Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics
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First, an important note for everyone to remember: some Wikipedians have come together to make some suggestions about how we might organize articles about mathematics. {{{1{{{1|}}}|
These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obliged to follow them. This WikiProject is not intended as prescriptive. If you do not yet know what to write, or the guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) for a draft manual, with detailed discussion of a number of issues.
Contents |
Scope
This WikiProject aimed originally to organize articles in the area of mathematics; in its broadest terms, this may include overlap into the areas of physics, computer science, operations research, and other areas.
The initial goals of this WikiProject were to:
- provide a standard "bare bones" format for mathematical articles
- provide useful links for article writers
- provide a location to discuss issues relating to this section of Wikipedia
- provide standards for mathematical notation using wikified HTML/TeX.
Update 2006
This project was started in 2002; not surprisingly things have moved on. For example the scope of this project would not now include many physics pages, outside some aspects of theoretical physics. The 'house style' of mathematics articles is now reasonably well established.
The main issues for WP Mathematics are now probably the following.
- Keeping track of, by listing and categorising, all relevant articles. There are over 10000 of them (it does depend on how one counts areas such as statistics, cryptography and so on). The overall organisation is pretty much in place, by now. There is now a bot that catches newly-categorised pages, so adding even an approximate category is important.
- Bringing stubs up to a reasonable standard. There are always plenty of pages that are definition-only. It is always good to add motivation and examples.
- Developing 'core articles' into good expositions. As anyone who teaches the subject knows, the gap between stating some true facts, and really putting over a topic, is quite large. Here we can consider also the need to add history and proper attributions.
- Expanding coverage to bring the subject up to date. This is a huge task, so the main requirements are patience, and not to be discouraged. Much of the advanced material is still really from the 1950s.
- Hoaxing There has been some of this; most Wikipedians, naturally enough, don't feel qualified to pronounce on articles purporting to be mathematical. If not us, who? Report anything suspect on the talk page of this page.
Charles Matthews 16:55, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Participants
See /Participants/ for a list. Introduce yourself.
Things to do
Looking for something to do? There are several places on Wikipedia where mathematics related requests, suggestions and tasks have been collected together:
| What | Where |
| Suggest or edit a mathematics article needing attention | Pages needing attention: Mathematics |
| Request or write a mathematics article | Requested articles: Mathematics |
| Request or provide an image | Requested images: Mathematics |
| Expand a mathematics "stub" | Mathematics stubs |
| Suggest or edit a redirect which could have its own article | Redirects with possibilities: Mathematics |
| Help move PlanetMath content onto Wikipedia | /PlanetMath Exchange/ |
| Add or find a "missing" mathematics article | Missing: Mathematics |
| Turn a "red link" blue | Mathematical redlinks |
| Maintain the mathematics portal | Portal:Mathematics |
| Review current mathematics activity | /Current activity/ |
| Help resolve a dispute | Requests for comment: Mathematics |
| Ask or answer a question about mathematics | Reference desk: Mathematics |
| Suggest nominations for collaboration | Mathematics Collaboration of the Week |
| Help with maths articles for Wikipedia 1.0 | /Wikipedia 1.0/ |
Some issues to think about
Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, when writing about a field, do we assume that the reader already knows group theory? A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and general statements as the article proceeds. The structure described below is one way of achieving this.
When you need to describe a concept in terms of some other concept (for example, explaining rational numbers in terms of integers), be sure to:
- Add a (prominent) link to the relevant article (in this case, integer). As for other Wikipedia articles, avoid duplicate links.
- If it makes sense, add a very quick (and naive) explanation/description (in this case, "positive or negative whole numbers" might work).
If the relevant article has not been written yet, then create a good stub, and list it on the list of mathematical topics (see below) - the odds are good that someone will expand on it.
Since some terminology varies from author to author in the literature, you can check the Wikipedia article on an ambiguous term (if one exists) to see what usage is established here (or to see if you want to try to change that).
It's worth a bit of time to just peruse what's already in the 'pedia; this will give you a feel for what type of information is already available, and how much detail you need to provide.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience for a project whose goal is to help make articles more accessible.
Motivation
See discussion at /Motivation/.
Partial list of articles that need higher-level explanations
How is the above list doing in terms of getting higher-level explanations? ---- Charles Stewart 08:32, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Proofs
See /Proofs/ for discussion of how and whether to include proofs of results.
Conventions
The following pages attempt to describe certain conventions for articles with mathematical content. Please read, comment on, improve, criticize, and if appropriate, follow these standards.
- /Conventions/ - Working list of terminology conventions.
- Wikipedia:Naming conventions (theorems)
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)
- Wikipedia:Algorithms on Wikipedia (proposed)
Classification
There is no one single, prescribed method. Both the lists and the categories have grown organically, rather than being imported. See also areas of mathematics.
List of publications in mathematics
There is an effort to organize a list of important publications in many areas of science. Such a list captures the major achievements in each field and might be a valuable asset for one trying to learn a new field. The List of publications in computer science is the oldest and most mature list and might show the goal of the lists. The rest of the list need much more contributions. Please try to improve the mathematics related lists:
- List of publications in mathematics
- List of publications in statistics
- List of publications in computer science
Some useful links and resources
The list of mathematical topics is used by contributors to keep track of changes to the entire content of mathematics in Wikipedia, in a fashion similar to the more general "Recent Changes" link. If you add new articles which are at least remotely related to mathematics (including biographies of mathematicians, and so on), please add them to that list, so that everyone can review / add to / mercilessly savage your contributions.
A lists of topics for subdisciplines can be found at the list of lists of mathematical topics.
Featured and former featured articles
As of December 19 2005, there are twelve mathematics articles which are featured articles:
| Featured articles | ||
| Article | Featured | |
| Prisoner's dilemma | Apr 4, 2002 | |
| Algorithm | Jul 24, 2002 | |
| Ackermann function | Dec 18, 2003 | |
| Trigonometric function | Dec 20, 2003 | |
| Infinite monkey theorem | Sep 29, 2004 | |
| Margin of error | Oct 12, 2004 | |
| Regular polytope | Nov 18, 2004 | |
| Monty Hall problem | Jul 23, 2005 | |
| Carl Friedrich Gauss | Aug 4, 2005 | |
| Blaise Pascal | Aug 19, 2005 | |
| Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace | Oct 16, 2005 | |
| Game theory | Dec 6, 2005 | |
As of December 19 2005, there are eight mathematics articles which are former featured articles:
| Former featured articles | ||
| Article | FeaturedTemplate:Rf | De-featuredTemplate:Rf |
| Ordinal | Apr 4, 2002 | Jan 19, 2004 |
| Statistics | Apr 4, 2002 | Jan 19, 2004 |
| Pythagorean theorem | Apr 4, 2002 | Mar 21, 2004 |
| Illegal prime | Aug 28, 2003 | Jul 13, 2004 |
| Computational complexity theory | Apr 4, 2002 | Aug 23, 2004 |
| Vacuous truth | Jan 6, 2004 | Sep 20, 2004 |
| Triangle | May 10, 2004 | Mar 3, 2005 |
| Fractal Template:Spoken | Jul 12, 2004 | Sep 15, 2005 |
Template:Ent The dates provide links (where they exist) to the featured article candidate discussion or the features article removal candidate discussion — prior to June, 2003, there was no formal FA nomination process, and there was no formal FA removal process, prior to March, 2004.
Emboldened article titles indicate articles that have been featured on the main page. The symbol: Template:Spoken, indicates an article that has an audio recording of the article text (see the article for a link to its recording).
Project subpages
| Subpage | Description |
| /Participants/ | List of project participants. |
| /Current activity/ | A list of current mathematics activity on Wikipedia. |
| /Conventions/ | A working list of terminology conventions. |
| /Proofs/ | Some recent (2005) discussion on proofs and proof style. |
| /Motivation/ | Some older (2003) discussion on the issue of motivation of mathematics articles. |
| /PlanetMath Exchange/ | The PlanetMath Exchange Project page. |
| /Graphics/ | Work on math-related graphics (not formulas) |
| /Wikipedia 1.0/ | Work on maths articles that could potentially be used for the Wikipedia 1.0 project |
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