Talk:Mathematics

BigCleanup deleted items

[[Image:Euclid.jpg|right|thumb|220px|[[Euclid]], a famous Greek mathematician known as the father of geometry, is shown here in detail from ''[[The School of Athens]]'' by [[Raphael]].]]
[[Image:Quipu.png|thumb|right|A [[quipu]], a counting device used by the [[Inca Empire|Inca]].]]
[[Image:GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg|right|thumb|Sir [[Isaac Newton]] (1643-1727), an inventor of [[infinitesimal calculus]].]]
[[Image:Pic79.png|right|thumb|In modern notation, simple expressions can describe complex concepts. This image is generated by a single [[equation]].]]
[[Image:Carl Friedrich Gauss.jpg|right|thumb|[[Carl Friedrich Gauss]], while known as the "prince of mathematicians", did not believe that mathematics was worthy of study in its own right{{fact}}.]]
[[Image:Abacus 6.png|right|thumb|Early mathematics was entirely concerned with the need to perform practical calculations, as reflected in this Chinese [[abacus]].]]
some images commented in the text
{{polytonic|μαθηματικὴ τέχνη}}

little comments

The word "pattern" doesn't appear anywhere in the article right now - while some would actually define mathematics as "the science of patterns". Also, historically mathematics was also driven by military engineering needs (ballistics, for example). It also mentions "amateurs" such as Fermat and Mersenne ... but in that time there were extremely few "professional" mathematicians, so the image conjured up by labeling Fermat an "amateur" is probably rather misleading.

Agree. I wonder whether improving the present text is easier/better than rewriting from scratch (some time ago I suggested it could be blanked). Any thoughts? --AlekStos 09:25, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

I'm not really happy with the article as written, either. Just removing (or truncating) the article does seem a little drastic, though. Is there any way to create an alternative article that might be used to replace it? Is this a good idea? Greg Woodhouse 07:31, 2 April 2007 (CDT)

Computation and Information Theory

I notice that such topics as computability and information theory are categorized under discrete mathematics. I'm not at all sure I agree with this classification. For example, it is not really clear what is meant by discrete mathematics: I have tended to think of it as having more to do with combinatorics than with formal logic to which I think the study of computation properly belongs. (Though there is certainly historicaal overlap here, the Busy Beaver function was introduced by Tibor Rado.) It may be worth some checking here, but I'm not even sure discrete mathematics is even a term generally used by mathematicians. I do certainly recall the term being used in the computer science curriculum, but there it seems to be more of a "catch all" for those aspects of mathematics that are important for computer science students. Greg Woodhouse 07:23, 2 April 2007 (CDT)

Pillar articles

In my mind these "Pillar articles" that Science itself is based on (such as Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, etc.) should present a general overview to the reader (see User:Pat_Palmer for another Author that feels this way). As readers "drill down" into links on the Mathematics page such as Algebra, Geometry, or Computability (or whatever "Computability" is called at that point :) these articles should increase in their technical jargon and complexity. Just something to think about --Eric M Gearhart 07:55, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Accessibility of mathematical notation across workgroups

As someone who has not taken postgraduate courses in maths but still regularly reads papers from a variety of disciplines using mathematical notation, I wish to add to continue this discussion by mentioning that it would be a great service for the reader (and potentially a pain for the writer) to have the first use of any mathematical symbols (be these logarithms, subscripts, superscripts, bra-kets, differential operators or anything else that may be ambiguous or non-intuitive) defined on first usage. To give an example from an example section, it is not obvious, based on the definition of the temporal derivative given as

${\frac {du(t)}{dt}}=u(t)$

that the dot over the x in the subsequent

${\dot {x}}=\sigma (y-x)\$

actually indicates the same operation, only performed on x instead of u. But if both the d and the \dot could be wiki-linked to the relevant section in a Mathematical notation article, the reader could get the information in a way not too effortful for the individual writer.

I have played around a bit with the <nomath> command but didn't see how such wikilinks from within <math> environments can be made (I suppose it's easy, though). Any hints on this, and comments on feasibility of consistent implementation across <math>-formatted articles, would certainly be appreciated.

And once we are at it, is there a way to search the wiki or the web for mathematical formulas, i.e. that points me to the second equation mentioned above if I enter something like

${\dot {*}}=?(?-*)\$

as the search term? This would greatly facilitate cross-disciplinary work on articles about certain mathematical concepts and structures, since many of them are employed in multiple contexts (with the original one often not being the most popular) that would not easily come together otherwise but could do so in an encyclopedic project like this. To give just two example, the heat equation is nowadays used for many things that do not have anything to do with temperature, e.g. the smoothing of geometric shapes in computer graphics, and spherical harmonics have found applications in many spherical (or topologically similar) objects, ranging from molecules to brains. --Daniel Mietchen 10:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)