Talk:Lists of mathematics topics

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Archives: Talk:Lists of mathematics topics/Archive 2004-2005

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move; the other pages listed below by the Transhumanist will be returned to article space. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:18, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems, after reading the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Contents, that the broad consensus is that this should not be in article space. Therefore, I will change my mind and close this as a move as request. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics → Portal:Mathematics/Lists — There are some previous discussions on where to move this page in the talk page archive, but that was apparently before considering a move to portal namespace (I'm not even sure that namespace existed at the time). Then there was a move without apparent discussion in 2006: [1]. Compare ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Lists. I think Portal namespace suits very well here, per the description at Wikipedia:namespace#Portal: "The portal namespace (prefix Portal:) is for reader-oriented portals that help readers find and browse through articles related to a specific subject. It also may contain links to encourage readers to contribute to relevant WikiProjects". Note also that the current page name (in plural) is not consistent with WP:NC#Prefer singular nouns —Francis Schonken 00:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Move (nominator) --Francis Schonken 00:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
• Question What would be the affect on the fact that this is a Featured List? Michael Hardy 01:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep -- Lists of lists are articles. See Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists). The decision to make them into portal subpages shouldn't be attempted one list at a time. This is an issue that concerns the whole class of pages known as "lists of lists", and it should be discussed at a wider forum. Many issues need to be discussed concerning these lists (there are more than 80 lists of lists), such as:

1. No searches - Wikipedia's default search box settings do not include portal space. Lists of lists would no longer show up in the search results of most users' searches. Lists of lists, which are essential navigation aids, would be partially buried. They'd still support navigation via browsing, but not navigation via search.
2. Cross-namespace link conflicts - many editors are unclear on the guidelines concerning cross-namespace links, and such links are subject to being deleted because of this. Moving lists of lists would require that the links to these pages be checked periodically to make sure they haven't been removed.
3. No longer part of the main encyclopedia - many mirrors and forks don't include portal pages - so these lists wouldn't be part of the main encyclopedia anymore, as they would no longer be considered articles.
4. As portal subpages, would they still be eligible for featured status? - they'd be part of the portals they are subpages of, which are covered by featured portals. This could lead to confusion and conflict. Could portal subpages attain featured status independently of the portals they belonged to? My guess would be "no".

Moving lists of lists out of the namespace they support is a bad idea. This is a policy or guideline concern, and belongs at the village pump. The Transhumanist 19:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - this appears to be an extension of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Contents concerning the 4 pages "Portal:Lists of basic topics", "Portal:Lists of topics", "Portal:List of overviews", and "Portal:List of glossaries" (all of which are lists of lists). Note that Francis Schonken boldly moved those lists to portal space without prior discussion, citing that they defied WP:ASR, but he misinterpretted that guideline. For them to be moved back to the main namespace would require an admin. The Transhumanist 20:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus at all was reached on this move. This is bogus.

There was no consensus at all for this move. The cited page on which the consensus was reached did not reach a consensus. And I didn't recognize even one name among those who commented there. HUNDREDS of daily Wikipedia editors have each edited HUNDREDS or (in my case and that of many others) THOUSANDS of mathematics articles, and they didn't participate in the discussion. We should broadly canvas to solicit opinions of those hundreds of mathematicians who edit here. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Just so this won't be misleading: that other page on which it is claimed that a "broad consensus" was reached mentioned this issue only twice, tangentially. I'm not sure it ever mentioned this page specifically. Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics was notified of the discussion on this page, but not of the other one. Participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics did not participate here when it seemed unnecessary. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

As Francis notes, he made an effort to solicit opinions, and the requested move has been open for some time. There has been a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Contents to work out where this sort of list belongs. If you feel so strongly about this issue, you should obviously request that the other lists mentioned by the Transhumanist get moved back to article space. This was, and is, the right venue to get moves you dislike overturned. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a situation I'd have preferred not to have: the closing admin / uninvolved party interpreting and taking a decision, and then have that decision overturned by an involved party.

Note that yesterday I still invited mathematics people to join:

• Portal_talk:Mathematics#Stalled_move_request
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Stalled_move_request

Michael, you had all opportunity to express your opinion on the move, instead, above you asked a question (BTW in the "#Survey" section, while questions are more appropriate in the #Discussion section). If you had expressed your opinion on the move, the page probably wouldn't have been moved as it was a close call according to the closing admin. Then after the move has been performed it appears you suddenly come forward with an opinion on the move, and you enforce it by overturning the decision of the closing admin. Leaving us with a closed poll and a closing rationale (given by the closing admin) that doesn't match the position of the page.

The proper thing for you to do would have been initiating a new WP:RM in the other direction if you thought more people could have joined.

I'll mention the contentious move at WP:RM#Incomplete and contested proposals. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There was no consensus for a move on this page, and the discussion was properly closed with a "no consensus" notice. I did not overturn the decision of the closing admin; what I did leaves intact the "no consensus" outcome. The proper thing for the closing admin to have done if he wanted to change his mind later would be to start a WP:RM. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I would add that there's nothing resembling a "broad consensus" at that other page either. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This article doesn't pass WP:VER

This article doesn't have sources for obvious reasons. The listed items are Wikipedia constructs, and while that is allowed under the guideline WP:SRTA, it causes a collision with Wikipedia's mandatory sourcing requirements in the policy WP:VER.

Should an exception to WP:VER be made here?

Does WP:IAR apply here?

The Transhumanist 22:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a self-reference as such. A self-reference might be "Wikipedia's table of contents", which would not make sense if the content were forked. This article is essentially, "This section's table of contents" which is on par in my mind with Wikipedia categories.

I have no problem with invoking WP:IAR, but I don't even think it's needed here. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

What would you like to verify? — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Every listed item. See Wikipedia:Lists#List content. Or alternatively, establish an exception for this kind of list. The Transhumanist (talk) 12:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Would you support such an exception? Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Michael Hardy seems to be onto a solution at WP:FLRC. The Transhumanist (talk) 12:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you also see a verifiability problem with the article List of '2007 in' articles?  --Lambiam 01:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

No, that's essentially a disambiguation page. The Transhumanist (talk) 11:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This list is obviously a useful navigational tool. I don't care whether it is a featured list or not (what difference does that make to anything ?) unless this is a first step towards an AFD nomination. Is it ? Gandalf61 (talk) 12:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The ability to verify this "page" is of dubious utility as it is not an article. Not many readers are likely to want to check that that a list they are interested in has been perfectly described in the section title and the short section intro. Is that logic a case of WP:IAR?; good heavens no -- its simply that this is a list of lists - its a meta-meta page - I havent seen guidelines for those yet. for example, Lists of people doesnt have cites either. Feel free to write a guideline, as there are a lot of "Lists of " pages, and I have never seen a ref on any of them, and I would vehemently oppose them having a ref. John Vandenberg (talk) 14:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Another move proposal

A proposal currently on WP:RM would move this list back to the portal namespace, see Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace. Andrewa (talk) 03:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed changes to this List

At the moment, this article divides Fields of mathematics into 3 subdivisions: Basic, Advanced and Applied. This makes no sense. It would make more sense to divide the advanced section into Pure and Applied, however I favour removing the applied tag altogether. To quote from the article on applied mathematics:

"There is no consensus of what the various branches of applied mathematics are. Such categorizations are made difficult by the way mathematics and science change over time, and also by the way universities organize departments, courses, and degrees."

If there is to be an applied section then differential equations should definitely go in it, and so should discrete mathematics. However I don't think there should be such a section. The List of topics could be arranged so that it starts with the more pure-ish topics and then moves down the list to more applied-ish topics, but there shouldn't be any hard dividing line. Delaszk (talk) 10:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Although this subdivision has been stable since it was introduced on June 9, 2005, I agree that contrasting Advanced with Applied does not make eminent sense. I don't think, though, that the best solution is to abolish the category Applied. The main point of having these categories is the ease of navigation. Lumping 6 + 7 = 13 fields together makes navigation harder. I favour instead changing Advanced to Pure. While there may be no consensus for all fields where they belong, I think most mathematicians, if asked to classify these 13 fields as either pure or applied, would reproduce the exact same subdivision. I don't agree that Discrete mathematics should go under Applied. The categorization of partial differential equations is indeed problematic; it is a bit curious that List of nonlinear partial differential equations is put under "Calculus and analysis", but List of partial differential equation topics under "Dynamical systems".  --Lambiam 23:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK agreed, pure and applied headings are a useful navigational aid.

Here's a quote from Dynamical systems

"The differential equations determining the evolution function Φ t are often ordinary differential equations: in this case the phase space M is a finite dimensional manifold. Many of the concepts in dynamical systems can be extended to infinite-dimensional manifolds—those that are locally Banach spaces—in which case the differential equations are partial differential equations. In the late 20th century the dynamical system perspective to partial differential equations started gaining popularity."

It would thus seem reasonable to move List of nonlinear partial differential equations to the dynamical systems section even though Differential dynamical systems may be an extension of calculus.

I said above that I thought "Discrete mathematics" is applied rather than pure, however "Discrete mathematics" does not seem to be a coherent field. It seems to be just the parts of various fields which are studied in computer science. Most of the fields: Number theory; game theory; logic; information theory; probability; and dynamical systems contain both discrete and continuous parts, and all of them already have their own sections on this Lists page, except for combinatorics. So I think a combinatorics section should be there rather than a discrete section. Delaszk (talk) 15:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Discrete mathematics is negatively defined as mathematics not requiring the notion of continuity (but see e.g. Scott continuity, which IMO belongs to the realm of discrete mathematics), and does not form an organic whole – but is still a useful category for navigational purposes. I would also put Set theory and Order theory under Discrete mathematics; I think they are misclassified under Logic.  --Lambiam 23:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Set theory is not really logic, in the general sense of that word, but it *is* "mathematical logic"; this is established terminology, even if it is not really (wait for it) logical. On the other hand, set theory (except, possibly, for very elementary set theory, such as Venn diagrams and so on) is not standardly characterized as discrete math. I do agree that order theory doesn't belong under logic, but I'm not so sure it goes under discrete math either. --Trovatore (talk) 00:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Discrete mathematics isn't so much a topic as a way of looking at mathematics. Since it is everything that isn't analysis, it includes parts of just about every area of mathematics.

I've just realized that Discrete mathematics is listed under areas of basic mathematics. I think it's fine there.

Looking to the Areas of mathematics article for inspiration, perhaps the Logic section should be renamed Foundations and then logic and set theory would be fine there and proof theory and model theory could be added. Order theory could be put under algebra or given its own section. Delaszk (talk) 16:46, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

list of math history and math philosphy journals

It may be helpful to develop one. Tkuvho (talk) 12:20, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on organization

There is a thread here about whether Lists of mathematics articles should redirect here. Let's consolidate the discussion on that other page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

We can help by making inconsistent?

Wonder what was meant here, don't want to change unless original editor lets us know what he/she was trying to say.Pdecalculus (talk) 18:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it's meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. DilumA (talk) 04:24, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

It's a good joke, but I'm not sure it should be presented to readers. I've commented it out, for the moment. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:12, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

And I've removed it. - dcljr (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

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