Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:14, 5 September 2009

Hello

Hello. Please notice this edit summary. "In geometry..." or "In algebra..." or "In number theory..." tells the lay reader that it's mathematics, and of course "In mathematics..." does so as well, but "In order theory..." doesn't. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll remember that. I don't think my version was that confusing because order theory was linked, and the article was also tagged as a math stub, but making it more explicit couldn't hurt. Pcap ping 11:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Type system quote

Hi! You recently added a quote by Mark Manasse to Type system. That quote contains a malapropism: the word "insure" is used where "ensure" would be correct. Since the quote is from an offline source I don't have, I can't check whether the error is present in the original or was introduced as a typo. Could you check? If the error is in the original, we can add "" to the quote, or alternately replace "insure" with "" (in brackets) to show the correction. Thanks! --FOo (talk) 04:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not a typo of mine. You can check on google books, by the way. Pcap ping 11:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for checking! --FOo (talk) 15:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Rewriting

Thanks for making an effort to improve this article. When you are all done, I hope the cursory reader will get a glimpse of why people talk about rewriting. (My impression is that the lambda calculus is part of the inspiration, though the article does not yet make this point). Also, as I imagine you've already noticed the See Also section is a bit too large. EdJohnston (talk) 22:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• "I hope the cursory reader will get a glimpse of why people talk about rewriting"

I'll add a simple, but non-artificial example that actually has some explicit rewrite rules (those I've commented out did not). There is a simple example in the ARS section but it's "artificial".

• "My impression is that the lambda calculus is part of the inspiration"

Yes, lambda calculus has the Church-Rosser property, but not necessarily normal forms. I was getting to that. The word problem (in algebra) is another important motivation; We have an article on the word problem for groups and I've linked it in the proper context.

• "the See Also section is a bit too large"

Yes, I was the one to tag it so I'll remember to prune stuff from it after it's mentioned in the article.

Pcap ping 22:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

P.S. To explain the historical motivation and the main application we need an article on equational logic. See discussion here. Pcap ping 17:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: guidline

I think that the totality of the wiki rules and the guidlines that currently exist put experts too much on the defensive. E.g., Instead of me spending a lot of time in these sorts of arguments, I could simply point to some guidlines that make the same point. Count Iblis (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

My experience from a year ago or so tells me that the wikirules are only good for those endless battles between scientists and creationists (and similar reenactments of real-world conflicts on the wiki) in the context of ArbCom, WP:ANI etc. If policies like WP:SYNT, WP:V were actually followed to the letter in math articles, they articles would be terrible. So, I gave up trying to have any policy or guideline changed, and quietly do my bidding in the way that CBM suggested: explain concepts and iron out differences between sources. He wrote at one point something along the lines: it's amazing how often one finds inconsistencies between authors when trying to write a wiki article on a concept. Luckily for me, in the articles which I'm interested in, I'm amongst a handful of editors that ever touch those articles; some don't see substantial changes in years. Honestly, editing a high-traffic article and then defending my changes against WP:RANDY isn't worth my time. Given that you are a someone involved in research, ask yourself if it's worth your time to battle Randy instead of working on some problem that might make a difference. Pcap ping 16:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of newbies not understanding what they write about. This error of defining a list as tuple, in the lead, and in red, survived for two weeks. Pcap ping 19:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Void vs. Unit type

Dear Pohta, you seem to have a specific mathematical or type theory in mind, where "unit type" is a well-known concept. However, in most computing contexts, that theory is neither well-known nor needed. The term "unit type" is meaningless to most readers; whereas most readers (even the theorists) will surely understand what is meant by the key being void.
Without reference to a specific language or theory, "void type" and "unit type" are two names for the same context. The assertion that "void cannot be stored" may be true in some programming languages, but it is only a trivial and arbitrary compiler restriction, not a logical impossibility. On the other hand, in most prgramming languages one cannot even declare a variable or field as being of "unit type". In summary: "void" is not a bit less correct or precise than "unit type", but is much more accessible to readers. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The section on unit type where you "clarify" the difference between "void type" and "unit type" is mixing up (a specific) abstract type theory with the type systems of specific languages. As said above, the C restriction against allowing void types or variables is merely an arbitrary decision by language designers. The restriction could probably be lifted by simply removing the explicit test in the compiler. (By the way, while standard C may forbid an empty struct, GCC allows them, as in "typedef struct vac {} vac; vac U, V; U = V;".) All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

If unit type is meaningless, the reader can click on it and become educated. This is Misplaced Pages, not CS101 at some community college where all they teach is Java. Besides, it's not such a difficult concept; it's implemented in quite a few languages. As for "it is only a trivial and arbitrary compiler restriction, not a logical impossibility", you should know that void type is just an implementation hack that C-derived languages propagated (void is defined as empty in the ISO C standard); it's not a theoretical concept taught in a PL class or described in a PL book in more than a passing mention (Pierce has about 3 lines on it); the theoretical concept is unit type. Pcap ping 21:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a technical journal, it is an encyclopedia. The target reader is not the specialist, or the CS student who has taken a course in type theory; it is the general reader, who has not even taken CS101 in Java, and knows about programming only enough to want to know what "set" means in computing. Those readers (and even seasoned programmers) will hardly understand the definition given in the "unit type" article — and theyshould not be required to learn type theory in order to understand what a set data strcuture is. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

You're wrong. See last bullet in WP:TECHNICAL which recommends against dumbing down articles. Propagating wrong info is not the way to go. Besides, User:Cybercobra made a reasonable change to the article in the mean time. So, I think this matter is closed. Pcap ping 21:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

hints for editors

Comment such as this really ought to go on the talk page. But why not just move the content yourself, instead of putting on a tag? — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:13, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe someone currently editing it doesn't agree? After all, that article had the same contents for a long time. Not that that means very much for a Start-class article like that. Pcap ping 17:17, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Misplaced Pages's software is chiefly unsuited for concurrent work because it employs the "first committer wins" paradigm, and has no automated merging capability whatsoever. Even CVS is better in that respect, and modern systems like git and darcs are light years ahead. Pcap ping 17:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

So, I'll let you do some work on the article over the weekend and come back to it later. Pcap ping 17:29, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

{{PL-stub}}

Greetings! A stub template or category which you created has been nominated for renaming or deletion at Misplaced Pages:Stub types for deletion. The stub type most likely doesn't meet Misplaced Pages requirements for a stub type, through failure to meet standards relating to the name, scope, current stub hierarchy or likely size, as explained at Misplaced Pages:Stub. Please feel free to make any comments at WP:SFD regarding this stub type, and in future, please consider proposing new stub types first at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals! This message is a boilerplate, left here as a courtesy, and should not be considered personal in nature. Grutness...wha? 23:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Please see the new comment at WP:SFD... Grutness...wha? 03:38, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: Bot

Frankly, I don't have the inclination to write a bot. In fact, I should be working on another software project of mine but keep getting sucked into Misplaced Pages editing :) --Cybercobra (talk) 08:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit note

Maybe a little more polite note next time, than "Please be more discerning with your linking", or perhaps edit the article so that it follows Misplaced Pages's WP:MOS by italicizing ALL book titles, which would prevent the problem. We even have Misplaced Pages:Citation templates for those who are unable to properly format a citation. Really, three different citation style in one article for only three citations is even bad by Misplaced Pages standards. Aboutmovies (talk) 03:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I offended you, but since you edit mainly movie articles, you should have realized that those three math/CS topics are probably unrelated tot the New Age Beyond Words Publishing, an article you have edited extensively, even without italics. Besides, the publisher is indicated clearly enough as Springer Verlag "In G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa, editors, Handbook of Formal Languages, Vol. 3, Beyond Words, pages 457--534. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997". Making the volume name appear in bold is not really a typographic improvement. There's a good reason not use those templates at times; they suck in some cases. Pcap ping 07:14, 5 September 2009 (UTC)