User talk:Jshflynn

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 * --Your friendly ProofWiki WelcomeBot 10:10, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

Title style
Note the house style when it comes to titles: important words are capitalised. What will happen is that someone will go through and change the titles of some of your recent pages as appropriate. Getting a good title for a page is an art so you may find the pages you've written may get namechanged.

Please keep up the good work - you are filling gaps we did not know we had. --prime mover 23:57, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks prime.mover. It is indeed difficult especially for something as unnameable as a B-Algebra identity. The true credit goes to others though. Someday I hope to publish my own paper so that I can see my own ideas on relation theory on this wiki. For now though I will continue research as too often I have found that any original idea of mine has been analysed to death in an obscure research paper. --Jshflynn 00:23, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Editing section-wise
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. --Lord_Farin 21:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I see. Will do so for my next edit. --Jshflynn 21:53, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Nudge
To avoid reinventing the wheel, consider Category:Definitions/Formal Systems. --Lord_Farin 23:48, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

That's alright. If I make something worthwhile then I will. --Jshflynn 23:49, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Motivation?
"I honestly wish I had never discovered mathematics."

I'm glad I did, because I'm even more incompetent at everything else. --prime mover 06:40, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Rework?
Not meaning to pour cold wet water-based liquid on your flames, but a lot of the stuff you're adding to your "Definitions" section has already been documented in the Category:Definitions/Formal Systems category (admittedly not that well structured at the moment). I'm not sure whether you're trying deliberately to reinvent this area of mathematics from a different viewpoint (full respect due) or whether you're not familiar with this area yet. Just sayin' ... --prime mover 11:53, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry - I see L_F has already been here. No worries. --prime mover 11:54, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I am reading a book on Formal languages and computation at the moment. It says that a lot of concepts are clear/obvious. I also noticed you, L_F and a few others seem to process your books by putting them on a completely rigorous basis on this site. As you are so successful at doing so and I am so unsuccessful at finishing books I decided to adopt the same approach.


 * The definitions on the section of this site clashed with a lot of the things I was reading (most likely because the field in question isn't that standardised). So, I decided to create my own user-based section in order to not mess up the work someone else did. Right now, it's really just the theory of finite sequences. But in due time it might look better. --Jshflynn 12:24, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It is often the case that different books do things in different ways, partirulcarly in evolving fields like mathematical logic and formal systems. What the approach is that we want on this site is to gather the various different approaches into one by using the "also known as" and "also defined as" technique: the first if the same concept is called by something different, and the second if either (a) the same name is used for two different things, and (b) (more tricky to do rigorously) if it's the same concept but defined with a subtle difference in the conditions (something in topology comes to mind where certain objects are defined on "open sets" by one source and "not necessarily open sets" in another).


 * The problem of course lies in the fact that proofs based on the definition in format A may well not work using the definition in the format B. Then we get angry emails from people who assume (without checking) that the proof assumes format B. The only way round this is to ensure rigorous proofwriting so that when an ambiguous property of an object is used, it is stated as well as being linked to. --prime mover 07:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, and it's also got to be pointed out that some books are not very good (in terms of rigor), if they are designed as a basic introduction for popular consumption. IMO this over-simplification approach might not be appropriate for ProofWiki. But as the book you are quoting from hasn't been specified, it is not possible to say whether this applies in this particular circumstance. --prime mover 07:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Broken link
The link you put on the community portal does not work. --Lord_Farin 06:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixed it, moved it into the appropriate place. --prime mover 07:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Other Languages
I'm so happy you took the initiative with German here on ProofWiki. I know I'd love to do something with the Hindi or Spanish portions, but I am currently tied up at work. My whole goal was to diversify ProofWiki and you've helped it get started. Maybe after things settle I could ask ask you again. I thank you once again. --Smettems (talk) 01:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Appointment
You seem to have missed our virtual appointment; it happens. It's just that I had been looking forward to it. --Lord_Farin (talk) 22:23, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Dictionary of Mathematics
You are (to considerable benefit) adding references to the "Dictionary of Mathematics". As you may or may not have noticed, it is standard that some indication is provided as to where in a source the concept under consideration is (first) encountered. IMO, it would benefit the significance of your exercise if you included this. --Lord_Farin (talk) 09:27, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * No problem. In the dictionary I found "exterior multiplication" in the entry "module". So would:


 * : ref. pending


 * Become:


 * : Entry: Module


 * What would the house prefer? --Jshflynn (talk) 10:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * That seems like an adequate solution. --Lord_Farin (talk) 10:21, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Why "Entry"? How about just:


 * : Module


 * with perhaps highlighting of the entry itself by making it italic (? maybe). Also note that in the case (like this) where the reference is to a concept held on ProofWiki on a different page, make it a link:




 * Suggestions only. --prime mover (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The "Entry:" addition is clarifying IMO. The amalgamation:


 * : Entry: Module


 * has my vote (possibly without italics). --Lord_Farin (talk) 12:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Might be worth adding an option to the BookReference template, e.g. "entry=..." which, if present as e.g. "entry=Module", will automatically add ": Entry: Module". Mind, last time I tried editing this template it started adding spurious linefeeds in the rendition, which I couldn't work out how to eliminate, so that may not be immediate. Then, if we decide on a different format, we need to change it in one place only. --prime mover (talk) 12:54, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Due to some spare time being consumed atm anyway, I have implemented the suggested feature:


 *  * 

ought to produce:



...and after a subsequent edit, it does. --Lord_Farin (talk) 13:12, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

It appears the spurious line breaks are due to MediaWiki interpreting a colon at the start of some piece of text (e.g. in an if clause) as were it positioned at the start of a line, causing a newline and indentation. Nowiki tags resolve the issue. --Lord_Farin (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent. --prime mover (talk) 14:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

book links
10/10 for enthusiasm, but preferable to post up the details of the book (and its authors)you are adding citations for before you add the citations - otherwise it's a great big pile of redlinks. I know, it can be a tedious task (specially if you don't have an ocr) to fill in the contents list, but you'll probably find that you may be the only active ProofWiki worker who has the book in question. --prime mover (talk) 06:12, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * In addition to that, please note that the sources are ought to be in chronological order. --Lord_Farin (talk) 09:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I found the time to correct the order on all pages you have added the source for now. --Lord_Farin (talk) 09:11, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Noted and thanks. On a similar note, lately I have found some books introduce theorems about a concept and name it afterwards. They have their reasons but it's quite inconvenient for the sources of PW. --Jshflynn (talk) 20:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Why is it inconvenient? You enter the definition, you enter the theorem, and you thread the links in the opposite order. Where's the problem? --prime mover (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * My mistake. I was under the impression that the (Previous)...(Next) feature had to respect the presentation of the book exactly. Perhaps it strays from the aims of ProofWiki but is there someway to see a list of all definition pages with no sources subsection? --Jshflynn (talk) 22:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The way I implement it, the (Previous)...(Next) feature does respect the presentation of the book exactly. So the (previous) link of (definition of concept A) is (theorem proving existence of concept A) and the (next) link of (theorem proving existence of concept A) is (definition of concept A). As I say, where's the problem? --prime mover (talk) 22:32, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Why do you need a list of all the definition pages with no sources subsection? --prime mover (talk) 22:33, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Would you rather learn theorems pertaining to A or the definition of A first? If it is immaterial to you then there is no problem and I see now it's just personal preference that I would rather learn a definition first.


 * Perfectly rational to prove the existence of an object, then after you've done that, give it a name. That's how the mathematician who discovered such an object probably worked it. Oh look, if you perform that operation to this object you get such-and-such an object. I'll define it thus-and-so. --prime mover (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah. That does indeed make sense. Thanks for clarifying. --Jshflynn (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be interesting to see which concepts are local to ProofWiki, which are too old to admit a citation, which are too general etc. ProofWiki is both a large and structurally regular body of information. It is only natural that I want to see patterns and statistics behind it. --Jshflynn (talk) 22:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * All objects would have a citation, ultimately. The only one I can think of that I added which did not ultimately come from some source work is Westwood's Puzzle because AFAIK it has never been published anywhere except on ProofWiki. If some pages do not show a citation, that's because I still haven't finished going through my material yet. Rome wasn't built, etc. --prime mover (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Most interesting. I didn't know you could do that with a rectangle. DHEI is half the area of ABCD. I wonder what would happen if you plotted all the "potential" E points such that that relationship holds. Is E somewhere special on the curve you obtain? --Jshflynn (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes it is. That's the whole point. It's the incentre of that triangle. Unique for a given rectangle. --prime mover (talk) 06:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Beg pardon, see what you mean. The locus of all the points $E$ such that $\Box DHEI = \Box ABCD / 2$. Should be straightforward to work out algebraically. My guess is that it's a quarter of an ellipse. --prime mover (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2012 (UTC)