User talk:Randomblue

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Contents 1 Constant 2 Help Desk request 3 Problems starting Wikipedia Cleaner 4 Wikilinks to constant 5 about ununoctium 6 Emile Bouaziz 7 First-order logic 8 translation of modular arithmetics 9 Bad Bot, no Cookie! 10 Roman Catholic Church 11 Image:Euler_identity.png listed for deletion 12 Roman Catholic Church 13 Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Émile Lemoine 14 Emmy Noether 15 Jean-Victor Poncelet 16 A gift for you 17 re Nancy

[edit] Constant

Thank you for working on this article, but I am not sure the move to numerical constant was good. Could you please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Constant move about this? Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not very happy with the expansion of the article Constant as it is taking place now, which in just 3 weeks blew up by a factor of 7. As you can also read at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Constant move, I feel that most of the material that has encyclopedic value should be treated in the more specific articles, such as our article Physical constant, and I am actually not convinced that it is worth having a separate article like this next to Constant (disambiguation) and the specific articles. As I see it, the main commonality between the mathematical constants and the physical constants is that both concepts are designated by terms containing the word "constant". Putting this material together in one article, is like having an article Rock with substantive sections on disparate concepts like Christian rock and Metamorphic rock.  --Lambiam 15:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not inclined to put much effort in attempting to improve the article, since I remain unconvinced it has a reason to exist in the first place (and expanding it only makes me feel there is more to get rid of). As I said before, the reason that a number like π crops up in physics equations is simply that physicists use mathematical models to express nature, such as the geometrical model of Euclidean space to represent physical space. Why that works so well is not fully explained (see The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences), but given that it does, the appearance of π is hardly surprising. Is it worth mentioning in an article on constants in general or on mathematical constants specifically that π makes regular appearances in equations of physics? It is mentioned in our article Pi, with the "geometrical" explanation I mentioned; beyond that, I don't know, but even if it is worth repeating in an article on constants more in general, it does not link "mathematical constants" to "physical constants". As far as I can see, the sentences that link the subjects are mainly "original research". I don't know of physicists revelling in the beauty of physical constants, except perhaps "Arthur Adding-one" in later life with his numerology of dimensionless physical constants. As to some other points, which are however minor compared to the major issues I have, I would not say that "today's temperature" is a value, only that it has a value. Today it has one value, say 280 K, and when today becomes yesterday it has another value, say 279 K. These values do not change: tomorrow 280 K will still be 280 K. What changes is not the value but the day referred to by the appellation "today". The word "invariant" has a specific meaning in mathematics and also a (somewhat different but related) specific meaning in physics, neither of which means "ubiquitous", so its use is confusing.  --Lambiam 17:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help Desk request

Comment! Best, — Rudget _{contributions} 17:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing you're referring to this? — Rudget _{contributions} 17:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah but I want a way to do it without having to save+uplaod image. Randomblue (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Have you seen the LaTeX page? — Rudget _{contributions} 17:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes but this doesn't seem to solve the problem... Randomblue (talk) 17:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll do some searching. Be back with a reply in five minutes or so. — Rudget _{contributions} 17:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this what was wanted, or was this the initial problem? See here. — Rudget _{contributions} 18:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Initial problem...

Oh dear. I'll put it back up at the Help Desk. Sorry about this. — Rudget _{contributions} 18:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, but it introduces more problems (wonder why). I just don't really see why it's necessary - I can generate up a LaTeX image of Euler's equation and upload it under public domain - that saves the trouble of messing around with HTML solutions. x42bn6 Talk Mess 20:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the <math> has the same problem. One can use a transparent PNG image to be uploaded, although it may look a little ugly when anti-aliasing is removed, or an SVG (but I don't know how to work with those). x42bn6 Talk Mess 20:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems starting Wikipedia Cleaner

Hi,

I just answered about your problem in the French Wikipedia (here), but I just saw that you managed to use it. Do you know what the problem was ? --NicoV (talk) 16:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikilinks to constant

Please do not add wikilinks to constant in all physical constant articles. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 23:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] about ununoctium

Hi. On the talk page you left "Bonding and noble need disambig". If just linking doesn't seem enough, I was wondering what type of disambig you are thinking about bonding? As for noble, is it enough to insert a note after the first use of the word? Nergaal (talk) 22:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I han't realize that. Thanks for noticing it. If you have time, you can leave your thoughts about the article on the FA canditate page. Thanks, Nergaal (talk) 01:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Emile Bouaziz

Hey there. Deletions don't appear in contributions, but in "logs". Here are mine: [1]. The link to this is on the lower left of the userpage, in the toolbox. Usually I'm happy to give users access to deleted content if they wish but since the page in question is an attack page that disparages its subject, I really don't think its necessary or prudent to reproduce it in any form. Did you create it under another account? Please don't do that. If you didn't create it and are merely curious about what it said I can assure you that while it wasn't a particularly vicious attack page, it was insulting and rather nonsensical. Cheers Dina (talk) 23:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First-order logic

Could you please be more careful with edits to areas of mathematics that you are not actually interested in. In a single edit you seem to have made a few sensible changes together with a lot of very bad ones. It would take too long to sort out this chaos, so I have reverted completely. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Many of your corrections still don't make sense. The general problem seems to be that you are replacing wiki links to redirects by what they point to. For example mathematical theory is a redirect to theory. If you replace that, and eventually somebody gets around to writing an article on mathematical theories (whatever that is), then all links to mathematical theory will automatically point to the right articles. But the links you have treated in this way will still point to Theory. The good thing is that your edit has pointed out many problems in the link structure, e.g. I had no idea that first-order theory redirects to list of first-order theories. That's one of the things I will fix as soon as possible. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried that link? It points to about 1500 articles. It's much easier if you can discard many of them because they point to Scientific theory or Theorist. And it's even easier if you only have to go through a few dozen articles pointing directly to Mathematical theory. It turns out we even have a direct guideline shortcut related to this: WP:R#NOTBROKEN.

I was a bit angry at first, but now I am glad this happened, because the first-order theory redirect really bothers me. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:41, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] translation of modular arithmetics

Hi,

I've done the translation you have asked me for. It is on my talk page. I did not attempt to find a good english prose (as it will be polished later anyway and my English is not that good). I don't know what "ensembles de modulo" means. I guess it means the set of zeroes of a polynomial, at least this would make sense. Also, there are a number of redlinks I didn't try to adapt to the English WP. Perhaps you or somebody working on the article could do that. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 23:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The translation of cryptography (sections 5.1. and 5.2) is done (see your own user page). Can you please ask someone else to do the rest of part 5? Good luck with the article. I think it still needs quite a bit of work (beyond translating the stuff). Jakob.scholbach (talk) 10:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the good work. Randomblue (talk) 09:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Bot, no Cookie!

Hi Randomblue.

Your recent bot edit to Hamlet removed links such as First Folio (and others in that article) tagged as removing disambiguation links; but none of those links were actually to disambiguation pages. Please be more careful before you set a bot loose on Wikipedia pages, or check its proposed changes better before saving. Thank you;--Xover (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You're right, the edits are quite appropriate and I'll undo my revert. However, I do not believe I failed to assume good faith in any meaningful way; the edit was labelled as a an… — let's call it “tool assisted” to avoid any possible negative connotation associated with the term bot; I may have used it too cavalierly — …edit to remove links to disambiguation pages and did not match the actual edit. IMO, the good faith assumption in that case is that WikiCleaner has had a bit of a hiccup, clean up the mess, and let you know about the problem. There was no intended accusation in my above comments. Admittedly, it would have been better if I had checked the edit more carefully before reverting, and my sincerest apologies for not doing so.--Xover (talk) 21:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Roman Catholic Church

Thanks for helping out. I appreciate it very much. Good work finding those for us. NancyHeise (talk) 23:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Euler_identity.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Euler_identity.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Nv8200p talk 02:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Roman Catholic Church

Regarding your note on the talk page - should we link all of the authors or eliminate McBrien's link? NancyHeise (talk) 03:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I just linked all of them. I think I'll just leave them for now. Some of the authors are red links, not sure if its because I didnt get the name just right. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 03:21, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Émile Lemoine

I addressed all but a few of your comments in the article; the others are addressed in a paragraph under your list of issues. Thanks for the review. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 00:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

See my comment there. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 21:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah. I knew it was that year and that volume and that issue from a source, but I didn't know for the life of me which article. I had a tip from a friend (who's much better than me at math) that it was probably that one, but if you actually have the article and are telling the truth, then it's not. Do you have the entire issue? Could you scan through and see which one? Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 21:42, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes; that was an obviously bad decision in hindsight. I've read all the other sources, or at least summaries of them, from JSTOR (I don't have access to the site, a fellow editor PMed me it), World Book, and the Gale database. I'm not sure why you would want me to select a few - isn't there an equal probability that the mention is in all of them? This is probably unnecessarily complicated; the journal sources a statement which is covered in other sources already used in the article and could just be removed. As for your second query, why isn't it a "notable prize"? It's mentioned often in the Bulletins of the AMS; i.e. volume 5 number 8, volume 13, number 6. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 23:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The "Notes" section which appears in every issue. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 23:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

My brother owns a copy of "College Geometry" by Nathan Court, and a few of Lemoine's papers. I admit that I didn't actually read that, though; I added it at someone's suggestion during the FAC. I'll go read it to see if it's relevant if you like, but it seems fairly obvious that it is. Also, I just noticed that it's at both ref 11 and 15; I don't know what it's doing at 11. I'll remove that occurence. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 00:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh wait, the papers are with my brother at college, so I guess I can't read them. But the comment about the obviousness above stands. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 00:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

My source for that was the Smith article; ref #1. I didn't know about the work in probability you mentioned. I'll do some research this weekend and find out about it. I might be able to access the local university's library; if not, hopefully I can find it in one of the databases I use. I'll check the latter right now. Thanks! Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 21:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Emmy Noether

Oof! Thanks for your note; I had assumed that the maths people were only editing the maths section – apparently some folks had been tweaking the bio too. I copyedited that, and hopefully I've restored the elegant sheen and readability to it. =) I read through the maths section, but I'm so lost in it all that I doubt any copyediting of mine would help there. Please let me know what you think of the article's flow now. Thanks again for your note. – Scartol • Tok 12:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

FYI: I've also responded to the comments on the talk page. – Scartol • Tok 12:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: the 4th lead paragraph: How about seeking a third opinion? Maybe Awadewit? – Scartol • Tok 12:28, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jean-Victor Poncelet

Hi there, Randomblue. You did some excellent work on the Lemoine article at FAC and even after, so I'm wondering whether you'd be interested in collaborating on the article Jean-Victor Poncelet - you see, I don't have access to several sources I need to make the biography longer, and one of the extremely comprehensive sources I do have in PDF form is on French, which I only have a rudimentary understanding of. It would be appreciated if you could help. Thanks in advance. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 01:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

What I have so far is a basic outline of his life - mostly in the form "in xxxx, Poncelet held this job and wrote this paper." The lead, I think, is very good, and I consider that portion complete. I haven't started on his contributions section yet, but I have plenty of material on that, so that won't be a problem.

What I mainly need is more details of his biography. Here's some sources that I don't have access to (the article doesn't require all of these, of course):

• Bertrand, J, (1879) Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences vol. 41
• Taton, Rene, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990). (it's his entry in it)
• Bogolyubov, A.N., Jean-Victor Poncelet. 1788-1867, Scientific-Biographic Literature 'Nauka' (Moscow, 1988). - this one's in Russian, apparently, so maybe we can't use it.
• Tribout, H., Un grand savant : Le général Jean Victor Poncelet (Paris, 1936).
• Bogolyubov A N, Geometry and mechanics in the works of J-V Poncelet (Russian), Studies in the history of physics and mechanics 271 'Nauka' (Moscow, 1986), 178-191. - same comment as the other Russian one.
• H J M Bos, C Kers, F Oort and D W Raven, Poncelet's closure theorem, Exposition. Math. 5 (4) (1987), 289-364.
• H J M Bos, The closure theorem of Poncelet, Rend. Sem. Mat. Fis. Milano 54 (1984), 145-158.
• B Belhoste, J-V Poncelet, les ingenieurs militaires et les roues et turbines hydrauliques, Cahiers d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences 29 (1990), 33-89. - aha! I've found this one on the internet in French. http://www.inrp.fr/she/fichiers_rtf_pdf/belhoste_lemaitre_poncelet_roues_et_turbines.pdf

Also, I have a comprehensive biography on him in PDF form - in French, which like I said, I can only understand at a basic level. I'll email that to you. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 16:26, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Huh, it seems that Wikipedia email doesn't accept attachments. I could upload it on a free webhost and email the link - in fact, that's what I'll do. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 16:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

And yes, FA is the ultimate goal. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 16:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes - Poncelet did quite a bit of work in that area, and it could contain invaluable material for the "Contributions" section. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 17:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I've responded to some of the things on the talk page; could you take a look? I'm off to write the contributions section now. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 23:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll go to bed now, and have a look at your work tomorrow. Randomblue (talk) 23:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about Didion's biography, written in French. I can send you a pdf version if you wish and help you for the translation. Pierre de Lyon (talk) 16:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

• In your bibliography you could add Bruno Belhoste «La formation d'une technocratie. L'Ecole polytechnique et ses élèves de la Révolution au Second Empire« Belin, Collection Histoire de l'éducation, which speaks about Poncelet when he commanded Ecole Polytechnique and his connection with the Leverrier commission which deeply reformed and modernized the Ecole. Pierre de Lyon (talk) 07:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, why do you know so much about Poncelet? Are you related? An alumnus from l'X? A historian? Best, Randomblue (talk) 13:13, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

As I said somewhere, Didion is my grandgrandfather, more precisely he is the grandfather of my grandmother (and as my parents are relative though the Didion, I have more connection). When I heard about his biography of Poncelet, I read it. In addition as I have a background in mathematics, I can understand what he is talking about. Pierre de Lyon (talk) 18:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

By the way, Random, if you have time, could I have the page numbers? I gave my reasons on the talk page. Nousernamesleft^{copper, not wood} 01:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A gift for you

Everyone knows I love my gifts of chocolate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] re Nancy

Randomblue. I would respect comments like yours to nancy a lot more if they were also directed to people like TONY and karanacs who have demonstrably made repeated FALSE allegations and accusations against the editors of this article, and failed to apologise when exposed. Instead you support members of a clique who consider it their right to make sneering and unsubstantiated comments about an article at FAC, and to barrage editors with false accusations. There seem to be signs of a clique harrasing the nominator into withdrawing the article. That is not in line with Wikipedia principles. Xandar (talk) 22:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to talk about others here; and I don't intend to "support" anyone, especially not Tony or Karanacs. By the same token, I don't intend to condemn Nancy. I just found Nancy's attitude in this FAC and the last one strikingly unconstructive. I find she doesn't take into account what others say, she's often on "defensive mode" instead of "discussion mode", and she always argues, argues, argues. Randomblue (talk) 22:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)