User talk:Caliburn

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Cheers! prime mover (talk) 15:18, 17 August 2017 (EDT)

refacoring
I see you're chewing your way through a lot of refactoring and restructuring. Keep up the good work.

One thing that may make your life easier (and also make our pages look prettier) is: if you're building a fraction with a single digit / letter on top and/or bottom, you can leave off the braces, as long as you keep the spaces: that is,  rather than , as long as you don't write   which makes it less than readable.

We also prefer spaces between entities in the same way we prefer spaces between words when writing English -- the fact that the $\LaTeX$ compiler ignores them is a fact, yes, but it makes the code more readable to put spaces in, and the code lays itself out on the page better around page breaks.

Also -- watch for circularity when crafting proofs. Cheers. --prime mover (talk) 18:38, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
 * Thanks, all noted. Caliburn (talk) 06:09, 31 August 2017 (EDT)

Point of grammar
I point you to:
 * Help:Editing/House Style/Linguistic Style

and also:
 * Help:Editing/House Style/Mathematical Symbols

Minor points, but I'm sure you'll be okay with it.

Cheers, --prime mover (talk) 10:45, 3 March 2018 (EST)
 * Fair enough, I will keep this in mind. Caliburn (talk) 16:36, 3 March 2018 (EST)

Whittaker and Watson
You will notice I added the source work you are using (info off the internet, Wikipedia mostly) and took the liberty of rationalising the references to it so as to use the edition you are using as a source.

This is how we have traditionally been handling materials from books with multiple editions -- in some cases an extensive rewrite of a source work has made this necessary.

Hope this is okay, and if so, I recommend you might want to use the style as amended on the pages you've written which cite it.

You may also want to populate the book page itself to reflext its contents, but as this is a boring job (I know, I've done a few of them) you might prefer to leave this to someone else who may also have that same edition. (If such a contributor exists on this site, that is.) --prime mover (talk) 07:27, 18 March 2018 (EDT)
 * Thanks, understood and much appreciated, so I'll have a look. Whittaker and Watson is actually old enough to be public domain. I'm using the third edition in particular because it was the latest edition I found on archive.org's open library. (I have quite limited access to texts, but this scan is easily quality enough to substitute a physical copy.)
 * I'm not sure how different each edition is, I'll have to look. Ideally it's just minor typographical corrections.


 * The important thing is that if this is the edition you are using, then that should be the one that is referenced. No need to scour all editions for every difference. --prime mover (talk) 11:30, 18 March 2018 (EDT)


 * Yeah, of course. As always I'll look at your changes and take note, no worries.
 * You're free to populate the appropriate pages using the online edition if you want to, but I'll probably get to it eventually. (it's not as if my work, or knowledge for that matter, is very broad at the moment) Can you give an example of a complete, or near-complete, Book: page that I can look at so I can get a feel of the formatting? It would be helpful.
 * Thanks again, Caliburn (talk) 10:24, 18 March 2018 (EDT)


 * One taken at approximate random: Book:Nathan Jacobson/Lectures in Abstract Algebra: I. Basic Concepts.


 * Most are (or should be) done. All that exist on my own library shelf are, for example. Although lately, through lack of a decent enough scanner and conversion package, I've not been filling in all the small details. --prime mover (talk) 11:28, 18 March 2018 (EDT)

recent work
The quality of your submissions is consistently superb. Just thought I'd say. --prime mover (talk) 12:29, 19 April 2018 (EDT)
 * Thank you! Much appreciated :) Caliburn (talk) 13:33, 19 April 2018 (EDT)

In accordance with prime.mover's praise and my own comparable observations, I have added you to the "trusted" users group. This enables you to do whatever you need in the course of normal editing, without needing us.

Enjoy, you've earned it! &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 13:59, 22 April 2018 (EDT)

Sources section: prev and next links
Please may I remind you about the Sources section, and the function of the prev and next links?

It was always intended that these links provide a linear ordering on the source work in question. Thus (except at the beginnings and ends of source works) there should be exactly one page for each "next" link, and from that "next" page exactly one corresponding link back to it again. This linear flow becomes compromised when someone copies and pastes an entire page, Sources section and all, to another page for editing, and pays no heed to these Sources links. There are then two pages with matching "prev" and "next" links and the flow is no longer linear, but branches.

Either the new page is in the source work whose links have been copied, in which case the links are to be updated accordingly (into wherever in the flow it fits, with all the complicated work that entails) or it does not, in which case that link should be removed (and if there are no links left, the entire Sources section should be removed with it). If you don't have the work in question, and you don't know whether the new page corresponds to material in that source work, then add the SourceReview template into the Sources section of both the new page and the one it came from, and someone who does have that source work (and the patience to update the links properly) will attend to it. If you add a comment (the first anonymous parameter to that template) explaining what you did and what needs to be reviewed), this would be a bonus.

As you see in the invocation of the Refactor template, we specifically request that people who are not "experienced editors" do not perform these refactoring tasks, because of the difficult nature of the task that assails us when we find that the source flow has been broken. (Unfortunately we have learned that a number of contributors seldom care to honour this request, as they seem to enjoy refactoring and don't care about the source flow, but we press on regardless.)

If you don't care much for the source flow yourself, then at least please add that invocation of SourceReview into the Sources section of pages you copy.

Many thanks. --prime mover (talk) 06:35, 15 May 2018 (EDT)
 * Added the sources section from the other page as an afterthought while extracting it out. Didn't think to check ordering. Will remember to do so in the future. No point rebelling against reasonable requests in a small community, so I would never be neglectful intentionally. (find it weird you say it's commonplace here) Thanks, I appreciate your feedback as per usual. Caliburn (talk) 11:28, 15 May 2018 (EDT)


 * Good job. --prime mover (talk) 16:45, 15 May 2018 (EDT)

moving without leaving a redirect
Please, when you move pages, try always to leave a redirect. There is practically always something that directs to the old page. When you don't leave a redirect, these all get lost.

Also, if you are moving mathematicians into the Mathematicians namespace from Writers, can you also add the mathematician to the appropriate Mathematician date and country page? They are likely to get lost otherwise. --prime mover (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2018 (EDT)
 * I agree, but I'm confused. You normally delete the redirect afterwards so I just assumed that's what was done. Suppressed redirects show in the deletion log the same way, so I don't see the difference. If the intent is to direct readers to the right page (which the deletion log does anyway), why not just keep the redirect? Though, I got the impression this site likes to use a minimal number of redirects from discussions. I also got the impression that the Writers subpages were obsoleted, so they were all to be moved to the Mathematician namespace, have I misunderstood? And yeah, I'll do that in future. Caliburn (talk) 12:48, 16 May 2018 (EDT)


 * Yes, we delete the redirect. But not right away.


 * Imagine the following scenario. "Theorem A" has a link in it to "Result B". "Result B" is renamed to "Result C" except that "Result C" now has a completely different name. No redirect is given. So "Theorem A" now has a redlink to a page that no longer exists. Another editor comes along, sees this redlink to the page that does not exist and goes ahead and rewrites "Result B" (not having seen "Result C"). Now there are two results saying the same thing.


 * So please, when you rename something, keep the redirects until such time as all the pages that have "Result B" in them have been (manually) edited to point to "Result C" instead. Then, and only then, do we delete the page "Result B" which contains a link to "Result C".


 * Yes, the Writers paces are obsolescent, agreed. So as and when you find enough biographical details of a mathematician to include him/her as a complete Mathematician page, then we need to: a) add that mathematician to the appropriate date range page in the right place, b) add that mathematician the correct country of origin page in the right place, and c) remove the reference to the writer from the Writer page it came from (the one starting with that initial). Then and only then does the redirect get deleted.


 * This is exactly why we placed a request on the Refactor page that only experienced editors do refactoring, because they understand all this. Just renaming pages is easy to do, but all the followup work: finding all the links to the old page and changing them to point to the new page; restructuring the pages they are transcluded in; reworking the Sources section -- that's not quite such fun. I have spent many a tedious weekend cleaning up after an editor's well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to change things around without thinking of the consequences. --prime mover (talk) 15:42, 16 May 2018 (EDT)


 * The third line suffices, I was only confused by your advice to not delete redirects at all, just a straightforward clarification. I completely understand why redirects should be kept as I said previously. Redirect cleanup is something that's easy to do semi (or even fully) automated, (eg. with AWB. Though this should be used with someone familiar with the tool as it can cause quite a mess if misconfigured.) so if an editor moved pages en masse without changing links to them, it'd be quite easy to resolve that with the help of Special:WhatLinksHere. I don't intend on going on a spree suppressing redirects or anything. I'll always correct anything I slip up on if notified, so you don't need to worry about cleaning up after me. Caliburn (talk) 16:45, 16 May 2018 (EDT)


 * Don't know what AWB is (it meant Average White Band when I was at school), so I don't know what you mean here. We have tried using automated tools to do automatic replacement of links before, but a) the things are riddled with bugs which render them unusuable, leaving the cleanup task worse than otherwise, and b) we can't guarantee that the links are all in the correct format (for example, some editors leave underscores in their links because it's more convenient for them, and someone else will always go through and clean up). Yes, WhatLinksHere is the primary tool to determine what link here (although you'd be surprised how few editors seem to know about it), and yes, while it's "quite easy" to resolve the redirects, when there are several hundred links to change, you can understand it can get a bit boring. But this is not about the updating of the links, this is about retaining the redirects in the first place so that the WhatLinksHere tool actually throws you the bone to get you started. --prime mover (talk) 17:10, 16 May 2018 (EDT)

Future prospects
Best of luck with Cambridge! --prime mover (talk) 18:01, 5 November 2018 (EST)
 * Thanks! :) Caliburn (talk) 11:15, 6 November 2018 (EST)


 * ... and big congratulations! --prime mover (talk) 07:47, 14 January 2019 (EST)


 * Cheers, was sure I cocked the interview up. Need to get myself back on track with regard to editing now. Caliburn (talk) 13:46, 6 February 2019 (EST)

Style of presentation of these probability distribution pages
Hi,

A quick heads up: when you write (or rewrite) one of the pages detailing the properties of one of the probability distributions (Bernoulli, Binomial, etc.) it is important that rather than just present the notation, for example, $\Binomial n p$, that you also write it in words and provide a link back to the definition page.

A case in point: we now have Expectation of Binomial Distribution, which has this on it:


 * Let $X \sim \Binomial n p$ for some $n \in \N$ and $0 \le p \le 1$.

... and the reader is left asking the question: what is $\Binomial n p$?

I appreciate that the name of it is given in the title of the page, and that the link to the page appears in the in Proof 1, but the site philosophy "there's no such thing as too many links" rules supreme, and we need to show it as something like the page used to be:


 * Let $X$ be a discrete random variable with the binomial distribution with parameters $n$ and $p$:
 * $X \sim \Binomial n p$


 * Then the expectation of $X$ is given by:
 * $\expect X = n p$

Was there a reason for deliberately removing the fact that $X$ is a discrete random variable? In the source work I got this from it explicitly specifies $X$ as being so. --prime mover (talk) 07:55, 30 March 2019 (EDT)
 * I saw the specification of "discrete" as redundant (implied by the distribution), but this is fair enough, I see your point. An alternative that I thought about was practically the same as what was there before - so I'll put it back. Caliburn (talk) 08:03, 30 March 2019 (EDT)


 * Nice one. Good job taking on this area of work, which has never really got off the ground. --prime mover (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2019 (EDT)

Naming conventions
A quick heads up, it's something which seems to have evolved:

Names for pages (definitions, results) refer to singular objects, unless the result specifically discusses plural objects.

On the other hand, names for categories refer to plural objects, unless the thing in the category is genuinely a singular concept.

I wonder whether the category for Raw Moment should be "Raw Moments"? My thinking is that there are lots of different instances of "raw moments". Same probably aplies to "central moments" as there seem to be more than one: "first central moment", "second central moment", and so on.

You will probably come back to me and say: What about "Exponential Function", should that also not be "Exponential Functions"? Yeah, I know, I'm conflicted about that one -- but it's big enough to be really unwieldy to change them all now.

Your thoughts? --prime mover (talk) 05:59, 20 June 2019 (EDT)


 * I'll go with whatever's standard. Pluralising makes more sense there when read out loud, and would be consistent with the naming of eg. Derivatives, Primitives and so on. I think exponential function is fine, because it's understood to mean $\exp$ specifically. Will go about changing it now. Caliburn (talk) 08:31, 20 June 2019 (EDT)


 * Nice one. --prime mover (talk) 08:52, 20 June 2019 (EDT)