of you. --JBL (talk) 17:34, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Prime-counting function

Could an uninvolved editor familiar with analytic number theory review this discussion?

I would particularly appreciate a source-based assessment using the published references discussed there and of the recent preprint.

Please comment at the linked article talk page so that the discussion remains in one place. Thank you. ~2026-48852-20 (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

A degenerate example of a Spherical tiling

I can't figure out what this means, in a discussion of a "Limiting case" of a uniform edge-to-edge tiling of the sphere:

A spherical monohedron $\{1,1\}$ with one vertex, one face, and no edges is the most trivial regular tiling of the sphere.

There exists a monohedral degenerate case $\{1,1\}$ where the surface area covering a sphere by one hosohedral lune of form $\{2,1\}$ (or equivalently, two monogons in $\{1,2\}$ dihedral arrangement) is represented through a face opposite a polar vertex antipode. This realization is self-dual on its only mirror by swapping the vertex and centroid through a central inversion, with a rotational symmetry of order two that acts as the universal covering space of the projective plane. As dimensional elements in this limit of symmetry, the dual axial vertex-face arrangent in the "monohedral polyhedron" $\{1,1\}$ is the simplest (and most trivial) regular tiling of the sphere.

References

I tried asking the author, user:Radlrb33, to elaborate in sufficient detail that I could make sense of what this is trying to say, and after being asked for specifics I gave extensive detailed feedback about what I personally found confusing in the first sentence, but they thought my confusion was "excessive", "demeaning", "deceiving", and finally declared that there is "no point in communicating with [me]", saying that they "do not want to interact further", because I was "aggressive, assuming, and unacknowledging, as well as evasive. Tic toc".

Can someone else figure out what this passage is trying to say, and explain it (just on a talk page would be fine) in a way that, say, an undergraduate math student can understand? Thanks. –jacobolus (t) 09:16, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

It is saying (rather badly) that there is a degenerate tiling by a figure with one face, one vertex, and zero edges. While that seems worth mentioning, someone should check the cited source (or otger potential sources). The "action of the universal covering space" is incompehensible though. The non-trivial deck transformation is the antipodal involution, not a rotation. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:47, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

"degenerate tiling by a figure with one face, one vertex, and zero edges" I did follow this far from the figure caption, and was able to surmise that the point diametrically opposite the single vertex is the "center" of the single face. I just don't understand any of the rest. What the source says is: "In fact, the universal covering surface of the projective plane is the sphere, and its fundamental group is of order 2, generated by the central inversion." I can't figure out what the projective plane has to do with this single-vertex tiling of the sphere. –jacobolus (t) 09:55, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

NB. An accessible version of the cited source: https://archive.org/details/introductiontoge0000coxe/page/384/mode/2up?q=%22universal+covering%22 Preimage (talk) 17:31, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

the author, user:Radlrb33 Ha, good luck. (Sorry this is not constructive.) --JBL (talk) 10:59, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Request for comments on Draft:Mario Wüthrich

I have written a draft biography of Draft:Mario Wüthrich, professor of actuarial science at ETH Zurich, known mainly for the Merz–Wüthrich formula for one-year reserve risk and for work on discrimination-free insurance pricing. He is also editor-in-chief of the ASTIN Bulletin. The draft is in the AfC queue, but since reviews take weeks I would be grateful for comments from editors familiar with mathematics biographies in the meantime.

Points I am unsure about:

• Notability. I have relied mainly on WP:NACADEMIC: named result used in industry practice, editorship of a journal, and a number of society prizes. I would like to know whether the independent sourcing for the Merz–Wüthrich formula is strong enough, since much of the biographical detail comes from ETH and RiskLab pages.
• Weight. The section on his collaboration with Łukasz Delong is probably disproportionate for a biography and could be cut down to a sentence or two, with the papers left in the publication list. I would welcome a view on that.
• The paragraphs on his early probability work (Brownian motion in a Poissonian potential) are the part I am least confident about summarising correctly. If anyone working in that area could check whether the description of the fluctuation and percolation results is accurate and not overstated, that would be very helpful.
• Length of the awards and publications lists — whether these should be pruned to the most significant items.

Any other comments on tone, sourcing or structure are welcome. Jryblyw (talk) 23:29, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

My comment: AI-generated text is forbidden here, both for writing articles and for making discussion page comments and requests. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, but why do you think I used AI? Jryblyw (talk) 00:44, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

GPTZero says it likely is. Also, do not remove threads that include comments by other people, as you just did here. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:46, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Okay, but it is widely known and proven that GPTZero is flawed. It is even scientifically proven. See: "Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?" by Sadasivan, Kumar, Balasubramanian, Wang and Feizi. Jryblyw (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

and biased against non English speakers! Jryblyw (talk) 00:53, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

What previous accounts have you used on Wikipedia? --JBL (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Noting for anyone who wants a laugh the response to this question: --JBL (talk) 01:06, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Well it’s super obvious because you’re talking about text you allegedly wrote yourself as if someone else wrote it, and because humans don’t do things like . Please familiarize yourself with WP:LLM, and stop dissembling. --JBL (talk) 00:52, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for info, I will take it under consideration in the future. Jryblyw (talk) 00:57, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

wikipedia is firmly against ai generated content and ai bots like gpt 4 or any other is considered as unreliable Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 09:32, 14 September 2026 (UTC)