Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2025/Jun
Would someone who understands group theory and more specifically understands reflection groups please look at this article and offer an opinion as to whether it meets the good article criteria? This is the longest-pending Good Article Nomination, having been nominated about eight months ago. My assumption is that it has not been reviewed for the obvious reason that most of the editors who review Good Article Nominations are not mathematicians. Neither am I. But a chemist and computer scientist should know where to look for mathematicians. The instructions say that any uninvolved and registered user with sufficient knowledge and experience with Wikipedia may review the nominated article against the good article criteria.
I am sure that some of you all have "sufficient knowledge and experience". Robert McClenon (talk) 22:27, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not someone with "sufficient knowledge or experience with Wikipedia" so I'm not qualified to review this article, but I am a human who tried to read the thing and here is my ignorant & uninformed take. This is a super dense and technical read. My head started spinning after the first few sentences. There is a page Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable that I think you, or anyone else who is editing this page, should really take a look at. It offers advice like "Does the article make sense if the reader gets to it as a random page" and "Imagine yourself as a layperson ... Can you figure out what or who the article is about?" I think the answer to both of these questions is clearly "No".
- There is also this quote: "When the principle of least astonishment is successfully employed, information is understood by the reader without struggle." For me, everything was a struggle and I think I know a fair bit about math. I imagine that writing a review takes a lot of time & energy, and if the reviewer has to expend even more effort to understand what they're reading, that might be why this article hasn't been reviewed yet. I can't comment on the definitions and equations, but having maybe some explainers for the non-specialist readers would probably be useful. Adding more illustrations could help. Maybe some context for why the reader should care about reflection groups or subgroups.
- The page I linked to above says:
- "Most Wikipedia articles can be written to be fully understandable by the general reader with average reading ability and motivation. Some articles are themselves technical in nature and some articles have technical sections or aspects. Many of these can still be written to be understandable to a wide audience. Some topics are intrinsically complex or require much prior knowledge gained through specialized education or training. It is unreasonable to expect a comprehensive article on such subjects to be understandable to all readers. The effort should still be made to make the article as understandable to as many as possible, with particular emphasis on the lead section."
- Yet you wrote on the talk page that the "appropriately broad audience" should be "advanced undergraduate mathematics majors and beginning PhD students in mathematics" which I take to mean that it was written with upper division math & PhD students in mind, rather than "make the article as understandable to as many as possible." Basilelp (talk) 01:31, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I hope someone doesn't mind comparing, but we do have three GAs of Mobius strip, Free abelian group, and Dehn invariant, which is technical and somewhat less conceivably understandable yet visually structured. Unlike algebra, to me, they probably require the notations consisted of weird symbols and variables as the way of shorthand, like abstract algebra; you might want to read History of algebra, thought there is another one. I think the same reason for higher fields of mathematics as in mathematical analysis and topology. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Basilelp: You are directing your comment to the wrong person: Robert McClenon is not an author of the article, he is just doing a good deed by trying to get it un-stuck from the bottom of a queue. I am the main author of the article; I am fully familiar with the advice you linked. You even quoted the relevant sentences:
Some topics are intrinsically complex or require much prior knowledge gained through specialized education or training. It is unreasonable to expect a comprehensive article on such subjects to be understandable to all readers. The effort should still be made to make the article as understandable to as many as possible, with particular emphasis on the lead section.
I would like to promise you that there is absolutely no way that parabolic subgroups of reflection groups can be made understandable to readers who have not completed (at a minimum) an introductory course in abstract algebra and a course in theoretical linear algebra, because grasping even a high-level description requires an understanding of what a group (mathematics) of linear transformations is. If the article never makes it through GA review because of that, that's fine with me; this is a generalist encyclopedia, and I've written an article about a very specialized topic. It is possible that the lead section could be made gentler -- lead sections of technical articles are very challenging because they are supposed to summarize the entire article, including the most technical parts -- but simply quoting WP:MTAU at me does not help with that. --JBL (talk) 17:47, 2 May 2025 (UTC)- I also think this article would benefit from some gentler context and motivation, especially in the early part. The explanation in the lead, "the collection of parabolic subgroups exhibits important good behaviors", is too vague to be useful in my opinion. As one example, it's not clear anywhere in the article why the name "parabolic" is used (is this a contrast with "elliptic" or "hyperbolic" subgroups?). –jacobolus (t) –jacobolus (t) 18:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I believe the nomenclature is somewhat second-hand from Lie theory, where one has "parabolic groups", as distinct from compact subgroups (parabolic are cocompact). These are generated by the parabolic subgroups of the Weyl group. Tito Omburo (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Yes; this is addressed in the section Parabolic_subgroup_of_a_reflection_group#Connection_with_the_theory_of_algebraic_groups (including footnote [h]), and also on the talk-page; the best available information on the nomenclature that I'm aware of is this MO thread, but the fact of the matter is that there's not a really good explanation for the name, and reliable sources don't have much to say about it. --JBL (talk) 20:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I think the article should give the best one sentence summary (even if it's "the name doesn't have a very good explanation") and then give whatever detail is known in a footnote, even if the sourcing is somewhat weak and the proposals are speculative. –jacobolus (t) 21:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- You are of course entitled to your opinion on this point; I chose to stick with what could be reliably sourced (which is to say, not very much). --JBL (talk) 18:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- The problem is that if nothing is said, readers end up a bit puzzled, because the meaning of the name is the kind of thing people expect to find. But anyway, you should do as you prefer. –jacobolus (t) 22:16, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Jacobolus: I have attempted to address the naming issue more explicitly in the lead of the article. --JBL (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
- The problem is that if nothing is said, readers end up a bit puzzled, because the meaning of the name is the kind of thing people expect to find. But anyway, you should do as you prefer. –jacobolus (t) 22:16, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- You are of course entitled to your opinion on this point; I chose to stick with what could be reliably sourced (which is to say, not very much). --JBL (talk) 18:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- I think the article should give the best one sentence summary (even if it's "the name doesn't have a very good explanation") and then give whatever detail is known in a footnote, even if the sourcing is somewhat weak and the proposals are speculative. –jacobolus (t) 21:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Yes; this is addressed in the section Parabolic_subgroup_of_a_reflection_group#Connection_with_the_theory_of_algebraic_groups (including footnote [h]), and also on the talk-page; the best available information on the nomenclature that I'm aware of is this MO thread, but the fact of the matter is that there's not a really good explanation for the name, and reliable sources don't have much to say about it. --JBL (talk) 20:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I believe the nomenclature is somewhat second-hand from Lie theory, where one has "parabolic groups", as distinct from compact subgroups (parabolic are cocompact). These are generated by the parabolic subgroups of the Weyl group. Tito Omburo (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Two of the three GAs linked above, Dehn invariant and free abelian group, were ones where (as nominator) I felt I was pushing the limit in how technical an article could be and still get through the GA process. The parabolic subgroup article feels, if anything, even more technical. (I have another current unreviewed nominee that I think is also pushing the same limit: Yao's principle. But if someone here is interested in reviewing for GA, the parabolic nomination is much older and should take precedence.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- On the other hand, I do realize we still have other GAs like Dirac delta function, e (mathematical constant), Pell's equation, Representation theory of the Lorentz group, and Field (mathematics)? Speaking of quoting "an appropriately audience", it is basically trying to say for the readers who understand the basic concept of mathematics, thereby not for the non-mathematics audience in general; in those examples, they are targeted for students who are studying mathematical analysis, calculus, number theory, and abstract algebra, respectively. Maybe the same reason for Affine symmetric group as FA. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- WP:ONEDOWN is a good first cut at what level to target for these articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Speaking for why nomination takes too long a time to be reviewed, I guess nobody can review the article of the parabolic subgroup since it is for the PhD thesis audience. Personal reviewing is not enough to pass, especially for those who do not take a course in higher-level abstract algebra. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:49, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- All the reliable sources on the topic are written for a research audience (PhD students or above); my aspiration (per the guideline David linked) is that significant portions of this article might be understandable to an advanced undergraduate student. I am not terribly worried about GA in particular (it would not be the first good technical article to fail to be Good). --JBL (talk) 20:35, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- The article has good content, and I think is 90% of the way there, but I have a few suggestions:
- -First, it is very difficult to clearly pick out what a parabolic subgroup actually is. I think it would be easier to read if you had one 'Definition' section and included the three sections after the background into it. Also, I think 'concordance of the definitions', while precise, is an unfortunate phrase here, as 'concordance' has a meaning in related fields (like link concordance'). I think 'compatibility of the definitions' or 'equivalence of the definitions in special cases' would be a more clear section heading. The fact that it's in finite real reflection groups that they coincide could be kept out of the section heading, as I'm sure people are more interested that they coincide at all rather than wondering if they coincide in that specific instance.
- -Second, I strongly prefer bold over italic for definitions, and looking at other articles for complex topics (like the Schemes article), they do the same. If you bolded the phrases 'standard parabolic subgroups of W" and ' a parabolic subgroup of W', I think it would help immensely.
- -Third, it would be nice to have a 'properties' section. All we're told is that parabolic subgroups are 'nice', but the only niceness we see is the lattice property. Is that the only reason these are studied? Actually, looking back, it looks like the properties are mingled up in the definition sections. I think having clearly-defined 'Definition' and 'Property' sections could help a lot, so either:
- 'Definition in case 1
- properties in case 1
- definition in case 2
- properties in case 2
- equivalence of two definitions in special cases'
- or:
- 'Definitions:
- -two definitions
- compatibility of definitions
- properties
- -two sets of properties'
- This is all just minor fluff and the vast majority of the article would stay the same, but I think it would make it a lot easier to read. So I suggest those cosmetic changes. I haven't been bold and edited because I'm suggesting out of a place of interest rather than confidence. Brirush (talk) 22:30, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Perhaps "90% of the way there" is being generous. If the target audience level is PhD students then writing one level down would try to make it intelligible for Master's students. It reads like a research paper, rather than an encyclopedia article. Along with the defintion fixes, including plain English descriptions following the jargony text would also help. Having history, motivation, context, and the other suggestions provided here are very much needed. The only changes to the article in the past few days has been modifying a reference, I get the impression that there isn't a huge rush to improve the writing. Possibly the only options for moving this article along the nomination process would be for a reviewer to copy/paste everyone's comments from this Talk and work to get it in form (or the authors could continue to throw their hands in the air saying "it is just too advanced for you") or for the nominator to retract it from the queue. Basilelp (talk) 16:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Why would you expect this article to have been changing recently, and what business do you have declaring what options other editors have? Your attitude (supported so far by lots of bold declarations and condescention but zero concrete suggestions) would not be endearing even if it were coming from someone whose account had existed for more than a month, had contributed to more than one article. JBL (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- What happened to being welcoming to newcomers?
- I would love to give you concrete suggestions. Hell, I would make the edits myself, but I would first have to understand the article in order to translate it into plain English.
- I'm sure you think it is a good article. It would probably even win Best Paper at a SIAM conference and boost your h-index. But as far as being accessible, keeping things one level down, not needing to have a dissertation in this area, etc. in my admittedly unqualifed opinion, it is that I don't get it. Basilelp (talk) 04:11, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Remarkably several other people who don't get some part of the article have contributed to this conversation without being assholes. Please never interact with me again unless mandated by policy to do so. --JBL (talk) 19:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Why would you expect this article to have been changing recently, and what business do you have declaring what options other editors have? Your attitude (supported so far by lots of bold declarations and condescention but zero concrete suggestions) would not be endearing even if it were coming from someone whose account had existed for more than a month, had contributed to more than one article. JBL (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Brirush: thanks for your constructive feedback! I will think about the issues you've raised. In my professional writing, I also prefer bold over italics for definitions, but regrettably this is proscribed by the MOS, see MOS:NOBOLD. Part of the issue is that the phrase "parabolic subgroup" does not have a single uniform definition that covers all the cases in which it appears; this causes some inherent issues in choosing how to structure things. --JBL (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Perhaps "90% of the way there" is being generous. If the target audience level is PhD students then writing one level down would try to make it intelligible for Master's students. It reads like a research paper, rather than an encyclopedia article. Along with the defintion fixes, including plain English descriptions following the jargony text would also help. Having history, motivation, context, and the other suggestions provided here are very much needed. The only changes to the article in the past few days has been modifying a reference, I get the impression that there isn't a huge rush to improve the writing. Possibly the only options for moving this article along the nomination process would be for a reviewer to copy/paste everyone's comments from this Talk and work to get it in form (or the authors could continue to throw their hands in the air saying "it is just too advanced for you") or for the nominator to retract it from the queue. Basilelp (talk) 16:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- All the reliable sources on the topic are written for a research audience (PhD students or above); my aspiration (per the guideline David linked) is that significant portions of this article might be understandable to an advanced undergraduate student. I am not terribly worried about GA in particular (it would not be the first good technical article to fail to be Good). --JBL (talk) 20:35, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Speaking for why nomination takes too long a time to be reviewed, I guess nobody can review the article of the parabolic subgroup since it is for the PhD thesis audience. Personal reviewing is not enough to pass, especially for those who do not take a course in higher-level abstract algebra. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:49, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- WP:ONEDOWN is a good first cut at what level to target for these articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- On the other hand, I do realize we still have other GAs like Dirac delta function, e (mathematical constant), Pell's equation, Representation theory of the Lorentz group, and Field (mathematics)? Speaking of quoting "an appropriately audience", it is basically trying to say for the readers who understand the basic concept of mathematics, thereby not for the non-mathematics audience in general; in those examples, they are targeted for students who are studying mathematical analysis, calculus, number theory, and abstract algebra, respectively. Maybe the same reason for Affine symmetric group as FA. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I also think this article would benefit from some gentler context and motivation, especially in the early part. The explanation in the lead, "the collection of parabolic subgroups exhibits important good behaviors", is too vague to be useful in my opinion. As one example, it's not clear anywhere in the article why the name "parabolic" is used (is this a contrast with "elliptic" or "hyperbolic" subgroups?). –jacobolus (t) –jacobolus (t) 18:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- A note to/request of those who have commented here or have interest in this: I have spent quite a lot of time with several well written textbooks that address reflection groups in detail, from different perspectives (as represented in the references of the article). They are all consistent in making use of parabolic subgroups in various ways, but in saying almost nothing about what makes parabolic subgroups useful. This is obviously somewhat frustrating, as I would love to be able to write two more sentences in the lead explicitly addressing this, but I lack appropriate source material. (My personal impression is that for many purposes they are the "right" substructure to consider, rather than the family of all subgroups or the family of reflection subgroups, in terms of being compatible with what you would want---the lattice property is part of this---and because of the connection with algebraic groups.) If you happen to know any RS that say anything that would allow for a non-OR discussion, please let me know! --JBL (talk) 20:05, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
- I won't take up the review as having to merely find all the sources listed to spot-check is something I do not have the time to take up (not to mention I do not have too much experience in editing Wikipedia), but I did want to comment that there are a couple of paragraphs and footnotes without proper citations per the WP:GACR. I'll tag some of the parts of the article I feel a citation would be warranted so that this aspect of the article is at least covered. Gramix13 (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Nearly every place you added a cn tag was already cited (often immediately following the place you added the tag). --JBL (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Do forgive me for adding the tags then, I added them out of caution. Gramix13 (talk) 23:18, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Nearly every place you added a cn tag was already cited (often immediately following the place you added the tag). --JBL (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Matrix addition. Gramix13 (talk) 00:39, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- The list of vital mathematics articles is a mess. If anyone cares, it would be worth doing a careful comparison of our top and high priority article lists, sorted by yearly page views, vs. the list of vital articles, and then proposing a large number of articles to promote or demote at varying levels of "vital", rather than discussing them piecemeal. For convenience:
- The latter list, especially toward the bottom, has quite a lot of chaff in it, and the former two lists, especially toward the top, have a lot of articles which should be considered essential. –jacobolus (t) 01:24, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Pardon, but it looks like the link for Level-5 does not appear to be working due to the URL of the category. Gramix13 (talk) 02:09, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Apparently you have to go to the page and copy-paste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_level-5_vital_articles_in_Mathematics into it. Linking to it is broken. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:12, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- I think I messed the URL up somehow. Did my updated link fix it? –jacobolus (t) 03:28, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Looks like it did, thanks! Gramix13 (talk) 04:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Agree w/Jacobolus. When I last looked at the list of "vital" articles, it seemed a bit random. There were plenty of top and high-priority articles that weren't listed as "vital", and many medium and low priority articles that were "vital". I assumed that the list of vital articles was cruft left over from 2005 that no one had bothered to maintain or update. Is it actually maintained? Who maintains it? Is it still needed, or is it a left-over from the 2005-era projects? Perhaps "vital" should be replaced by some weighted average of priority and yearly page-views? 67.198.37.16 (talk) 22:10, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
- They do seem mostly like cruft left over from 2005, but some people are still actively maintaining the lists and they are widely linked from around Wikipedia, so if anyone has a moment with nothing better to do, it's maybe worth trying to update. The mathematics lists still only get about 10–15 views per day, so it's not a super high priority though. –jacobolus (t) 00:44, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
- Agree w/Jacobolus. When I last looked at the list of "vital" articles, it seemed a bit random. There were plenty of top and high-priority articles that weren't listed as "vital", and many medium and low priority articles that were "vital". I assumed that the list of vital articles was cruft left over from 2005 that no one had bothered to maintain or update. Is it actually maintained? Who maintains it? Is it still needed, or is it a left-over from the 2005-era projects? Perhaps "vital" should be replaced by some weighted average of priority and yearly page-views? 67.198.37.16 (talk) 22:10, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
- Looks like it did, thanks! Gramix13 (talk) 04:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Pardon, but it looks like the link for Level-5 does not appear to be working due to the URL of the category. Gramix13 (talk) 02:09, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
White appearance on STL
[edit]
Does anyone know what causes the white appearance in an STL polyhedron? This complaint originates from the Talk:Regular icosahedron where a user asks about the missing edges on STL, possibly because of the same reason as mine. For some reason, this problem also applies to many STL polyhedra. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:27, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
- If you zoom out significantly on the white icosahedron, it gains proper shading. There's either (a) some kind of problem with the STL file itself (either the shape or the lighting), or (b) some kind of bug in Wikipedia's STL viewer. I get the same behavior in multiple browsers, so I don't think it's a browser problem. –jacobolus (t) 20:30, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
Hi everyone! Anyone willing to opine on the notability of this mathematician? I think he is notable (full professor at Yale University, co-proved Zimmer's conjecture, shared the 2022 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, and his work received in-depth coverage from Quanta Magazine). Best wishes, Esevoke (talk) 19:47, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- (please comment on the draft itself) Esevoke (talk) 19:48, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- Sure he's notable; for what reason should anyone need to add comments to the draft about this? --JBL (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you! It's because it seems that most pages at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Submissions are declined/rejected. Esevoke (talk) 22:34, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- Yes that's because people write bad articles about non-notable people; your draft is fine and the subject is notable, there will be no problem once a reviewer gets around to it. --JBL (talk) 22:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- I have accepted the draft at Sebastián Hurtado-Salazar. GTrang (talk) 05:04, 8 June 2025 (UTC)
- Yes that's because people write bad articles about non-notable people; your draft is fine and the subject is notable, there will be no problem once a reviewer gets around to it. --JBL (talk) 22:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you! It's because it seems that most pages at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Submissions are declined/rejected. Esevoke (talk) 22:34, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
- Sure he's notable; for what reason should anyone need to add comments to the draft about this? --JBL (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)