User talk:Dmharvey

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• Archive for May 2005 - May 2006

Contents 1 Happy end problem 2 WP:BEANS 3 blahtex ready? 4 Edit to MathML page 5 thank you 6 Blahtex in Python 7 Fermat's Last Theorem article = 8 Unspecified source for Image:Wedding cake island.jpg 9 Question about twin prime conjecture

[edit] Happy end problem

I have a question about this edit to Happy end problem. I have not been able to confirm the claim about George Szekeres and Lindsay Peters proving that f(6)=17. Do you know to what journal the work has been submitted or when it is expected to be published? Thanks. Michael Slone (talk) 16:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I will ask around and get back to you in the next few days. Dmharvey 17:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Michael, I just shot an email to Lindsay Peters. With his permission, I paraphrase his reply: He submitted it to ANZIAM two months ago, and it is now "queued for review". Dmharvey 22:51, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Michael Slone (talk) 22:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BEANS

Please try not to give people bad ideas; describing how Wikipedia could be disrupted "today, if you so desire" doesn't really help anyone, and there are people who desire to disrupt Wikipedia today.

(Note that WP:BEANS isn't official WP policy, but I think it's a pretty good idea anyway).

RandomP 12:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of WP:BEANS. I apologise for my outburst. Dmharvey 13:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't mind you deleting it. Thanks. Dmharvey 14:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] blahtex ready?

So I went all around telling people that blahtex was ready for the next step (whatever that might be, I don't even know. Installation on test.wikipedia.org?). But looking at your announcement again, I see that you never said Blahtex was ready, but rather only that you've had no response from developers about a future for Blahtex, and therefore didn't see the point in continuing to work on it. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be ready anytime soon. So... did I mischaracterize the state of things? -lethe ^{talk +} 21:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe it's ready enough to be deployed on wikipedia itself, in an experimental capacity. I think the test wiki is some evidence of that. It's still a little rough around the edges, but the issues I have in mind here are things that people won't notice except in unusual situations, and I can get around to fixing them later.

The mediawiki developers may disagree that it's ready. One objection I anticipate is that I haven't put together any thorough unit testing. And perhaps they will find serious security holes which make them lose faith in my programming ability. I expect not, because security was uppermost in my mind throughout development.

So I don't think you have mischaracterised the situation, but there's room for disagreement.

When I talk about "continuing to work on it", I mean that I have plenty more ideas for further improvements. For example, commutative diagram support. Also, at some point I want to port it to Python, which I've been working with a lot recently, and am finding is a brilliantly productive language. But obviously I'm not going to dive into these things unless I know someone's going to use it. Dmharvey 21:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for setting my mind at ease. But uh ... commutative diagrams! Imagine that! And Feynman diagrams surely wouldn't be far behind! -lethe ^{talk +} 22:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit to MathML page

Hello; I'm new to wikipedia, so I hope that this "talk" page is the correct forum to respond to you. I am the person who put in the link to "One Mathematical Cat, Please!" on the MathML page. You removed this link---thanks for supplying a reason, that "there are *plenty* of sites that use MathML out there". I wish I saw that this was the case! I search constantly for free educational sites on the web that use MathML, and I just can't find them. People just don't seem to know about MathML. Indeed, I have not found ANY other site that uses MathML and Javascript to create randomly-generated, interactive mathematics. I thought it would be very valuable for people to see what can be done---this ability has transformed the way that I teach mathematics. You are clearly an established "wikipedian," and I certainly defer to you that a link to my site there was not appropriate. But, I just need to mention, that in the one day it was there, I had about 10 visitors from that link. In any event, I would very much appreciate seeing the many sites you refer to that use MathML for educational purposes. Thanks, Carol

Hi Carol, a few things before I answer:

• Yes, this talk page is a perfectly good forum to reply on. Alternatively you can use the talk page of the article under discussion, for example Talk:MathML.
• It's not a good idea to leave your email address on a wiki page. You will get LOTS of spam. I have taken the liberty of removing it.

Many thanks.

• When you add a message to a talk page, add it to the bottom.

Oops, sorry. I had actually highlighted this in my printed-out instructions and then promptly forgot. In many logs, newest entries go on the top, so this is counter-intuitive to me.

• It's a good idea to sign up for an account. All you need to supply is a username and password. If anything it increases your anonymity on wikipedia because we don't all get to see your IP address (from which geographical information about you can be deduced, and possibly even what company or university or whatever that you work for). It also makes it much easier to track conversations.

Done.

Now to your question. For educational purposes, I'm not so sure. I've heard that lots of people use it for course websites at universities these days, although I haven't personally seen one. They might be hard to spot if the the teacher restricts access to their students. But for interactive websites, there are quite a few. For example, if you look at the MathML home page, they have a list of software packages, many of which have online demos. I could mention my own LaTeX-MathML converter, which we are planning to deploy on wikipedia, which has an interactive demo at http://blahtex.org. Dmharvey 23:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's the educational purposes that seem not to have caught on. My students love the ability to go online and practice to their heart's content. All my source code is completely open (I don't even load any files) so people can see how I do what I do. (I have no formal programming training, so programmers might cringe at my inefficiencies.) I can't even find any pages (in the educational setting) where MathML is being used to display the static math---most pages use pictures. I feel that if teachers could see what the possibilities are, then they could create market pressure to develop tools that make "web exercises" easy to create.

Which brings me to... your LaTeX-MathML converter. (I used LaTeX for about 3 months, about 10 years ago, but went back to TeX. LaTeX took over too much for me.) It's great! I played in the Sandbox for a bit. This is EXACTLY what I want---to be able to just insert simple TeX-like commands in my XHTML code, and have it display correctly on multiple browsers and platforms. More specifically, I want to be able to type TeX-like code in my JavaScript, and have it automatically converted to MathML and then displayed correctly. Any plans to try and get this capability outside Wikipedia? Also, are you familiar with Peter Jipsen's ASCIIMathML work? He has a TeX-to-MathML converter that allows you to write TeX-like format in HTML (not XHTML) pages.

Finally, Robert Miner posted a link to my site at [Web Sites That Serve MathML], and you might consider putting a link to BlahTeX there. Thanks for your contributions to spreading MathML. Fishcaro 12:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

(An email address was still there, at the end of Carol's post. Fixed.)

Advertising will draw more visitors, but Wikipedia cannot do that for you as it would conflict with its goal to be an impartial encyclopedia. Consider contacting the folks at W3C's MathML page; I expect they'd be happy to acknowledge your site. Also, the users of Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers may be interested. --KSmrq^T 00:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... "advertising" and "acknowledgment" don't seem to be quite the right words to express my intent. I guess my intent for this link would more correctly be described as "spreading the word." The current MathML site is (I feel) lacking in its absence of real-world applications of MathML. It needs a section entitled "MathML in Action" or some such thing, with links to meaningful sites that use MathML. Right now, teachers who visit this site aren't going to leave with a real sense of what MathML can do for them. (By the way, my web site is just a personal project: I get no pay for doing it, and I get no income from it. Well, I tried Google AdSense, but people who come to work math problems seem to not want to click on many advertising links.) What I do want is to spread the word about MathML in the educational setting, to hopefully get (in my lifetime!) better, more reliable, and easier implementations in the web environment. I'm a bit timid now (after my first failed attempt) to put in such a section, but perhaps some more experienced wikipedian out there can take it on. Thanks for your comments. Fishcaro 12:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thank you

for fixing my sloppy edit. --VKokielov 17:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't be silly. I've seen far sloppier work than that. Dmharvey 18:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Now come on. I'm thanking you, that's all.  :) --VKokielov 21:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay then, you're welcome :-) Dmharvey 22:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blahtex in Python

I am currently rewriting blahtex in python. - This is good news! I might find use of Python blahtex in some projects of my own, and maybe even contribute to blahtex itself if time permits. Fredrik Johansson 10:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Cool. I haven't been using python that long, but it's really grabbed me. Certainly seems much better than C++ for this kind of thing. Will still be a few months though. I've got other stuff going on too... Dmharvey 10:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fermat's Last Theorem article =

Hi could you look at what am working on for the FLT article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Timothy_Clemans/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem? Timothy Clemans 21:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Timothy, sorry but I prefer the current version better. In fact I preferred one of the older versions some time ago, but I can't remember exactly which one. Also, I just can't afford to spend much time on this now... sorry... Dmharvey 03:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unspecified source for Image:Wedding cake island.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Wedding cake island.jpg. I notice the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this file yourself, then there needs to be a justification explaining why we have the right to use it on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you did not create the file yourself, then you need to specify where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the file also doesn't have a copyright tag, then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{fairusein|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. 62.233.129.226 11:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about twin prime conjecture

Very sorry to bother you. I read your discussion on the twin prime conjecture article and was impressed with your passion regarding mathematics. I run a blog on the history of Fermat's Last Theorem blog on history of math.

Any way, I recently came up with an argument that there are an infinite number of twin primes based on elementary number theory (modular arithmetic,complete residue system,etc.). It is only 9 pages. If you could take a look and let me know if you have any comments, that is greatly appreciated: Proof of Infinitude of Twin Primes.

As a math amateur, working on a math proof is lot like walking in a busy intersection blindfolded. Once I see the flaw in my reasoning, I will feel like the blindfold is off.

If you don't have time but know of someone who might have time, that would also be awesome.

Thanks very much,

-Larry