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Fermat–Catalan conjecture

Someone added several solutions to Fermat–Catalan conjecture, but they are OR. I checked the first two and they are correct. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:48, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They are WP:OR, still. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know, but they do check out. It is sad that we can't help un-frustrate the contributor. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:33, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The condition on the exponents is met, but the triples aren't coprime. 70, 105, and 35 have common factors of 5 and 7; 194 and 291 are multiples of 97; 756 and 945 are multiples of 189; 66 is twice 33; 1011 and 1348 are multiples of 337. XOR'easter (talk) 06:52, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, good catch. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:14, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I made a note on the talk page at Talk:Fermat–Catalan conjecture § New unpublished solutions, to at least save the content of the reverted edit somewhere. –jacobolus (t) 07:27, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Isn't it feasible to try all numbers a,b,c up to 1000 and m,n,k up to 10 (say) and check the conditions by a conventional computer? There are just 1.0e12 combinations, and several obvious ways to prune the search space apply (wlog. a<=b; coprimal numbers can be precomputed; etc.). - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A prototype implementation in these bounds obtained the first 5 solutions from Fermat–Catalan_conjecture#Known_solutions, and no others. The approach can be scaled up by a few orders of magnitude, and I'm going to explore that. However, the last 5 solutions are beyond feasibility for such computer search. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:53, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unsolved problems

In the List of unsolved problems in mathematics, we do have hundreds of questions regarding the problems and conjectures, and in fact many unsolved problems are not listed there. Are there any criteria for this, and how can one add up an unsolved problem? Or if I have to put it blatantly, for example, can each of the five problems by Shephard be included somewhere in Wikipedia with {{unsolved}} [1]? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since the paper you link says it presents 20 problems, maybe there should be one article about those 20, which would have a single link from the List of unsolved problems in mathematics, included within the early section whose title begins with the plural word "Lists". Michael Hardy (talk) 19:56, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The only thing I could utilize Shephard's 20 problems is by including some of them in the article Polyhedron, or Convex polyhedron, which I will break off and have its article. nvm about this one.
For now, I could assume that every problem or every conjecture in the article has proposed solutions (but not officially as the real solution) as in Lonely runner conjecture and Inscribed square problem, further problem in Reversible cellular automaton, special cases and generalization in Kissing number problem, and do not have all of them in Szilassi polyhedron or Perfect cuboid. In these cases, I might say every problem can be included in Wikipedia, as long as they meet WP:NOTABILITY. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:33, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nominated Cleo (mathematician) for GA

Hello! If anyone could put in the time to GA review an article that I created in light of the recent identity reveal of the notorious Math Stack Exchange user Cleo, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you! GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 16:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but heavy reliance upon YouTube and Reddit (i.e., unreviewed, user-generated content) is not suitable for biographies of living people. XOR'easter (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for reviewing! I didn't directly use YouTube and Reddit as sources - as I understand it, since Wikipedia is a tertiary source, if a different source (Meduza and multiple others) uses those as sources, then isn't using Meduza to confirm the statements fair game? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:20, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Only if those other sources like Meduza are themselves reliable. Anybody can watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, skim a Reddit thread, etc., and mindlessly repeat what they found there to draw clicks to their own website. None of them seem to have done in-depth reporting here, just aggregation. (The number of websites that recycle glurge from social media to pass themselves off as "news" is stupefyingly high.) Meduza overall might be reputable enough to be usable, but the other two look extremely iffy. Maybe ask at the Reliable Sources noticeboard to get wider input on that. XOR'easter (talk) 17:28, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving aside GA, I'm not sure this meets Wikipedia's "notability" standard. The only source is one podcast interview. Maybe it could be a small section of an article about Math Stack Exchange, or maybe even that is pushing it.
(Aside: internet sources claim that the identity of Cleo was recently figured out, and confirmed by the person behind it.) –jacobolus (t) 17:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the previous version of the article that I had written up [2] had several more sources, but they were removed for being aggregates. What are your thoughts on those sources? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:44, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Wikipedia should be Doxxing people, and these revisions should probably be deleted from the database. (But the whole article getting deleted as non-notable would also solve the problem.) –jacobolus (t) 17:49, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’m a bit confused. Is it doxxing if the person behind Cleo confirmed it on their own Stack Exchange profile? They admitted that they created Cleo and confirmed it with McCann, and several sources have published it as well. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In that case we probably don't need to get too aggressive about scrubbing it immediately, and can let normal processes take their usual time. I expect this article to end up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. –jacobolus (t) 17:57, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are the Russian/Uzbek sources along with the Scientific American interview not sufficient for GNG? I specifically waited for the sources to be available before I tried creating the article. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 18:03, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they can only contribute to notability if they're reliable, which they might or might not be. XOR'easter (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the GA nomination to gain clearer consensus first. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 17:55, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article easily meets SIGCOV. In fact, I found out about this reading the sciam article, and only then checked out the Wikipedia article. The sourcing is problematic for GA, as others have noted. It strikes me that this is an article whose goal should not be GA. Actually, that would be a disimprovement. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. What are your thoughts on including Cleo’s true identity in the article? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:29, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Really? The "significant coverage" here is a single podcast interview with a random prolific stackexchange participant. "Has ever been the subject of a podcast" doesn't seem to me like what the standard suggests, but maybe I haven't contributed to enough notability deletion discussions to have a good sense of where Wikipedians typically come down on the question. –jacobolus (t) 06:06, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interviews are almost never considered to count as significant coverage for notability in deletion discussions. The problem is that WP:GNG notability needs multiple sources that are independent of the subject and each other, reliably published, and provide in-depth material about the subject. Interviews are not independent because it is the subject saying stuff. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:01, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, it wasn't the subject being interviewed though. Tito Omburo (talk) 13:30, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's fair to characterize the interview as with a "random prolific stackexchange participant". Multiple academics were interviewed: Ron Gordon is a former physicist, Anthony Bonato is a mathematician at Toronto University, and Jay Cummings is an associate professor at California State University, Sacramento. Plus, Cleo themselves were not the subject of the interview, so this source is independent. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 16:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While unusual for a mathematics article, I'd view Cleo (mathematician) as similar to our GA Celebrity Number Six (AfD, talk page discussion), insofar as it summarises traditional media reporting of events on 'social media' (Stack Exchange and YouTube). While the sourcing is thinner (SciAm and Meduza instead of NYT, the AV Club, and Wired), I'd view it as adequate for V, though not for GA status unless we can find more reliable sources. While we should be careful about stating the true identity of Cleo (BLP broadly applies), I would support expanding the Identity section to note the Feb 2025 claim that Cleo has been re-identified, sourced to Meduza — analogous to Satoshi Nakamoto#Possible identities. Preimage (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Somebody watched a YouTube video and made a post on a random website with unclear and perhaps nonexistent editorial standards repeating what the video said" is not the ideal basis for a biography article in an encyclopedia. XOR'easter (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Meduza is one of the better-known (albeit small) Russian free press outlets, similar to Novaya Gazeta and The Insider. RSN considers them generally reliable, with WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_433#c-My_very_best_wishes-20240405162900-Doug_Weller-20240405100100 being the only dissent I could find (discounting a Meduza explainer due to its being an additional considerations apply source, as well as lacking a byline). The article we are discussing is attributed to Mikhail Gerasimov, described elsewhere on the site as their resident video game and IT expert.
While the depth of reporting in sources used on Celebrity Number Six is somewhat greater, e.g. the NYT and Vanity Fair also interviewed Sardá, as we've just been discussing, interviews with the subjects of articles are generally less useful than non-interview reporting. Meduza didn't simply re-report what was in McCann's YouTube video: they also checked this against evidence on Stack Exchange and statements by Reshetnikov on X. Preimage (talk) 23:51, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Meduza item might be acceptable; the others look more like fly-by-night websites that just aggregate content for clicks. XOR'easter (talk) 00:12, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. All the other Russian/Uzbek sources are based on the February 20 Meduza article (Gazeta.uz [uz] is a direct translation, other articles are partial summaries, most were posted a few days later, and many use the same lead image with direct attribution to Meduza). WP sourcing relies on quality, not quantity; rather than swamping readers with less-reliable sources, I'll switch the other ones over to Meduza. Preimage (talk) 05:06, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 06:20, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The GA nomination was withdrawn but there is still an active DYK nomination: Template:Did you know nominations/Cleo (mathematician). —David Eppstein (talk) 00:49, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added the DYK nomination because I still believe that it's a good candidate for it. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 03:14, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was not intending any specific criticism; merely pointing participants here to a related discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:50, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article is written in a non-neutral point of view (W:NPOV). I have added a section for discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cleo_(mathematician) PatrickR2 (talk) 20:01, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Regular icosahedron/Archive 6

Can someone help me in archiving these discussions. I think I numbered the wrong one. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tensor categories: content, notability etc

A relatively new editor @Meelo Mooses has over the last couple of weeks created at least 10 (!) new pages, Modular tensor category, Fibonacci category, Fibonacci anyons, Algebraic theory of topological quantum information, Unitary modular tensor category, Bruguières modularity theorem, Modular group representation, Rank-finiteness for fusion categories, Schauenburg-Ng theorem, Müger's theorem; added a large amount of new content to an existing BLP Alexei Kitaev and created a new (Wikipedia) category . I am fairly certain that some (perhaps most) have Wikipedia problems, for instance not encyclopedic, peacock terms, written like essays etc -- I have tagged a few of the pages in WP:NPP, not all. Those are perhaps not unsurprising for a new editor.

More critical is to what extent these are all notable and/or duplicated by existing articles. Most of these appear to be related to aspects of theoretical physics, quantum field theory, quantum information (although they are not showing up as new physics pages). This is a bit outside my comfort zone, so I am looking for comments here, or please add to the appropriate talk pages. (If you "adopt" some of these please let others know as this is a BIG list of pages to overview.)

N.B., I have posted to Talk Physics because I think this is more theoretical physics than math, but I may be wrong as most of the pages start with "In Mathematics". Please post there at WT:Physics#Tensor categories: content, notability etc to minimize overlapping/duplicating comments. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:34, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MathSciNet journal abbreviations

Note that if you have Template:Infobox_journal#Search_links, as well as TokenZero's infobox journal prettifier, enabled this will be substantially easier to handle.

User:TokenzeroBot/abbrev params contains a list of journal articles with potentially missing MathScinNet abbreviations.

For example, Annales Polonici Mathematici has the probable mathscinet abbreviation Ann. Polon. Math.. You can (and should) verify if this is the case in [3] (or alternatively, [4] if you have a subscription to MathSciNet).

If the abbreviation is correct (and here, it is), all you need to do is add it with |mathscinet=Ann. Polon. Math.

Any help you can give with this is greatly appreciated. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:12, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"if you have a subscription" link results in:
Matches: 2
Journal results for "0066-2216"
Ann. Polon. Math. Annales Polonici Mathematici [Indexed cover-to-cover; Reference List Journal]
Ann. Polon. Math. Polska Akademia Nauk. Annales Polonici Mathematici [No longer indexed]
But really this is a job for a script. There are too many to make searching and editing these one-by-one a useful thing for a human editor to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:27, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's about 77 journals in need of such abbreviations. I've done way bigger jobs myself, it just takes time. Having help helps a lot, which is why I'm asking here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:13, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The reasons for abbreviating journal titles rather than giving the full title are good when applied to things printed on paper. They don't apply to Wikipedia at all. Yet still people do it here. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having the info in the infobox is critical for two reasons 1) if you put |mathscinet=J. Math. Psych. in the infobox, it will prompt you to create relevant Category:Redirects from MathSciNet abbreviations, if they don't exist. 2) Now if you search for J. Math. Psych., it will take you to the relevant journal, and you know that it stands for Journal of Mathematical Psychology (instead of say Journal of Mathematics in Psychiatry). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:32, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proof 1 of Interior extremum theorem

Every single proof I've looked at resembled proof 2. Has anyone come across a textbook or paper that uses a proof similar to proof 1 of the Interior extremum theorem? Based5290 :3 (talk) 20:40, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Based5290: I'm assuming you couldn't find it in the citations? Gracen (they/them) 21:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. If I remember and read correctly, those that give a proof all give something resembling proof 2. Based5290 :3 (talk) 21:04, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say we remove it unless someone finds a source containing the proof, then. Gracen (they/them) 21:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tikhomirov (1990) Stories about maxima and minima, p. 105:

We assume that ⁠⁠ and show that ⁠⁠ is not a local extremum. We suppose that ⁠⁠. By the definition of a limit, the fact that (where ⁠⁠) implies that there is a ⁠⁠ such that if then . But then for ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, so that and for ⁠⁠, ⁠⁠, so that In other words, to the left of ⁠⁠ the value of ⁠⁠ is less than ⁠⁠ and to the right of ⁠⁠ it is greater than ⁠⁠. This means that ⁠⁠ is neither a maximum nor a minimum. This completes the proof.

(But having two proofs where the main idea is really more or less the same is probably not necessary; I don't think this proof #1 is adding much whether or not we link a source.) –jacobolus (t) 05:39, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we even have these proofs in the article? Unless the proof itself is particularly significant or particularly enlightening, it should not be there. We definitely should not be including proofs that are not based on published sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:16, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I concur. PatrickR2 (talk) 23:54, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In an article about a theorem having at least one proof seems like a fine idea. –jacobolus (t) 02:01, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For anyone curious about the history, JSTOR 43695566 is kind of interesting (also cf. JSTOR 41133963), though I'm not sure there's any concise way to communicate it in the context of this article, since mathematical conventions and priorities have changed significantly since Fermat's time. –jacobolus (t) 04:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Idempotency of entailment

I'm lost. I only got to Stats 3. Please help to source this stub and explain it in an educated layperson's perspective. Bearian (talk) 11:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article was clearly written for people who already know the subject. It is now a redirect. D.Lazard (talk) 15:25, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is sadly true of many math articles. —Tamfang (talk) 19:42, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:MATH
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