User talk:Jakob.scholbach/Archives/2008/December

Peer review for Locally connected space

Dear Jakob.scholbach,

Because you are interested in peer reviews, I thought you might like to participate in the peer review for locally connected space. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help.

Topology Expert (talk) 11:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I will review the article, but can't make it before Monday. Perhaps you can return the fav and have a look at vector space's GA nomination? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 12:27, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Certainly. I am going on a flight in two days time so I will be travelling for next week and may not be able to edit much. However, I will give as many comments as I can before then (perhaps tomorrow).

Topology Expert (talk) 13:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the vector space article is great! You really have done hard work (even on group theory as I have noticed) so I wanted to give you this barnstar:

		The Original Barnstar
		Topology Expert (talk) 13:22, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Topology Expert (talk) 13:22, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, were there any parts of the article that you needed reviewing or just the whole lot?

Topology Expert (talk) 12:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. And yes, reviewing the whole article would be best. If you are unfamiliar with it, you might also want to have a look at the Good Article criteria. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:05, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I could not edit Wikipedia for the past week because I (unanticipated) did not have access to the internet (I was travelling for part of the time but now I am in Freiburg and I won't travel anymore for quite a while). Since I am back, I will start reviewing the article on vector spaces. I will also follow your comments regarding the peer review for locally connected space.

Topology Expert (talk) 18:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

MV sequence

Thanks for the tips and comments Jakob. GeometryGirl (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

In the peer review you wrote: "What about generalizations and related notions? E.g. what about other topologies (e.g. Nisnevich topology). Also other types of (co)homology would be good, e.g. etale cohomology (actually pretty much any cohomology theory, right?)"

It turns out I have only followed a first course in algebraic topology and I don't know advanced topology. Could you add some advanced examples at the end of the article? GeometryGirl (talk) 13:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll weigh in later this week. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 14:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Vector space

I've reviewed the article, see the talk page. It's on hold right now, as I think there are a few things that ought to be fixed before it's a GA. But I expect you'll have no trouble. Just so you know, I'm going to be traveling tomorrow and the day after, so I won't be around to reply, but I hope my comments are explanatory enough. Ozob (talk) 02:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Matrix

As per your request, I've added a few sections on application in physics. Markus Poessel (talk) 20:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome; all for the good cause of improving Wikipedia's math coverage. Markus Poessel (talk) 21:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Ring (mathematics)

Hi Jakob,

I noticed that you corrected one statement on the section on direct products. In all my hastiness for editing this article, I am forgetting my mathematics! Thanks anyway for correcting that. I will avoid making such mistakes in future (perhaps I was thinking in a different category!).

Point-set topologist (talk) 15:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

All right and thanks for working on the article. And welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy the place. You may also be interested in the discussions at WT:WPM. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link (I actually found out about that a lot earlier because people were discussing my edit there!). I know that you have certainly helped out at that article, but will others do too? I informed them at WPM but no-one has (yet) responded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Point-set topologist (talk • contribs) 18:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

My experience is that you have to do 95% of the work on some article you are interested in yourself. Everybody is busy with something... A way to achieve wider input is a good article nomination or peer review, but the ring article is still far from that level. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:49, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I created an account because I noticed how bad the ring article was! Anyway, I don't know whether I can make it as good as Group (mathematics) but anything is better than what it was originally. Point-set topologist (talk) 18:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jakob,

I noticed that you did a lot of work on group (mathematics). Good work! I just wanted to ask you whether you would mind reviewing ring (mathematics). Not really for mistakes, but since I am not familiar with article creation (I have read all the policies carefully but...), it would be good if someone could go through it. In particular, if you know any good references, could you please add them (I don't have any access to a library for a week or so). Thanks!

Point-set topologist (talk) 20:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review! I will go through all those points in the near future. Point-set topologist (talk) 10:36, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

How does the article look now? Would it be suitable for FA (still a lot of minor corrections, mainly inline citations are necessary; apart from that, the article seems OK) after I have responded to your suggestions?

Point-set topologist (talk) 21:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The article is very far from FA. To be honest I don't think it is even a satisfactory article at the moment. No offense intended, but if you want to go for FA (I strongly suggest aiming at GA first, which is already quite some work, as you may see with vector space, for example) part of your recent work seems to go a bit in the wrong direction, IMO, in the sense that stating trivial things and even proving them and listing many many definitions has undue weight. The current material is more or less a glossary of ring theory (compare to glossary of group theory or glossary of topology). The article does not provide orientation about applications of rings, what big classes of rings there are, what are open problems etc. etc. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 02:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Finally, a personal note, hopefully not too presumptuous: when I started working on groups, I had not realized how huge the topic is. Even restricting to "basic notions" it is still terribly huge. It took some 600 edits of mine and much help and many edits of others to get it where it is. I learned a lot about it, especially how little I knew about groups, and how little I knew about writing a good article. If you are seriously aiming at FA, you might want to consider getting a bit closer to WP writing etc. and then (re)start a big topic such as this one. As you will have remarked, there are tons of articles of smaller scope where improvements are sorely needed... Jakob.scholbach (talk) 02:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. When I next have a chance, I will try to give motivations for ring theory. Perhaps that may improve the article a bit. But the most recent improvements were the references. Now those are sorted, I will aim for GA perhaps (I know that there is a lot of hard work but I am willing to do it just this once (300 edits to the article so far...)). But I agree that now that the article is satisfactory, I will improve the other articles (but not with as much effort!).

Point-set topologist (talk) 15:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Matrix (mathematics)

I just added a little more to the determinant section, on using Cramer's to solve linear equations. I hope you don't mind, and please feel free to mercilessly fix/correct it or remove it altogether. Just trying to help, as I think that aspect deserves greater mention. I thought it prudent to notify you, as you seem quite engaged in revamping the article of late. Best of luck in continued improvements; what you've done for this article thus far has been impressive and very well done. Keep it up! Best regards, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:57, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Dramatic edits

Since you know a lot about WP:MOS and such, I wanted to consult you about the following. Most recently Taku completely rewrote the article (please have a look Ring_(mathematics)/Draft for his version). He kept the formal definition right after the lede instead of the motivational example of the integers. So basically, he changed the structure of the article completely. The content he added was reasonably good but his lede was (along with my criticizm):

In mathematics, a ring is an algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those familiar from the integers.

I don't think this sentece is well-written. Notice: "A ring is an algebraic structures". More than the extra "s" at the end of "structure" (grammar), how many people would know what a algebraic structure is? My lede explained this clearly. Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

In technical terms, a ring is an abelian group with multiplication that distributes over addition (i.e., c(a + b) = ca + cb.)

This sounds as if "a ring is an Abelian group with multiplication"; it is under addition. The c(a+b) = ca + cb is not TeXed properly. "Technical" should be "mathematical" etc... Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Commutative rings, a ring with the property ab = ba, are much better understood than noncommutative ones.

It should be, "Commutative rings (a ring with the property ab = ba), are much etc... Even that is wrong because ab = ba is not TeXed and it should be 'ab = ba for all a and b in the ring (mathematical precision). Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Due to its intimate connections with algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory, which provide many natural examples of commutative rings, their theory, which is considered to be part of commutative algebra and field theory rather than of general ring theory, is quite different in flavour from the theory of their noncommutative counterparts. A fairly recent trend, started in the 1980s with the development of noncommutative geometry and with the discovery of quantum groups, attempts to turn the situation around and build the theory of certain classes of noncommutative rings in a geometric fashion as if they were rings of functions on (non-existent) 'noncommutative spaces'.

This is copied (completely) from ring theory. Not that this is a problem but it is still not written properly. Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The ring theory studies the structure of rings, their representations, or, in different language, modules, special classes of rings (group rings, division rings, universal enveloping algebras), as well as an array of properties that proved to be of interest both within the theory itself and for its applications, such as homological properties and polynomial identities.

Throughout the article, a ring is assumed to be unital and associative. See also glossary of ring theory for additional terminology.

What does 'unital' and 'associative' mean (people may not know)? This was (appropriately) placed in "notes on the definition". Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

This is why I think my lede is better. If necessary, I can critize the other content too (there is of course good content and I will add that back when I next get the time to do so). I think with such dramatic changes, it is always good to explain first and then change. Point-set topologist (talk) 20:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

---

Anyway, I have similar criticizm to his other edits. Which version do you think is more appropriate (the current, Ring_(mathematics) or Ring_(mathematics)/Draft)?

Thanks!

Point-set topologist (talk) 21:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

From a quick scan I like the draft version better. It goes in the right direction of distinguishing central notions and particular cases (such as non-commutative rings). It also omits trivial matters such as the trivial ring. Your lead section fails to even mention commutativity which is a key issue. However, you should sort this out with Taku and other interested editors at the article talk page; try to find consensus. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)