Talk:Monstrous moonshine

Give a Fricke

Reference to Fricke: long dead in the 1970s, he overlapped with Felix Klein with whom he wrote on the modular group (one of those German works that killed a subject for a generation). Charles Matthews 20:52, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Co-efficients

It is not obvious to me how teh co-efficients increase... could someone please explain how? Tompw 16:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Conway and Norton's first conjecture

I think there must be something wrong here. This is trivially true (for any group and any series you like!) since we may just take V_m to be an appropriate number of copies of the trivial module. 86.15.136.29 21:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Bibliography

The bibliography in the external links section has not been updated since 1997. DFH (talk) 07:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

coefficients as linear combinations

Every natural number is a linear combination of 1. So what exactly is asked for? What condition must the linear combination fulfill? Being simple? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bildungskatastrophe (talk • contribs) 12:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful, but

A beautiful entry, but I conjecture that no more than 1000 people on earth will understand it's content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.176.198.217 (talk) 07:17, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

You're probably right. I wouldn't normally brag about my IQ, as it's a dubious measure and irrelevant to most of daily life, but it's been measured somewhere beyond 160 and I still haven't the darnedest clue what any of this means. In fact, I only came on the talk page to see if there were any clues and maybe ask "all very clever, but what is this actually useful for, if anything? or is it just evidence of a load of PhDs being canny enough to talk their way into being paid to while away the daytimes alternately coming up with ever more devious puzzles for their peers to solve, or attempting to solve puzzles that they themselves have been set?". I keep running across mathematical articles like this on Wikipedia, and whether it's something inherent to the subject itself, or just the confounding way they've been written, it all looks like a mix of sudoku and contract bridge notation, and dangerously close to the dear old Time Cube, with no hint of any practical applications for any of the theories/concepts/methods anywhere. 51.7.49.61 (talk) 00:48, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

My IQ is high enough (about 4 SD above the norm) to understand that it's absurd to think that a high IQ alone would be enough to know what the page means ... but follow all the links and learn the background material and the terminology, and with a high enough IQ (considerably lower than 4 SD) you can grasp it.

And yes, it's inherent to the subject itself, which is rich in layered conceptual content, because that's all it is, and is the result of millions of person-hours of investigation. Here's a "friendly" explanation of the Monstrous Moonshine conjecture: https://www.quora.com/How-did-string-theory-help-Borcherds-solve-the-monstrous-moonshine-conjecture -- Jibal (talk) 08:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Needs rewrite

This article needs to be rewritten for a general audience. Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable  czar 05:11, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^^ this ^^ ... and then most of the advanced mathematics ones in general, as on the whole they appear to have been copied and pasted from an electronic doctorate-level textbook aimed at someone who's already been through at least five years of relevant tuition solely within that subject area, and thus has an intimate knowledge of the foundation material and relevant concepts without needing any of them restated, and published on WP largely as a cloud-accessible aide memoire for whoever submitted them. Which is entirely antithetical to the encyclopaedia concept. I'm almost fearful to look for whether any of them have a Simple English version, because that would be pretty ironic.

Maybe transclusions might help, seeing as they're a thing now? 51.7.49.61 (talk) 00:51, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

It's not logically possible to rewrite technical mathematical explanations like this "for a general audience" that isn't willing to follow all the links and learn the terminology. If you believe otherwise, then go ahead and do so. It achieves nothing to post on the talk page "Needs rewrite" as if that's going to magically happen, or Jimmy Wales and his staff of millions will swoop in and do it for you. Take a look at https://www.quora.com/How-did-string-theory-help-Borcherds-solve-the-monstrous-moonshine-conjecture ... that's as friendly as it gets, but will still be impenetrable for most people. -- Jibal (talk) 08:23, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it's illogically possible then ? Go on, give it a try.

I have a degree in Mathematics and I cannot understand anything about this article beyond the fact it's something about group theory. If it is impossible to write this in such a way that at least people with university maths or physics level education understand it, then delete it. 2A00:23C6:3087:9F01:8164:7D73:EDBD:77A4 (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Bottle of Jack Daniel's

In the section Related observations it is stated that Andrew Ogg offered a bottle of Jack Daniel's to anyone who could explain a particular observation.

It is not mentioned what happened: Did anyone ever win that bottle?50.205.142.50 (talk) 20:04, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Good question, still no answer here. I'm not a drinker, but surmise that a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey is generally preferable to a (typical) bottle of moonshine whiskey. Perhaps Ogg was punning on the "moonshine" reference? yoyo (talk) 04:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Someone should nominate this article for deletion.

Clear violation of this:

Scientific journals. A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well-versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead (and sometimes the initial sections) of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic. While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:3087:9F01:8164:7D73:EDBD:77A4 (talk) 20:46, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but following this policy - or guideline (which, you don't say):

Introductory language in the lead ... of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field

literally would mean deleting most, or even all, technical articles from Wikipedia. This is just another motherhood statement that presents an impractical ideal. An encyclopaedia is not consulted only by "any literate reader", a group so vast that it includes young children who don't even know the words "mathematics" or "encyclopaedia"! Professionals also use it, and why shouldn't they?

But this isn't the place to debate policy (and I'd rather focus on this article anyway). More to the point, you already suggested deleting this article in the "Needs rewrite" section of this talk page, above, so are repeating yourself.

I do agree that the article is a difficult and technical one, and could be substantially improved. I'd say that the first step in that direction ought to be providing inline citations, as already requested by another editor. To that end, I'd like to use a standard {{Reflist /}} template in a section called References, rather than just a list of Sources, and give specific page numbers for each inline citation. Then we might consider just how we could make the whole article - particularly the lead section - easier for interested readers to understand. Together, we could make it a useful article, even for non-mathematicians. yoyo (talk) 05:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Missing constant summand 744

On the article about Heegner numbers, you find a constant term of `744` in the sum of j(τ). Why it is missing here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henning Poppinga (talk • contribs) 13:13, 7 February 2022 (UTC)