Talk:EoM:This project

This project is based on an electronic version of the "Encyclopaedia of Mathematics", published by Kluwer Academic Publishers until 2003, and by Springer after that. The encyclopaedia goes back to the Soviet Matematicheskaya entsiklopediya (1977), originally edited by Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov.

The electronic version had its formulae written in $\rm \TeX$, which were saved as png images. On its way through the various publishers the original $\rm \TeX$ source code was lost, therefore, to edit a formula in one of these original pages requires to retype the code for that formula from scratch.

For the project, it will be of big help to transcribe the old pages. To make this easy, it was decided to use MathJax, which allows to use Plain $\rm \TeX$ or $\rm \LaTeX$ for formulae encoding.

Some help on this is given on the help pages.

The installed software and extensions for this project can be seen here. This collection will be updated and extended.

Comments

Please add comments and/or suggestions here:

This is a useful page, but it should be more visible. Maybe the navigation toolbar should contain it (among "main page", ..., "help"). --Boris Tsirelson 08:14, 14 December 2011 (CET)

I have added a link to this page on the Help:Contents page. Nathan Brothers 17:28, 16 December 2011 (EST)

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The footer "How to Cite this Entry" is appropriate for articles, but probably not for user pages etc. --Boris Tsirelson 15:05, 14 December 2011 (CET)

I have transmitted your proposals to the admins. Ulf Rehmann 22:44, 14 December 2011 (CET)

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I rewrote Measurable space; please look. In particular, in the bibliography I gave links to MathSciNet (following a suggestion by Ulf Rehmann); but for now they use my private template User:Boris Tsirelson/MR; if you like it, please move it into Template:MR (with needed changes, if any). --Boris Tsirelson 21:43, 20 December 2011 (CET)

Ok, I have made MR a global template and have added a ZBL template as well, see Measurable space. --Ulf Rehmann 22:53, 21 December 2011 (CET) Same for Tamagawa number --Ulf Rehmann 00:38, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Good news: even working with no subscriptions, clicking a Zbl link I still get a review, in contrast to an MR link (MR says: "For users without a MathSciNet license, Relay Station allows linking from MR numbers in online mathematical literature directly to electronic journals and original articles. Subscribers receive the added value of full MathSciNet reviews.)".

That corresponds to Zbl's policy: They do allow up to three requests even to non subscribers. --Ulf Rehmann 10:40, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Bad news: even working with an MSC subscription (via my university), clicking a Subject Classification link I get:

A username and password are being requested by http://ams.math.uni-bielefeld.de. The site says: "MathSciNet Authentication".

--Boris Tsirelson 10:13, 23 December 2011 (CET)

That is different here: Under a vpn connection I do get access -- even from my home notebook, and I can switch on and off that access by using or not using vpn (as it should happen). But: after switching on, I have to reload the EoM page before my browser realizes that access is given.--Ulf Rehmann 10:40, 23 December 2011 (CET)

And still, the MSC template is not good for primary-only cases, because the "ParserFunctions" extension is missing. --Boris Tsirelson 10:21, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Unfortunately that is true. An updated software installation was promised to me before Christmas, but this may no happen, as it seems.--Ulf Rehmann 10:40, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Our audience

It seems, most of EoM articles are targeted at graduate math students and professional mathematicians; but some are accessible to an interested layman. I try to collect these; for now, starting on "A", "B". --Boris Tsirelson 10:36, 14 December 2011 (CET)

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Absolute value + Additivity + Algebra + Algebra, fundamental theorem of + Algebra of sets + Analytic geometry + Arabic numerals + Arithmetic mean + Arithmetic root + Assertion + Associativity + Axiomatic method

Ball + Bayes formula + Bell inequalities + Benford law + Bernoulli experiment + Bernoulli random walk + Bertrand paradox + Binary tree + Binomial distribution + Bit

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Should we introduce (two or more) levels, and mark articles accordingly? --Boris Tsirelson 11:17, 15 December 2011 (CET)

I am not sure. Maybe it is good to just have a list (category) of articles which are suited for non professionals, in order to attract such readers. --Ulf Rehmann 13:21, 15 December 2011 (CET)

Preferred style

Many articles have (near the end) the section "Comments" (and often also the second "References" section after "Comments"). What does it mean? And should we follow this pattern when editing and creating articles? --Boris Tsirelson 11:22, 15 December 2011 (CET)

This is due to the history of the encylopaedia. It underwent various (print and electronic) editions, which not always resulted in a rewrite of an article, but just in an update by amending a comment (sometimes there are several, each with its own reference list). There is no need to follow this pattern now since wikipedia does allow better ways of updating.--Ulf Rehmann 13:21, 15 December 2011 (CET)

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I guess, some day the use of our new templates will become a part of recommendations posted on our help pages. Here is another question of style.

I observe a typical pattern in the existing articles: the title, mentioning a notion, is immediately continued by the definition of the notion. Sometimes a slanted text in between gives some context or some synonims. Examples:

Binary relation

A two-place [[Predicate|predicate]] on a given set.

Spectral density

of a stationary stochastic process or of a homogeneous random field in n-dimensional space

The [[Fourier transform|Fourier transform]] of the covariance function of a stochastic process which is stationary in the wide sense...

Inter-quantile width

inter-quantile distance, inter-quantile range

The difference between the lower and upper quantiles of the same level (cf. [[Quantile|Quantile]]).

But in rare cases the definition appears much later (as in Berwald connection).

On Wikipedia the pattern of the beginning is different: the title is not a part of the definition; an example:

Binary relation

In [[mathematics]], a '''binary relation on''' a [[set (mathematics)|set]] ''A'' is a collection of [[ordered pair]]s of elements of ''A''.

Thus, what is our preferred style for the start of an article? --Boris Tsirelson 17:28, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Subject classification

What I find more important is to classify articles by MSC (Mathematical Subject Classification) and possibly categorize them according to that. This classification should be done so that it is easily recognizable by bots collecting bibliographic info. Of course MSC is subject to change over time, and there should be a tool to update such a classification easily over the whole collection. (We are lucky, since such a change did just happen via MSC 2000 --> MSC 2010.) Does anybody know if there exist wikimedia extensions which do support a suitable classification (and possibly its update)?--Ulf Rehmann 13:21, 15 December 2011 (CET)

For now I added MSC codes to our categories. It will be much easier to update categories than all articles. About bots collecting bibliographic info, I have no idea. But probably a template can help. Do you know which text should appear on articles to this end? Boris Tsirelson 20:51, 15 December 2011 (CET)

Some html meta tag would do the job like

<meta name="description" content="2010 Mathematics Subject Classifiction 20-XXX" />

and

<meta name="keywords" content="associative algebras, Galois theory, ..." />.

But I think that ought to be done on a pagewise basis. --Ulf Rehmann 12:47, 17 December 2011 (CET)

As an experiment, I added "<nowiki><meta name="keywords" content="probability" /></nowiki>" to the end of "Probability"; it is invisible, but appears on the generated html as "<p><span class="tex2jax_ignore"><nowiki><meta name="keywords" content="probability" /></nowiki></span></p>". Will it do the job? --Boris Tsirelson 16:39, 17 December 2011 (CET)

I see, one cannot put some <meta> tag outside the <body> section of some wiki page (unless there is some wikimedia extension wich helps??). So maybe you just omit the <meta ... /> tag and only use an ascii strings like

2010 Mathematics Subject Classifiction UU-XXX

which could be visible, as it provides an info to the reader as well. After a few days we can try to find out if google knows about it. (Of course the MSC should be significantly specific for this test.)

Concerning categorization I propose to use the sectioning scheme used by the International Congresses of Mathematicians as shown below (I have added the respective two digit MSC codes - please amend/correct):

ICM sectioning scheme, cf. ICM 2010		Corresponding 2010 two digit codes
1.	Logic	03
2.	Algebra	06,08,12,13,15,16,17,18,19,20
3.	Number Theory and Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry	11,14
4.	Algebraic Geometry	14
5.	Differential Geometry and Global Analysis	53,58
6.	Geometry, Topology	51,52,54,55,57
7.	Lie Groups and Lie Algebras	22
8.	Analysis	26,28,30,31,32,33,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47
9.	Ordinary Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems	34,37 (39)
10.	Partial Differential Equations	35,37
11.	Mathematical Physics	70,74,76,78,80.82,83,85
12.	Probability and Statistics	60,62
13.	Combinatorics	05
14.	Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science	68
15.	Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing	65,68
16.	Applications	81,86,90,91,92,94
17.	Control Theory and Optimization	49,93
18.	Teaching and Popularization of Mathematics	00,97
19.	History of Mathematics	01

--Ulf Rehmann 12:47, 17 December 2011 (CET)

A good idea; I shall do. --Boris Tsirelson 15:54, 17 December 2011 (CET)

But I wonder, is this table available somewhere? Are the codes MSC2010 (or MSC2000)? Why is combinatorics 97 rather than 05? --Boris Tsirelson 16:19, 17 December 2011 (CET)

The tableau has been used by IMU for the recent ICM section setup, see ICM 2010, ICM 2006, ICM 1998, also this. We could use as well the more verbal description from 2006.

The 2010 codes were added by me, including the typo 97,05 (fixed, but there may be more?).

Probably you mean this page. --Boris Tsirelson 19:59, 17 December 2011 (CET)

Both will do. (The link above was broken.)--Ulf Rehmann 22:42, 17 December 2011 (CET)

Some doubts remain. 08: algebra? 37: ODE/DS (rather than PDE)? 39: ODE, really? 51:alg.geom, really? "Geometry {For algebraic geometry, see 14-XX}" 52: ? "Convex and discrete geometry" 81: ? QM 94: ? "Information and communication, circuit". (Also: 14 and 68 appear twice, but this is intentional, I guess.) --Boris Tsirelson 20:25, 17 December 2011 (CET)

Fixed (I hope). Yes, there are overlaps, so numbers may occur several times.--Ulf Rehmann 22:42, 17 December 2011 (CET)

(Unindent) I've made a template here and used it in Tamagawa number. It would be better to use the template "[ 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification {{{1}}}{{#if:{{{2|}}}|,({{{2}}})|}} ]", since the call {{MSC|11F70}} should not generate "11F70,()". Unfortunately, the "ParserFunctions" extension is still missing.

An "MSC" template is worth using, since (1) changing it one can change the appearance of all MSC at once, and (2) in 2020 :-) one can instruct the template to replace some codes with new ones. --Boris Tsirelson 16:57, 18 December 2011 (CET) --Boris Tsirelson