Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2016/Mar

Discussion about generally considering articles from predatory publishers unreliable

There is a discussion here if that topic is of interest. It has been going on since Feb 26, but just wanted to make sure folks here are aware of it. Jytdog (talk) 18:13, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

A mathematics AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kolmogorov–Zurbenko filter, also appears to be connected to the same topic. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:19, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

List of things named after Friedrich Bessel

We now have a List of things named after Friedrich Bessel. Perhaps strangely, I found a list that was not empty but that had no internal links. I created those links. But possibly the article should be expanded. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:51, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Polymath project

I don't know where to go, so I'm posting this here. There has been another polymath project solved! Can someone add this information to the "Problem solved" section of the article please? I think it can go under the heading of "Polymath proposal problem" under "Problem solved" section. This problem was going to become a polymath project, but someone else proved it so quickly before it becoming a polymath project (with number). However, I think it is another achievement worth mentioning in the article. Due to my limited mathematics background, I don't think I'm able to write about it as well as someone else with a major in mathematics or advanced knowledge in mathematics. If not, does someone know anyone, who has a strong background in mathematics, that currently still active on Wikipedia? So that I can ask him/her out personally. Thank you! Pendragon5 (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Introduction to "Fractional Fourier entropy"

The article titled Fractional Fourier entropy begins like this:

Fractional Fourier entropy (FRFE) is based on two steps: (1) fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) that can transform images from the spatial domain to the “unified time-frequency domain”; and (2) Shannon entropy to extract features from the FRFT spectrums.

This doesn't set up the context properly. Could someone who knows this topic improve the intro? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

The article is now at AfD. Sławomir
Biały 13:33, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

AfC assistance

Greetings. If someone has a moment, there's an article over at AfC which needs some expert advice on whether or not it's notable. Assistance would be greatly appreciated: Draft:GBT - Generalised Beam Theory. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:31, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Faddeev picture

In the Russian Wikipedia there is a picture of Dmitry Konstantinovich Faddeev. Could someone speaking the language have that picture uploaded to Wikimedia commons (or tell me how to link the Russian version)? YohanN7 (talk) 13:58, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

It is written there, in Russian, that this image is not free, thus fair use is required; and that this is fair use, since he is dead, therefore it is impossible to make another photo, and there is no free photo available. I have no idea, whether this is OK for Wikimedia commons, or not. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 16:11, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

As I understand it, fair use images (which this would be allowed as, since the subject is dead) must be uploaded directly to en.wikipedia rather than commons. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Anyway, the source is here. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 19:02, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. If it is non-free, the chances of using it "legally" is about zero in this Wikipedia. I have made similar attempts, and have been caught every time. (I like the Russian attitude towards bureaucratic problems; it is fair use because he is dead period. The English Wikipedia isn't that pragmatic. (I can understand the fear of an American-style lawsuit for $100 000 000.)) YohanN7 (talk) 11:10, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia allows fair use images for dead people. They have to be uploaded to the English Wikipedia (not commons) and have a fair use statement stating that it's fair use because the subject's dead, but I don't think there are more restrictions than that. As for lawsuits, I think the possibility is remote; the likely worst case is that we get a request to take the image down again. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

If that is the policy, I'll give it a try. Does it make a difference in which article it is used? For instance, the Élie Cartan picture is a no-no to use elsewhere according to Wiki-lawyers. YohanN7 (talk) 17:56, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the picture should be used "only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding" (WP:NFC). In practice that means it's definitely ok for a biography of the subject but more dubious as decoration on articles about the subject's mathematical results. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:20, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Successive approximation, iteration(s) etc

For now, "Successive approximation" redirects to Successive approximation ADC(!), and "Iteration" disambigs to Iterated function, and Iterative method is a piece of applied mathematics. But it seems to me that both "Successive approximation" and "Iterations" are also mathematical terms. Or not? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 18:47, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree, these are math terms, too. Various types of successive approximation methods are mentioned in Fixed-point iteration. It might be the best target for a math context redirect; Picard iteration already redirects there. My opinion is that Successive approximation itself should be a DAB page, because the psychology and electrical engineering uses of the term seem common, too. For iteration, there is just the Iteration article, which does briefly mention the mathematical uses. Iteration is the dominant link in the Iteration (disambiguation), so I think the math case is somewhat covered there, too. All the math type of iterative methods I know are from numerical analysis. Are there others? --Mark viking (talk) 20:03, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

"Are there others?" — I'd say, "Banach fixed-point theorem" (a.k.a. "Contractive mapping theorem" - redirect) is. And, yes, I like "Iteration#Mathematics", thank you for this point. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 20:36, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

The posting by Tsirel above was wrong: Successive approximation did not redirect to anything at the time he wrote that. But Successive Approximation (with a capital "A") did. I created the former redirect a few minutes ago. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I have made Successive approximation into a disambiguation page. It needs further work. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Very nice. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 06:43, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:35, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Rare case

Look, just for fun: Article needs a re-write (toned down from: WTF is this $hit).   :-)   Boris Tsirelson (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Continued here. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 2:48 pm, Today (UTC−5)

not continued elsewhere, I'd like someone to (hopefully, sorry Tsirel) convert me to someone who likes Wikipedia. 90.199.52.141 (talk) 20:45, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Exponential function

In this section of a talk page, two users say that the page titled Exponential function should deal only with the base-e (natural) exponential function and not other bases. Both of them seem to take the confused view that if other bases are allowed then the article is about the binary operation of exponentiation in general, as opposed to exponential functions of one variable. I agree with them that the binary operation of exponentiation should be, and is, the topic of a different article rather than this one. I wrote this brief explanation:

${\begin{aligned}(b,c)\mapsto b^{c}&&&{\text{This is exponentiation in general.}}\\[10pt]x\mapsto b^{x}&&&{\text{This is an exponential function}}\\&&&{\text{(the base is constant; the input variable is the exponent).}}\end{aligned}}$

Michael Hardy (talk) 01:31, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Ask them if they even curry? 90.199.52.141 (talk) 20:40, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I have set up an RfC on this at Talk:Exponential_function#RfC: Should exponential function be about exponentiation to any base?. The explanation above is not right, the question is whether the article should be about e^x like for instance Exponential function at Wolfram MathWorld, or whether it is about exponential growth and decay which is what exponential functions is general are mostly about and have the current contents moved to natural exponential function. Dmcq (talk) 23:40, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Math in wikilinks broken?

See new thread at WP:VPT#Math in wikilinks broken? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:46, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

(That is, WP:VPT#Math inside wikilinks broken?.) —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 08:53, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Stagnation of math pages

There is currently a discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Search recent changes, and other Inspire Campaign proposals discussing the overly technical nature of some mathematical articles. The Beta_distribution has been singled out as an article with too much technical info, indeed there is much which could be cut from that article. The diff [1] on Euler's totient function has also been brought up as a case of WP:OWN. --Salix alba (talk): 06:55, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Assault of the science blog churnalists

The Pi day brigade seems to have arrived late this year. Please keep a close watch on the article pi. There is a discussion underway at Talk:Pi, wherein a blog post is proposed to override a peer-reviewed secondary source written by the Borwein brothers. This could merit the attention of Wikipedia editors who are familiar with editing articles on mathematics and scientific topics, as opposed to Entertainment news topics which is what we seem to do mostly nowadays. Sławomir
Biały 19:44, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

For those interested in phylogenetics, and clade presentations

Could you have a look at this effort, here, to use clade diagrams to summarize pharma business acquisitions. My take at present is that the images created are devoid of standard quantitative meaning—nothing is captured by vertical and horizontal line lengths, as far as I can tell—and so they are a misapplication of this maths/graphic presentation method. Moreover, I argue that they are misleading (presenting a time axis, but not making spacing of events proportionate to the historical time differences), much harder to maintain (consider adding entries to a std Table versus this graphic), more likely to diminish article quality (in their ambiguity of content, again, over a std Table with clear headings), and therefore practically amenable to decay as a result. I would add to this, in this esteemed maths context, that they would make those who trained us, and other purists in methodology and meaning (and Edward Tufte more generally), turn in their graves/beds. After having a look at the User page and at a couple of pages linked on that sandbox page, leave your opinion here, regarding the overall effort? Thanks for your opinion. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 01:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about the inappropriate posting above. I have opened a discussion in the appropriate forum, here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Companies#Diagrams, for anyone who is interested Jytdog (talk) 03:28, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Merge Semi-major axis and Semi-minor axis into the same article?

Another pair of doubly related articles are these. Should they be merged into the same article, maybe called Semi-minor and semi-minor axes? (Not set on title). M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 18:06, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I think that is a good suggestion. --JBL (talk) 13:51, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Consequences of a lack of consensus concerning inline text style mathematical formulae

CC: Template talk:Math#Consequences of a lack of consensus concerning inline text style mathematical formulae.

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Typography#Consequences of a lack of consensus concerning inline text style mathematical formulae. — Tentacles^{Talk or ✉ mailto:Tentacles} 22:04, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Mathbot

Mathbot appears not to have put up any new changes in User:Mathbot/Changes to mathlists since March 23, but instead in User:Mathbot/Recent changes. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:03, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

User:Mathbot/Changes to mathlists was just updated. But the other one might nevertheless be helpful to watch, as it lists articles with updated cleanup tags, not just new articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

User:AlexNewArtBot/MathSearchResult shows a few new articles that the others are not showing. An example is the new article Martin Scharlemann. 189.63.176.164 (talk) 22:27, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Abstract Geometry creations languishing in Draft namespace

• Draft:Moduli stack of elliptic curves (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Draft:Suslin homology (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Draft:Principal orbit type theorem (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Draft:Hamiltonian group action (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Draft:Direct limit topology (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I was working through stale unedited pages in the Draft namespace and discovered several very abstract geometry creations from levels of "it exists" up to stub level quality. Several of these pages (as I've listed some examples above) had not been edited (since I came through looking at them) since 2014 in the draft namespace. I am not making any accusations regarding any individual editor or type of creation except to note that these draft title land grabs are begining to be more closely looked at if there is no positive progress on them. Does WP:Maths have any suggestions/interest in improving these to the point that they are ready to be promoted to mainspace? Hasteur (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Principal orbit type theorem (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) should obviously be deleted. I do not think that Draft:Suslin homology (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) should be redirected to Singular homology, since to me it seems strange to have a redirect from the draft space into the mainspace. Perhaps a merge would be more appropriate, with a sentence or two mentioning Suslin's application of ideas of singular homology to algebraic varieties? Hamiltonian group actions are already discussed in moment map, which seems appropriate to me, so I don't see much value in a draft. Likewise Draft:Direct limit topology (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) seems like it would be a fork of final topology if it had any useful content, which it does not. In principle, an article on the moduli stack of elliptic curves would be worthwhile, but there is no useful content at the draft. Sławomir
Biały 16:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

@Slawekb: I redirected the homology article based off the only reference provided in the "proposed" draft [2] which said that Suslin was also known as singular. In practice, for these old unedited drafts is to redirect to a mainspace article that either is the subject or a section redirect to one that is appropriate. It's very flexible. I was primarily interested in having a Mathematics project member take a significant look at these examples created by one editor to help determine if some corrective action needed to be taken. Hasteur (talk) 17:31, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I want to remind that they are drafts; that's why they exist in the draft namespace not in the main name space. The question should be whether the topics are notable or not not the actual states of content. I agree there is no value having drafts on nobodies (since they will never become main-name space articles). The above drafts, on the other hand, have potential to become main-namespace articles. Now I explain why they were created:

• Draft:Moduli stack of elliptic curves; this topic is currently not adequately covered in Wikipedia. There are sufficiently many technical points that it makes sense to have a separate article.
• Draft:Suslin homology is now in the main namespace.
• Draft:Principal orbit type theorem; this is an important result. Why delele? Am I missing anything? Wikipedia gone crazy?
• Draft:Hamiltonian group action; as pointed out, there is some overlap but it makes sense to discuss stuff like symplectic cut and linearization in a separate article.
• Draft:Direct limit topology; no really sure about this one. As far as I know, I couldn't find the materials in the page elsewhere in Wikipedia when the page was created. The merger is a good option but really there is no need for deletion.

More broadly, the issue seems to be the unclear nature of the draft namespace. I'm on the camp that there should be no deadline; some disagree, obviously. -- Taku (talk) 00:23, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Some of the drafts you are defending have no useful content (e.g., moduli stack of elliptic curves actually has no content at all, principal orbit type theorem has no content, direct limit topology is just an irrelevant property about Cartesian products). Although there is no deadline, it doesn't seem like these drafts are under active development, and nothing much seems likely to emerge from the content that is there. If you actually want to do the work and learn about the moduli stack of elliptic curves, go ahead and read Lurie's notes and write an article. No one is stopping you. Sławomir
Biały 11:23, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree. The only one of these articles that has anything useful is the one on Suslin homology; all the others have no content. Ozob (talk) 12:40, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think a direct limit topology is exactly the same thing as a Carterisan product topology; in algebraic topology, one typically works with the compactly generated weakly Hausdorff spaces and it would be useful to clarify the relationship between a direct limit in the category of those spaces and a direct limit in the point-set topology context (that's why I started a separate article.) In any case, as it appears to me, the issue is whether there should be a deadline or not; so I started Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#RfC: is there a deadline for a draft. -- Taku (talk) 00:36, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

"I don't think a direct limit topology is exactly the same thing as a Carterisan product topology": The draft under discussion concerns some property of Cartesian products, which is sourced to Milnor and Stasheff, not some other thing that you might be thinking of. But, like I said, there's no useful content at the draft, so whether you meant one thing or another isn't really that relevant. Sławomir
Biały 00:52, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

And there is no reason not to include materials not about a Cartesian product topology (e.g., stuff about CW complexes.) -- Taku (talk) 00:59, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

No, but why do you need a separate article to discuss Cartesian products of direct limits? Why can't this be covered in the article final topology? Sławomir
Biały 01:03, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Why do you not see the point of having an article on direct limit topology? You do agree that notion exists, right? and is distinct from Cartesian product topology. Anyway, I don't think there is any issue here except the concept of deadlines. -- Taku (talk) 01:07, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we have an article on the direct limit topology already. Your draft is about Cartesian products. Are you proposing that we should have an article about Cartesian products of direct limits? Because that's what your draft is about. Sławomir
Biały 01:38, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

No, we don't have it; Direct limit topology is a red link to me at least. I don't understand why you're so hang up with Cartesian product. The draft will eventually cover more topics. Isn't that why it's a draft? No one is proposing to limit the scope to Cartesian product of direct limits except you. -- Taku (talk) 07:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

It's another name for the final topology, to which that link now redirects. Sławomir
Biały 10:54, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Clearly we don't speak the same language; What I have in mind is the direct limit of topological spaces. I don't know whether a direct limit topology refers to a direct limit of topological spaces or final topology. (It might depend on the field.) I have edited the draft (of course it still needs a ref etc.) -- Taku (talk) 23:43, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Here we go again with the "in my field, everything is defined differently"... Sławomir
Biały 23:56, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Taku, I must confess that I don't understand your point, either. Perhaps it would help if you could point us to a reference for the idea you're thinking of. Ozob (talk) 12:54, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, by "direct limit topology", I was thinking of a direct limit of topological spaces not final topology; whence, the draft is not a duplicate. I said I don't know whether a "direct limit topology" is synonymous with "final topology" across the board. I suspect some people might use direct limit topology to refer the topology of the direct limit of topological spaces; see e.g., [3]. The relationship between direct limits and topology can be quite tricky and so it makes sense to have an article on the subject; that's all I'm saying. -- Taku (talk) 00:25, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Our direct limit article says "Direct limits in the category of topological spaces are given by placing the final topology on the underlying set-theoretic direct limit", and this is also discussed in similar terms in the final topology article. So your reasoning for why this should be distinct from the final topology article remains unclear. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:49, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with the definition; for example, product topology and quotient topology are examples of a final topology. The direct limit topology is an example of a final topology. A quotient topology is a final topology but not a synonym of it; in the same way, I make a terminology cal distinction between a direct limit topology and final topology. (I suspect I'm not alone in that usage but I leave that to the others.) -- Taku (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Based on the paper you linked above, I suspect you are alone. The paper's point is that sometimes the direct limit topology is not the right one. This sort of problem – that the category of topological spaces is badly behaved – has been known for a long time. See, for instance [4] or [5]. The solution is not to redefine the term "direct limit topology", but to either take the direct limit in another category (like the category of compactly generated spaces) or to take the direct limit in the category of topological spaces, but then construct a better behaved topological space from the direct limit (like replacing the topology with the compactly generated topology it generates). Ozob (talk) 03:06, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

(you misunderstood me. A direct limit topology is still defined as a final topology on the direct limit; I'm not redefining it; see the post below -- Taku (talk) 04:39, 26 March 2016 (UTC).)

(I appreciate everyone's patience with me, I meant it.) Please let me ask this way. Given a set, you can always put the final topology with respect to some given family of maps to the set. In particular, you can put the final topology on the set-theoretic direct limit of a direct system and the resulting topology is called the "direct limit topology". This topology is cited as an example in the final topology article rather than a synonym. Does it make sense to have an article about this topology separate from the article final topology? In particular to discuss the issue like the above? just as we have an article on quotient topology (correction to my early post: a product topology is initial not final, that was stupid). I had assumed the answer is yes. If the other editors disagree, then of course I will respect that. -- Taku (talk) 04:11, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, you would have to find sources attesting to the notability of the direct limit topology, independent of its being an example of a final topology. But if you can do that, then I have no objection. Ozob (talk) 16:16, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Why "independent"? For some reason, you keep misunderstanding me completely (this is too frustrating). I just wanted to ask: can we have an article extending the example (not as independent)? If the answer is no, I'm ok with that. However, I am not advocating for some non-standard weird usage. In any case, let's stop; the last thing I want is to waste everyone's time; I have redirected Draft:Direct limit of topological spaces to final topology. -- Taku (talk) 02:49, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, I believe that all I am asking for is that the article subject be notable. As always, notability is not inherited from the notability of related topics (see WP:NOTINHERITED), which is why the sources should attest to the notability of the direct limit topology independently of the notability of the final topology. I raise this issue because I'm not sure that such sources exist. But if you can find them, then I have no objection. Ozob (talk) 04:07, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

(Maybe I misjudging "independent".) Does the paper I linked establish the notability? By googling, you can find tons of papers discussing direct limit topology (so there is no notability question.) Direct limit topology as a special case of a final topology is clearly notable. Going the other direction, a pushout is an example of a direct limit topology, that should also establish the notability. Also, the direct limit topology can be thought of a on-nose version of hocolimit; in other words, hocolimit is the homotopy-theoretic version of a direct limit topology. It's thus so natural to have an article on direct limit topology. -- Taku (talk) 04:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

A pushout is not an example of a direct limit because its index category is not cofiltered.

Homotopy colimits are not a good analogy. A colimit is a basic categorical construction; colimits appear everywhere we use equivalence relations, for example, so they are of interest not just in geometry and topology but also in combinatorics and analysis. A homotopy colimit requires additional data on the category to even define, and its usage is confined to homotopy theory (and areas which make contact with homotopy theory). And it's well-known that homotopy colimits can be completely different from colimits. For any topological space X, the homotopy colimit $*\cup _{X}*$ is the suspension of X, while the same colimit is trivially the one-point space. Ozob (talk) 21:06, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

About pushout, I know that: I was abusing the terminology a bit (since we're debating the question on notability not math): a pushout is an example of a colimit (and a direct limit is a colimit of a direct system). How about an article about colimit in topology? Is it your position that a "colimit in topology" is notable while "direct limit in topology" isn't? I don't think the analog is wrong if not perfect. One colimit is homotopy-theoretic and the other isn't; so obviously two notions are distinct (when did I claim colim = hocolim?) Yes, direct limit and colimit are category-theoretic concepts but they do get used in topology and I just don't get why we can't have an article about this topic in Wikipedia. The paper I linked and the issues you have listed show there are some issues specific to direct limits or colimits of topological spaces; that is, it is not taken care entirely by category-theory. It thus makes sense to have an article about the topic (or so I reasoned). -- Taku (talk) 03:07, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I have no objection to an article about "colimits in topology" if you find reliable sources that affirm its notability. Nor do I object to "direct limits in topology", under the same proviso that you find reliable sources that affirm its notability.

Right now, I'm objecting to your analogy. Homotopy colimits are not the same as colimits in the category of topological spaces, nor are they the same as colimits in the homotopy category of topological spaces. Indeed, colimits in the homotopy category need not even exist (one of the standard examples is written up at [6]). Ozob (talk) 02:08, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly why I put the qualifier "if not perfect". Ok, maybe "homotopy-theoretic" was a poor word choice; maybe homotopically has been better, since I wasn't referring to the homotopy category. (Note since a homotopy category is a different category, you can't even compare hocolim and colim if the former is meant colim in the homotopy category). I believe I'm correct to understand that in some context in algebraic topology hocolimit of spaces gives a correct answer as opposed to the colimit of spaces (why or how are irrelevant to us.) The point I'm making is that I find it strange that we're allowed to discuss hocolim of space but not colim of spaces. I don't think the final topology is the best place since the article is really about equipping a set with a topology in a certain way not exactly about the construction. Also I have already given one ref and Googling will many more. Of course other editors may disagree with my understanding of the notability and I'm not pressing the issue. -- Taku (talk) 03:10, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Guidelines about living scientists

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Science_and_academia#guidelines_about_living_scientists--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:21, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Probability distributions -- variates

Maybe I'm reading into this incorrectly, but how can Elliptical distributions be in the Location-scale family, when location-scale families are univariate and elliptical distributions are multivariate? I'm working through classifying the variety of probability distributions on Wikidata using d:Property:P279, so this is how I came about this question. (Basically, am I doing something wrong? :D) --Izno (talk) 19:37, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, usually location-scale families are assumed to be univariate. But sometimes they are not. For instance, see Def. 2.3 in lecture 17 here: [7]. Boris Tsirelson (talk) 20:20, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Will make the necessary amendments. Thanks! --Izno (talk) 20:28, 30 March 2016 (UTC)