User talk:Wvbailey

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Welcome!

Hello Wvbailey, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- KHM03 15:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your e-mail

Hi, I got your e-mail, but you aren't blocked. And I see that you've made edits more recent than your e-mail to me, so I assume whatever the problem was has gone away now. --Angr (tɔk) 06:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proof of impossibility

Very nice article on Proof of impossibility!

Meekohi 02:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fractal

Saw your comment on Talk:Fractal. I removed your annotation on your Fractals for the Macintosh reference on the fractal page because it is not consistent with the style of the other references on that page, and does not match any of the reference styles recommended in the style guide Wikipedia:Citing sources. If you want to provide a description of this length for a reference, it is better practice to create a page for the book itself and put the description there, then use the book's title as a link from the reference to the book's own page. That way, any other articles which use the same reference can also link to the book's page, rather than repeating the whole description. Gandalf61 12:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hilbert

Thanks for your intervention and witnessing on the talk:David Hilbert page. I'm taking a time-out and will check back in later. I have tried very hard to engage only productively, but it is quite difficult! John (Jwy) 19:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Licorne's been a challenge to many of us. FWIW - with pretty high certainty we know the guy's name, we know where he lives, and we know where he got his PhD and what its title was .... all this does NOT seem to help anything in dealing with him, unfortunately. The anonymity of the net can be blamed for a lot, but not for Licorne. Thanks for trying to think straight! --Alvestrand 20:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Licorne

Hi Bill! I agree with your sentiment about Licorne. I don't know if your message is in the right place and of the right form, though. Essentially nobody on Wikipedia will accept his behaviour. I suspect that without the running RfAr, someone would already have banned him outright. Now people are just waiting for the official pronouncement. So we will be rid of him fairly soon. As for the place: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Licorne/Evidence is for evidence only. May I suggest to move your remark to Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Licorne/Evidence?

Have a nice day! --Stephan Schulz 18:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] quoting from taocp

Hi, I reverted your edits to algorithm, as I doubt quoting that amount is allowed. By the way, in the third edition he gives al-Khwarizmi's name as "Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī". Cheers, —Ruud 18:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

My editions states: "All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced...". I know you can quote pretty much anything of any length in an academic paper (you have to if you don't want to be accused of plagiarism), but on Wikipedia you also have to think about copyright. I'm afraid you will have to do a bit of creative writing of your own (and attribute Knuth as well). —Ruud 18:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.” [1]

None of the situations above describe your use of the quotation as it was not used in a critical context, but as part of the article's message. As Wikipedia can be considered operating in the same marketplace as Knuth does with his "The Art of Computer Programming" this cannot be considered fair use. —Ruud 19:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] keep it civil, please

I have no idea what I have done wrong to you, but stop the immature name calling please. —Ruud 17:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Civility, please

Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on the contributor; personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks may lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. -R. S. Shaw 19:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know you or Mr Ruud. Perhaps he did make some poor edits. The editing needs to be straightened out. Regardless of that, we need to proceed in a civil manner, without growling or name calling (despite the theraputic effect that might have for our speens). -R. S. Shaw 20:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Algorithm references

I appreciate all of the references that you are adding to Algorithm. However, I was wondering if you might consider making them cite.php-style inline references (See Wikipedia:Footnotes). That way we'll know which specific reference is relevant to a particular piece of text in the article. Also, you might like to use the {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} templates to help achieve a standard format (although I'm happy to keep going through and converting the references to the template forms as you add them, if you prefer). Thanks. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Helpful article

I came across this article: THE PRINCIPLE OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE THEN AND NOW: ARISTOTLE AND PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA. I had no time to read it yet, but from glancing through it, I think this is just what is needed. It is an essay, not in encyclopedic form, so the information given there needs to be rephrased, but my impression is that the author has a good grasp of the issues and presents them in an insightful way. It also has adequate references. --Lambiam ^Talk 11:56, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't see that Andrews' essay supports the assertion that Gödel was strongly influenced by the debate. I only see suggestions the other way around: "'Intuitionism' ... found new impetus in the results of Godel." and "the [intuitionist] position was strengthened by Godel's results". And as far as reductio ad absurdum is concerned, I only pointed out that the intuitionist rejection of LoEM does not impact on the validity of negative results reached that way. And I only did that because you wrote: "If the law were to be abandoned, e.g. Turing's proof and Godel's proof (1931) would be in serious jeapordy." And after I contradicted that, you wrote: "I don't agree with you about the Turing proofs (plural). The Godel proof(s) worry me too". The point I made was that, being negative results, they were not in danger.

As to your "Wikipedia experience", I am sorry it has been so unsatisfactory for you. The best advice I can give you is to stick to topics for which you are confident about your understanding of what is written about them, and to build articles up piecemeal, making sure that intermediate versions are presentable too. It is better to omit something, than to let the scaffolding show by leaving in sentences in telegram style and tags like "work in progress". That discourages other editors from working on the article. Best wishes. --Lambiam ^Talk 20:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason I'm not writing is simple: I don't have access to a library, so I cannot "source" what I write. So instead I try to shape up things, correct obvious errors, increase clarity and such. If original research was allowed, it would be a different story, except that Wikipedia would then be so full of cr*p that I probably wouldn't want to contribute. For the record, I did not propose that editors write only "about what they truly know", but, instead, only about that for which they truly understand what already has been written on the topic. In other words, if editors read up on a topic and are not quite confident they get it, they should simply refrain from reporting on it.

The Wiki model is not perfect, and I see several ways of improving it, but I am actually surprised it is working as well as it is. Personally I find Wikipedia an increasingly useful source of information. --Lambiam ^Talk 23:13, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Martin Davis

You might try asking him directly, he's a nice guy. Here is his NYU web page, with e-mail contact, telephone, everything: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/cs/faculty/davism/. --Lambiam ^Talk 00:41, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Quoting from an e-mail is problematic; it is "unverifiable" under Wikipedia's definition. But if you can know of a published source (book or article) in which Davis first used the term, you have my blessing (if it counts for something) to cite that while using a phrase like: "The term Halting Problem was coined by Martin Davis <citation>." --Lambiam ^Talk 13:33, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On the halting problem

This is a response to a question you posed on Halting problem. You asked:

Early this year I first came to Wikipedia with this question: 
why does Turing's "circle proof" seem so different than the "halting proof"?

I looked through Turing's 1936 paper in which he defines circular and circle free machines. Turing's goal in that paper is to consider machines that enumerate the decimal expansion of a real number. Because these machines enumerate the expansion in order, either they produce a complete infinite expansion or they produce a finite initial segment of one. Thus the question is whether the expansion produced by machine e is infinite or not. The set of those e that produce an infinite expansion is of Turing degree 0’’. The Halting problem is Turing equivalent to the set of pairs (e,n) such that machine e halts on input n. This problem is of degree 0’.

If you view an enumeration of a decimal expansion, as in Turing's paper, in the modern way as a partial computable function f that takes each n to the nth digit of the expansion then the question of whether any particular digit is assigned a value (that is, whether f(n) converges for a particular n) will in general be equivalent to the halting problem. The question Turing asks is whether every digit is assigned a value. This requires quantifying over infinitely many instances of the halting problem, which intuitively is why it is of higher degree.

After looking through Turing's paper, I believe Turing knew or should have known that the Halting problem is undecidable. He was not considering partial computable functions, which is I believe is the reason that he did not bother to mention it.

in fact is it O-prime (as in "Oracle-") or zero-prime? -- Davis used O not zero

The notations 0’ and 0’’ come from the poset structure of the Turing degrees. The least degree is named 0 (zero) as the least element of a poset often is. For each Turing degree a there is another degree a’ pronounced a prime. Thus 0’ is (0)’ and 0’’ is (0’)’. If Davis used an O instead of a 0 it might be because the two look the same on many people's screens and typewriters; this is only a guess. The pronunciation zero prime is universal. CMummert 14:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I do not have time right now to spend on the Turing's proof article. Perhaps once I finish the other things I have in mind, I will be able to return to it. CMummert 03:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

You asked for a recommendation for a book on computability theory. My memory is that the book by Cutland would be good for self study (I don't have a copy at hand). It is aimed to be a first course for undergrads. If you need more advanced books, the books by Rogers and Soare are thorough introductions at the graduate level. I would start with Cutland, though. CMummert 23:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minsky

Thank you for finding this source. Robert A.West (Talk) 02:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello on Turing Machine

There are a new sugestion.

[edit] Algorithm definition: example

Hi Wvbailey. I came across this article, and am inclined to nominate it for deletion. Apart from the fact that it doesn't seem finished (or at least it does not to me show anything about the definition of algorithm, as it claims), it is not normal to have supplements to articles in that form. If there is not room for explaining the problems of a definition in the algorithm article, perhaps something like Definitions of algorithm would be a better idea, explaining different views, with examples. In any case, I would suggest moving this page to your userspace until it is more complete. JPD (talk) 15:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(PS: While the Manual of Style does allow the use of the first person "we" in things like mathematical derivations, we are encouraged to avoid it in general, writing in a more encyclopedic tone. JPD (talk) 15:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC))

Hi Bill. As you say, the article is obviously not complete. Since to me it seems not even complete enough to be clear what it is about and allow others to contribute to it, I don't think it should be the main article space. I can understand that you want to work on it in Wiki formatting before it is ready, and that is why I suggest you could work on it at User:Wvbailey/Algorithm definition: example or something like that, until it is ready to be in the main space. This is a good way to work on things before they are ready, there you won't have any problems with "�impatient" users. You can move it by clicking on the "move" tag at the top of the page. Apart from that, as I mentioned I think a more general article on definitions would be more helpful and more inline with the Wikipedia style than an article on an example. I hope this helps. JPD (talk) 09:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questions in Talk:Recursion theory

You asked several questions there, which I don't want to address on that talk page because they are not relevant to that article. Hare are some brief answers:

So I ask: in layman's terms, what is the difference between all these kinds of recursion?

Primitive recursion This is a specific model of computation, weaker that Turing computability, described at primitive recursive function
Partial recursion and Full general recursion. These are the same. They provide a formal way of dealing with finitary functions on the natural numbers defined by sysytems of recursive equations. They are equivalent to Turing computable functions (that is, once the definitions are laid out properly). For example, multiplication is the function M defined by

A(n,0) = n,

A(n,m+1) = A(n,m) +1,

M(n,0) = n,

M(n,m+1) = n+A(n,m).

This is also primitive recursive. The Ackermann function is defined by recursion equations that are not primitive recursive but are general recursive.

And what is 'the minimization operator' that Elgot-Robinson and Minsky mention? Is this necessary for "full general recursion"? It is the Mu operator. It is required, beyond the operations of primitive recursive functions, to compute all the partial recursive functions.

CMummert 00:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Halting problem

I read through the article Halting problem this morning. It is turning into a good article. I noticed that you have a long list of historical references that you have researched. I wanted to point out the Wikipedia policy on original resarch WP:OR. It discourages historical research like you have done (the policy is not math specific, but is also intended for areas where secondary sources are more likely to give comprehensive viewpoints than primary sources). In the math articles, there is some balance between the original research policy and the need to allow writers to use their personal knowledge when writing articles (so, for example, the article recursion theory that I wrote might also qualify as original research under a pedantic reading of the rules).

In particular, WP:OR says (emphasis added):

Articles may not contain any previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, ideas, statements, or theories. Moreover, articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, ideas, or statements that serves to advance a position.

In the Halting problem article, you spend a long time justifying that M. Davis was the first to use the phrase halting problem. I don't propose cutting that material out, but to fit with WP it should be edited so that it doesn't appear to be an argument in favor of a new position. A shorter reference that states that the phrase appears in Davis and is not known to appear in previous works would be fine IMO. On the other hand, if you could find a statement in print (unfortunately, email and WP talk pages aren't suitable as references) that says the phrase originated with Davis, this would be a great reference.

By the way, thanks for your work on Halting problem and Turing machine. These are difficult articles to write because they are of broad interest but more technically challenging than most elementary mathematics.

CMummert 12:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It might not have been your intention, but you recently removed content from Counter machine:Reference model. Please be careful not to remove content from Wikipedia without a valid reason, which you should specify in the edit summary or on the article's talk page. Thank you. A link to the edit I have reverted can be found here: link. If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me. TheRanger 21:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your edit to Register machine models

Your recent edit to Register machine models (diff) was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept my humble creator's apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // AntiVandalBot 22:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

The article Busy beaver, to which you have helped contribute, has been flagged as requiring cleanup.

If possible, we would appreciate your assistance in cleaning up this article to bring it up to Wikipedia's quality standards. If you are unsure what the nature of the problem is, please discuss this on the article's talk page.

[edit] articles citing other articles

The best description in policy is at WP:CITE, where it says in bold

Note: Wikipedia articles may not be cited as sources.

Based on comments I have seen from other editors, it seems this is interpreted to mean that references should be duplicated for all articles where they are used. It makes sense to point to another article's references if you are thinking in terms of subarticles, but the way things are set up no article is a subarticle of another. CMummert 04:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Entscheidungsproblem

I cleaned up Entscheidungsproblem some. You are probably more familiar with the references than I am. Do you know if Hodges covers the history of the problem as discussed in the article? I put a cite tag between the two sentences that I am interested in. CMummert · talk 14:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference; I added it to the article and resolved the fact tag.

If you are interested in finding out about more about intuitionistic math, I recommend that you read about the BHK interpretation and read the introduction of "Varieties of Constructive Mathematics" by Bishop and Bridges. If you want something more advanced, there are some books by Troelstra about constructivism in the references for BHK interpretation. In contemporary parlance, "constructivism" includes all sorts of mathematics done with intuitionistic logic, but without the philosophical baggage. CMummert · talk 17:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Godel 1931

Thanks for the offer of a PDF of the translation of Godel 1931. I have the book in front of me, so I can't take you up on it. I can make a counter offer - the PDF of the original 1931 paper in German, from SpringerLink online. If you can use it, send me your email address (with the "email this user" link on my user page).

Also, any edits you would like to make to On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems would be very welcome. CMummert · talk 02:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Active voice on Algorithm

Hi, Your active voice looks nice. As long as we do not make first person or second person as subject, I am happy with it. mlpkr 09:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcuts

The point of a shortcut box is not to list every single incoming link (that's what we have Special:Whatlinkshere for). The point is to list one or two common abbreviations as mnemonics. For instance, if WP:ABC is renamed to WP:XYZ, it doesn't make sense to keep the old shortcut in the box, even if we won't delete it. >Radiant< 16:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

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