Redirected from Mathematics/Old Talk
I would disagree here, but then you'd make me fill in the P&S stuff I thought was missing (like more detail about the Bayesians, the Doomsday paradox, more history of gambling and statistics-as-rhetoric, resampling... Damn, I guess I just volunteered. --LDC
Now for my *opinion* - I feel that the other Math pages have been both a more co operative efforts and attempts to single out interesting and fundamental material rather than an attempt at writing a text book by one author. This will naturally result in occassional failure to link and some incomplete entries, so far. I do think that eventually these will be corrected. Most impotantly, in these pages the math is correct. Further certain areas of math are almost impossible to explain here, due to the lack of symbols, ability to show diagrams and graphs, etc. How does one properly explain the Integral without being able to draw a graph, Limits with no proper notation, classic functions without the ability to show graphs (trig, exponential, natural logarithm, conic sections- need I go on.) Submitting graphs and symbol images to wikipedia to upload for every entry is a little much. Within the constraints of this media I think the Abstact Algebra is fine as far as it goes, and the Analysis nearly impossible.) Finally, I think it is very hard for a non-Math person to assess the value of the higher level math pages.-RP
My own philosophy pages are pasted with Larrys Text, but at least I invite people to change them; and today I decided to remove the Larrys Text pointer from pages that I've wikified.
I totally agree with the assessment of the accessibility of the higher-level math pages. I have the impression that the mathematicians are simply showing off :-) which is just fine, and actually great because so much has been done, but it sure would be nice (and actually, even more impressive) if they would make an effort also to explain the concepts, insofar as this can be done, in a way that intelligent nonmathematicians can understand, or start to understand. This won't be easy, but in many cases it can be done. The simpler explanations needn't replace the more precise formulations, of course! --LS
But more math talk would help and that I will try to add. Math is a subject, that after a certain level, you do not read, but you rework it through, and try examples. This makes math somewhat different than other subjects. "Reading" a math text can take literally hours per page. Knowing math involves a unique set of skills, because you can not progress until you have integrated the material you are studying into your brain to the extent that you can "use" it in the next development. This is really hard to explain and I am in a hurry. I will return and try to do better. I am not saying here that math requires higher level skills than another subject, just different ones. RoseParks
By the way, when you say, "I call alternative schemes..." you seem to be inviting public support for a radical change to the Mathematics page. Y'know, the best way to get that support, I'll bet, is just to change the Mathematics page and invite comment/further changes. --LMS
1. I've reorganized the Mathematics page, changing the table to a more conventional layout, primarily because the table wouldn't resize (it scrolled off the right hand side of my window). This also gives the page a similar look and feel to other "portal" pages in Wikipedia. Finally, it will make it much easier (I believe) for anyone else to edit the page.
2. Signing pages. I understand the desire to "track down" pages one has a vested interest in for further work. I offer a couple alternatives to signing: set up a "To-Do" list on your personal page, as several others have already done; put an inocuous marker (I've used "To-Do" without the hyphen) which can be easily searched for. Try searching for it right now; there aren't that many pages that match and it might encourage someone else to work on them. If you really want to stake out some territory, I'd suggest creating a "Talk" page and signing comments there.
3. Editing "owned" pages. As a former coworker used to say, "Get over it!". Yes, I'm reluctant to modify pages that someone else has put a lot of work into, but we all knew when we started using Wikipedia that any page is subject to complete revision--that's one of the key features of Wikipedia.
4. Wikipedia is not a textbook, it's an encyclopedia. Keep in mind that most viewers of these articles will likely not have a deep background in mathematics, so the tone, depth, and in-line "handholding" gloss should be appropriate for that level of reader.
5. Presentation. Wow. This discussion has been going on in several locations. I think that these discussions should be consolidated in one place, perhaps a subpage on presentation; say HowToPresent[?]. I don't have the time right now to do that, but if no one else does it first, I'll try to merge and summarize the comments to date.
Ok, flame away. --loh (2001-06-20)
I added this to the main page, then decided to put it here!
Oh please. Applied math pays the bills, and does a darn good job of it. And its fun. Its just really, really, hard (consider a horse, a perfectly spherical horse...). As a first topic here, I propose Mechanics?, which one might say is the queen of applied math. I will also state that without a thorough steeping in Lie Groups and Lie Algebras, you ain't going anywhere fast in mechanics. So the rigor is there, always has been, but the problems we can solve are getter more and more interesting!
An Applied Mathematics page already exists (I didn't know that when I reformatted the table). I'll add that link, but perhaps someone who knows more about the field will decide whether to add items here or just refer to the separate A/M page. (cf Finite Mathematics) --loh (2001-06-22)
There is a link to "computation" lost all by itself at the bottom of the page. Where should we move it? AxelBoldt
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