User talk:Prime.mover





Archives
For what it's worth I have archived my user talk page in all its offensive embarrassing glory. --prime mover 12:15, 29 April 2012 (EDT)


 * So, what's your affiliation with the RU Nijmegen? --Lord_Farin 17:40, 29 April 2012 (EDT)


 * Participated in a conference on mathematics wikis. Feel free to inform me if I do not have the authorisation to display its crest in conjunction with my name, as it could be construed as presumption. --prime mover 19:38, 29 April 2012 (EDT)


 * I don't know nor bother; I'm with Utrecht anyway - at least until the summer of 2013. --Lord_Farin 04:42, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

Your last contribution to the talk page really was not constructive; I understand this by looking at the clock, but please ensure that you are contributing something in the future. It's not an obligation to respond the same evening (although some would call me a hypocrite for putting this up, I don't really care; feel free to hit back at some point). --Lord_Farin 18:46, 1 June 2012 (EDT)
 * It was constructive enough. I corrected the two points mentioned, but the fact is the last major change to this page IMO detracted from rather than enhanced its meaningfulness, as it failed to keep the notation consistent. What does a man do? It's a crappy page anyway. --prime mover 18:51, 1 June 2012 (EDT)
 * I think the issue was just that it sounded like you were annoyed at Frades rather than at the existing mediocre content. Sometimes it would probably be better to wait rather than responding overly tersely while you're pissed off :) --Alec  (talk) 22:13, 1 June 2012 (EDT)

Perhaps on the book pages, we could put links to theorems that reference that book, for instance, under each chapter, we may list the numbers of the theorem and link them directly to the pages that they correspond to. Is this something that could/should be implemented to any extent? Andrew Salmon 08:55, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * If that's something you want to do, then feel free to get under way. --prime mover 09:41, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I've made an effort to make my style more in line with the proofs on this site, but they still keep getting marked "tidy". What does this one, in particular, need to become "house style"? Transfinite Recursion/Lemma --Andrew Salmon 05:18, 26 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Two points in particular:
 * 1. Spacing, basically. If you notice, every page on ProofWiki (every tidy non-talk page, that is) has a gap between the sections which consists of two blank lines. This forces a noticeable gap between e.g. the Theorem section and the "Proof" heading. Note that when you edit a section separately, the gap vanishes (this is an awkward feature of MediaWiki software) so editing individual sections is not recommended. Funny, but I have a feeling LF has already mentioned this (although I can't find it).
 * 2. Note that every time brackets are used, the "left" and "right" delimiters are used, and braces {} are used to enclose the field being parenthesised. This ensures consistency and provides an immediate way to ensure brackets match.


 * Also worth noting that there are several places where links are not being used. Every concept needs a link to a page explaining it.


 * Also worth noting that whenever you start a new topic on a talk page, do it by pressing the "Add topic" button above, or otherwise add a new heading in the talk page itself.


 * I hate to have to write instructions for this stuff over and above what is in the Help pages (although all this is doc'ed in the House Style page) - I prefer to think that these things can be picked up by following examples. --prime mover 05:36, 26 July 2012 (UTC)


 * That is, as long as the influx of new contributors putting up piles of new information does not exceed a certain bound. --Lord_Farin 10:28, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

What word should we use here
The theory $x < y \implies z+x < z+y$ holds for ordinal arithmetic. Note that the converse does not hold and that ordinal addition is noncommutative. What word should we use to describe this theorem. I'm looking for a term like Ordinal Addition is Associative or Ordinal Addition is Left-Cancellable. Thanks, Andrew Salmon 07:19, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Ordinal Addition Preserves Ordering? --GFauxPas 08:23, 27 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Definition:Relation Compatible with Operation, and we can call it "left-compatible" and "right-compatible" if you need to discriminate. --prime mover 14:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Colons
I think that subpages like Powers of Group Elements/Sum of Indices should be referred to as Powers of Group Elements: Sum of Indices since IMHO the forward slash looks very ugly. --Lord_Farin 10:59, 2 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree, and I admit I have been less than diligent at sorting these occurrences out, through sheer laziness. --prime mover 17:19, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Help
Could you take a look at Lebesgue Pre-Measure is Pre-Measure? I can't seem to identify the issue, it looks like nothing I have seen before in PW. --Lord_Farin 18:11, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The culprits are apparently my $Lord_Farin 18:17, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It looks fine to me. What appears to be the problem? --prime mover 20:52, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * When writing consecutive $(($ or $]]$ in the eqn template it apparently breaks the interpreter, probably some issue pertaining to the PHP regexp implementation in MediaWiki. Look back in the history, the first big edit of today, and you can see it for yourself (I can, at least). --Lord_Farin 20:55, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, is bound to cause a problem especially when you follow it with a  because that's the delimiters for an internal link. Within a template you might fall foul of more severe restrictions. I have consisently used $\left[\left[{ ...  }\right]\right]$ for Definition:Equivalence Class in the past - recommend you might want to do the same for your contructs: $\left[\left[{ ...  }\right)\right)$ and $\left(\left({ ...  }\right]\right]$. It seems to work. --prime mover 21:01, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I have adapted it to the latter inside the eqn's indeed; it works. However it is cumbersome and the intuitive form does not lead to problems outside of templates (that I know of). As I see it the dollar signs (ah, that's where it may be from, precedence in parsing delimiters) are parsed before internal links, hence can't be caught by annoying issues with double ['s. On the other hand I may lay off my recalcitrance later, when I'm in a more realistic mood. --Lord_Farin 21:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Hah! You invented the notation - you live with it! :-) --prime mover 21:14, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Style
Hello. I do want to learn this "house style" and the correct formatting for this site. I have been through the house style page several times, but I am confused as to why some of my recent pages have been marked "tidy". I would like to write pages without them getting hit with the "tidy" template, so would it be possible for you to write maybe 3 or 4 words explaining what is wrong with the page the next time you do it? I don't want to impose too much writing or explanation that may be able to be found elsewhere, but maybe you could write something like "more links" or "spacing is wrong" or something to that effect. --Andrew Salmon 04:13, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Will do. Note that some of it is really subtle, like making sure that e.g. there is a colon then a space between the bookreference template and the section it comes from, and using "Also see" not "See also". And note the use of the eqn template. And sentences always being on a new line. --prime mover 05:11, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Some of it's grammatical stuff: "Then" is not followed by a comma. Sometimes it's just that a proof does not flow well as an argument. And so on.


 * As I say, the "tidy" flags are there so they can be attended to later when I'm not working on something else - but as the whole concept of how ordinals and classes are to be treated is to be given a complete rethink so as to be able to accommodate all these different and structurally incompatible approaches, just tidying the style is not such an immediately straightforward task. --prime mover 05:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Seeing as you obviously have other plans for the ordinals section, would you recommend that I move onto chapter 9 as that deals with the axiom of regularity instead? --Andrew Salmon 05:40, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Probably. I know nothing about the specific work in question. --prime mover 05:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

As requested, I've spent some time adding some explanations to some of the "tidy" tags. --prime mover 06:41, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * While at it, is it a good idea to instate one of 'Iff' and 'iff' and one of 'Implies' and 'implies' as standard for page titles? The stuff doesn't matter very much to me as I mostly search through Google, but may be another step towards consistency (among the other naming conventions we have been enforcing lately). --Lord_Farin 13:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If we can decide which to use. My money is on lowercase. --prime mover 13:47, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * My preference as well. --Lord_Farin 13:53, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I was thinking lowercase because I thought that was what we used for "if", "only if", and "implies". But looking around, that's inconsistent, too.--GFauxPas 14:30, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This is an issue which I am not applying a high priority to, I'm afraid. Perhaps I'm getting fiddle-fatigue. --prime mover 14:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I brought it up mainly to prevent the pile of work from growing further, which would happen if no convention arose (in which case both forms would continue to be added). We'd better stick to our on-the-fly adaptations as such is far more constructive and useful for us and the reader just strolling by. I will amend the appropriate Help section to mention these conventions. --Lord_Farin 14:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Which'
In ongoing annoyance with the lack of a neuter gender counterpart to "whose" in the English language, I have adopted the egologism "which'" (in an attempt to find a close translation to the (archaic) Dutch "welks"); in case I'm being unclear, I mean the correct pronoun in 'The house which' door was open" where "whose" sounds distinctively wrong. This message serves not but to inform you that this use is intentional (and a faint attempt to make it a nostrologism instead of an egologism, but as you're a native speaker I suspect you will have grown used to "whose" or the more pedantic "of which"); please leave it in tact or provide me with the correct one-word alternative. --Lord_Farin 13:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, behold the new type of page section I deemed useful: Definition:Convergence in Measure. It was useful mainly because it would be hard to have to come up with the code for $\displaystyle \operatorname{\mu-\!\lim\,} \limits_{n \to \infty} f_n = f$ every time, while I like it a lot better than $f_n \stackrel{\mu}{\longrightarrow} f$. --Lord_Farin 14:40, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "whose" is AFAIK perfectly good grammar. I've never encountered an issue with it. I gather its wrongsoundingness originates from the fact that "who(m)" refers to an animate (or probably, strictly human) object, whereas "whose" is not so restricted, sounds as though it should mean "of whom".
 * I'll respect your suggestion, but I would not be surprised to find someone else "correcting" it. --prime mover 16:52, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * And the "Technical Note" looks like a useful innovation to me, go for it. It complements the "Symbol Index" which is shamefully not kept up to date (and was never in date in the first place, come to think of it). One of these days I'm going to go through a mathematical dictionary and extract everything in it to ProofWiki, though, so we have that to look forward to. --prime mover 16:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Definitional Abbreviations
How to denote definitional abbreviations? What is the policy here? --Andrew Salmon 03:20, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Looking around, it looks like the policy is to use $\dashv \vdash$. Is this correct? --Andrew Salmon 03:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's $:=$, see Definition:Definition.

"Start" link
Can the books have a "start" link on their book page that links to the first page that the book references? That is, it should link to the page that you get if you kept clicking prev until you can't anymore. Maybe it could be on the book page? --Andrew Salmon 06:20, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds like an excellent idea. I'll give it some thought - but I have to go to my day job right now. --prime mover 06:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Message
Hello prime.mover. I'm back. I would like to know:

1) How may I upload an image? (my expectation is that my profile may not)

2) How may I upload a .pdf file?

--Jshflynn (talk) 22:00, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I take the liberty to respond as PM is off to bed already.
 * 1) I see an 'Upload file' link under the 'Toolbox' header in the menu.
 * 2) This is currently disallowed.
 * If you explain your intentions, and we approve, site admin Joe may change the permissions to allow PDF uploads. I don't think that we will allow any user to upload files with the current amount of spam accounts; maybe there could be an 'authenticated/privileged users group'. For now, you can send the PDF to my address (lord_farin@proofwiki.org) and I'll look into it (my curiosity is also involved here :) ). LBNL: WB. --Lord_Farin (talk) 22:50, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * My view is: no PDFs. Anything therein should be able to be transcribed. If it's a picture, do it as a jpg etc., if it's text then type it up.
 * The reason for no PDFs is that they can not subsequently be edited. --prime mover (talk) 05:17, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Subsection editing

 * PM, how come you are adding the ability for people to edit subsections? Here's something I was told early on by L_F:


 * "Although convenient, the section-wise editing feature destroys the carefully set up large whitespace separating sections. This then requires a subsequent edit to recover the desired amount of white. It is therefore generally preferable (except on talk/user pages, where house style is not enforced) to edit the page as a whole using the link at the top."


 * I never got around to asking him why the option exists in the first place. Are you fixing this bug or something?


 * It's part of the MediaWiki functionality. Don't know whether it can be turned off. It's not a bug, it's just the way it works. Besides, I'm not the man who controls the software. --prime mover (talk) 23:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Request
Hi PM. This may be rude of me as I'm not entitled to it. Am I allowed to see that 1300 page LaTeX document you mentioned? It sounds fascinating. --Jshflynn (talk) 16:05, 28 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not letting you have the source code but you can have the built DVI file (or PDF if you prefer). Let me know which, and a mailbox to drop it into, and I'll bag it up. I lied, it's more like 1200 pages not 1300. It might have been edited down. The zip is nearly 3 megs. Email me at prime dot mover at proofwiki dot org. --prime mover (talk) 18:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Proofread
I have created an update for "proofread" to allow it to have a clarifying statement in the first template argument (so one can now add comments as well, in place of just the options "grammar" and "both". Showcase is at User:Lord_Farin/SandboxTemplate. If approved, I will place it on Template:Proofread. --Lord_Farin (talk) 15:52, 29 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks good. Feel free to deploy it. --prime mover (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Capitals in Titles?
Hey PM. Just out of curiosity. How come in page titles ProofWiki treats keywords as proper nouns. For instance why is Subset Relation is Transitive given that name as opposed to subset relation is transitive or Subset Relation Is Transitive? I have no problem with it as I find it aesthetic. But I would like to know if there is/was a practical reason behind it as well. --Jshflynn (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Purely aesthetic. I have distaste for language and presentation that looks kindergarten. I'm a proud fascist. --prime mover (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Second opinion
Can I have your opinion on the stuff described on Talk:Open Sets of Double Pointed Topology? Eventually I want to prove Separation Axioms on Double Pointed Topology/T5 Axiom, but it turned out I need some preliminaries. --Lord_Farin (talk) 12:40, 18 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, that turned out to be a lot of work to eliminate just one stub entry. A fresh reminder on why I tend to hate examples when I understand the general definition. --Lord_Farin (talk) 15:14, 20 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The entire contents of is examples. That's its reason for existence. It shows which properties of topological spaces are dependent on which, and sets up examples to prove the various non-dependencies. Fun. --prime mover (talk) 15:23, 20 October 2012 (UTC)


 * While at it, let me explicitly tap my hat to your tireless refactoring duties; impressive how long it takes you before succumbing to the ever-lurking keyboard-smashing frustration it induces. --Lord_Farin (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Pff. It's just the direction my OCD takes me. My personal space is a shambolic clutter of open, half-open and closed books, bounded and unbounded ... --prime mover (talk) 15:23, 20 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Luckily, you can always employ the shift operator to clear your mind :). --Lord_Farin (talk) 15:50, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Topological conventions
Definition:Connected (Topology) has a mishmash of different conventions, and thanks to my changes Definition:Connected (Topology)/Subset is now even worse. I think we need to drop the formality of naming the space, its underlying set, and its topology throughout those articles. Such formality is rarely used in practice because it makes most things both more verbose and harder to understand. --Dfeuer (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't understand what you mean by "drop the formality of naming the space". Can you explain? --prime mover (talk) 19:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Formally, there's a set $S$, a topology $\mathscr T$, and a topological space $X=(S, \mathscr T)$. In practice, the space is identified with its underlying set, and the topology is handled implicitly. So it would be usual to write "Let $X$ be a topological space, let $K = \mathbb R \times X$, Let $U$ be open in $K$, and let $p \in K \setminus U$", rather than the horrible things that would be needed to write out all the formal details. Dfeuer (talk) 20:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see there's a problem. We specify it at the start: "Let $T = \left({S, \tau}\right)$ be a topological space" and then we refer to $T$, $\tau$ and $S$ as appropriate. Not horrible at all. --prime mover (talk) 20:56, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * If you're dealing with simple theorems involving one or two spaces, it's not too bad. If you're trying to deal with large products and such, it gets messy pretty quickly, and you soon start running out of good variable names, and more importantly working memory (I say, speaking as someone with a limited working memory). A more formal way to look at the informal approach is that it avoids naming the underlying set or the topology, and overloads set notation to allow $x \in X$ to mean "$x$ is a point in $X$" and "$S \subset X$" to mean either "$S$ is a subset of the set of points in $X$" or "The set of points in $S$ is a subset of the set of points in $X$".Dfeuer (talk) 22:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * We try to move as far away from informal as possible in both our proofs and our definitions. In the context of a linear exposition like a book or a paper, in which the train of thought is more-or-less constrained by the flow of the document, then introducing simplificational notations and short-cuts can be a useful saver of space. But in the multi-dimensional context that is ProofWiki, in which the path through the material is a complicated exercise in graph theory, it is (if not essential), a very good idea to ensure that the notation be kept as uniform, monolithic, consistent, formal and explicit as possible. The aim is for any page to be immediately accessible to any user.


 * Please be aware that we have been through this particular thought process before, several times over (whenever someone makes a similar suggestion to yours). The above philosophy is one of the cornerstones of the entire website. The fact that we have never received a favourable review from anywhere in the world is beside the point. --prime mover (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I have to side with PM here. In the past, I have been frustrated by the complications this philosophy brings notationally; however, I consider this outweighed by the fact that we can make precise various category-theoretical notions that would otherwise only be expressible in colloquial language with appeal to intuition. OTOH, it may be convenient to have a notation for the "underlying set operator" so that we may avoid having to invent triples of variables (of which we then need to remember the definition).

I am very much open to any solution unifying the apparent benefits of both worlds (i.e. retaining rigour with minimal notational clutter); until such is provided, I'd rather stick to formal correctness. It may well be the sole truly distinguishing point PW has to offer in the competition with a comprehensive collection of mathematical books - that, and of course the documentation of all variants and notations around. --Lord_Farin (talk) 23:10, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I have a few thoughts: 1. contrary to a belief common to category theorists, most mathematicians, and the vast majority of mathematics students, are not category theorists. 2. At the very least, components of the triple that are never used in the text shouldn't be named: "Let $X$ be a topological space over $S$" is better than "Let $X = (S, \tau)$" if $\tau$ never actually comes up. 3. When not using set notation, the underlying set needn't be mentioned, so until it gets too awkward, "Let $U$ be a set of points in $X$" is better than "Let $U \subset S$, where $S$ is the set of points in $X$". As for the general distaste for overloading notation, well it might be nice if math didn't do that, but it does, so I think it makes a certain amount of sense to use the notations everyone else does. 4. One option, taken from the world of programming languages, is the module import or implicit variable: let an article incorporate, by reference, the shortcuts of the relevant field. Dfeuer (talk) 23:22, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Points 2. and 3. are certainly valid; another useful sentence may be "Let $\tau$ be a topology on $S$" or simply "Let $\left({S, \tau}\right)$ be a TS". Point 1. I can recognise :). I must admit to not fully understanding 4.. --Lord_Farin (talk) 23:44, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Dfeuer, what do you recommend happen to existing pages? --Jshflynn (talk) 00:10, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Jshflynn, I think they should all be made as clear as possible. Dfeuer (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I should mention also that some notation is universally overloaded: $f(x)$ means the function $f$ applied to the argument $x$, while $x(y+z)$ means $x$ times $(y+z)$. Dfeuer (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Dfeuer: While your point of view is indeed welcome, your proposed suggestions are in fact not going to happen. Your bold statement that "(such-and-such approach) is better than (thus-and-so approach)" is based on nothing more than your opinion. I happen to disagree and believe that "(thus-and-so approach) is better than (such-and-such approach)". Because, while it is usual for a definition not to explicitly make use of the internal structure of the topological space (as that definition may itself be based upon other definitions rather than on specific properties of the topology), it is likely that proofs that use such a definition do require specific details of the internal structure. The existing approach is therefore better.


 * As for "use the notations everyone else does" that is a fatuous argument: 1. Every piece of notation that is used by everybody else is used on this site. It would be stupid not to. 2. Every piece of notation over which there is dispute is by definition not used by "everybody else" otherwise there wouldn't be a dispute over it.


 * I repeat my earlier suggestion, made more elliptically earlier: if you don't like the structure of ProofWiki then you are more than welcome to start a rival site using a structure and philosophy that you do favour. Maybe perhaps if you were to make some valuable contributions to fill some of the many areas of mathematics which are still undocumented, and demonstrate that you are able to do useful work, your opinions may be held to a higher value. But we have so many editors whose only contribution has been to find fault with relatively trivial aspects of existing well-covered areas that my patience with such editors (never bountiful in the first place) wear thin very easily. Them as can does; them as can't, teach; them as can't teach, criticise. --prime mover (talk) 06:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm doing my best to add and improve material, which I hope counts as useful. I am getting a bit frustrated by being shown the door at every turn. As for the topological matter, I don't actually understand what you're saying, so if you can give a clarifying example, I would appreciate that. Dfeuer (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Style befuddlement
Clearly, it's going to take me quite some time to get a good sense of the style you prefer. In the mean time, I'll try my best to at least get the equations in the right style so it won't take you too long to fix the words around them. I know you like to keep things short and choppy, and I have no objection to that, but it's not something I'm accustomed to or particularly good at as of yet. --Dfeuer (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Take your time.
 * You may come to like the style.
 * I find it makes it easier to follow a proof.
 * In the meantime, remember: the return key is your friend. --prime mover (talk) 07:29, 6 December 2012 (UTC)