Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Should the LaTeX space in integrals be changed from '\,' to '\mathop{}\!' site-wide?

Among other various changes, User:Sbb has sometimes (I'm not sure how many pages were affected, I didn't investigate closely) changed all of the instances of \, to \mathop{}\! in integrals on some pages. For example, instead of writing \int e^x\,dx, that would instead be \int e^x\mathop{}\!dx. These two render identically:

$$\int e^{x}\,dx\qquad \int e^{x}\mathop {} \!dx$$

After reverting one of these changes, I made what I thought to be a polite comment on their talk page asking them to not make the same change to other articles:

[...] using a 2 mu '\,' space before the 'dx' of an integral is the common standard in LaTeX documents used by most mathematical authors (and most Wikipedia pages; we e.g. recommend this in every integral example on Help:Displaying a formula), and we don't need to re-invent the wheel here and we shouldn't make changes across Wikipedia. Your version, '\mathop{}\!', is both significantly harder to read in the source and also renders literally identically, to the pixel. [...] Please don't do this type of replacement. It just adds spam to people's watchlists while also making the article marginally worse.

Sbb does not agree. They explain their reason for this change:

I ignored this for the longest time because it is simply wrong [...] [saying \, is a common standard approach is] categorically false [...] [\mathop{}\!] serves as a semantic identifier or singly identifiable place to eventually search/replace when WP eventually allows editors to extend LaTeX markup with new commands / macros [...]

In my opinion a hope for future macros and a site-wide find/replace is not a reasonable justification for making large-scale changes that add a ton of clutter to article markup, when the hoped-for eventual macro feature might someday give us the capability to.... render exactly the same thing but with a bespoke command name instead of an explicit thin space.

Even if such a macro feature did eventually appear, and there was a consensus decision to adopt a macro for writing the space in integrals, it would be quite trivial to make a bot identify all such spaces using some set of pretty simple heuristics, and with some human spot checks it wouldn't be hard to almost entirely automate the conversion of integral spaces to some desired future format. So the "semantic identifier" argument does not seem very convincing to me.

I believe drive-by changes of '\,' to '\mathop{}\!', especially if undertaken at scale, to be disruptive, and think they should be reverted per WP:STYLEVAR and to avoid pointless watchlist spam and edit warring. (But I have no personal problem if individual article authors want to write new integrals on arbitrary pages using this syntax. I'm generally happy to defer to article authors about such trivialities.)

I'm here for a third opinion, since I don't think I will convince Sbb by myself. –jacobolus (t) 21:27, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

To be clear (and I think jacobolus pejoratively misrepresented my edits as "drive by"), those edits are always a small part of my article-wide edits for maths improvement (such as changing from colon-indent to <math display="block">, applying {{math}}/{{mvar}} consistently if the inline maths are trivial, removing <math>...</math> from captions (per standard because of Phab bug), etc.).  — sbb (talk) 21:54, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm here for a third opinion, since I don't think I will convince Sbb by myself.

The ending subordinate clause is an unnecessary aspersion. Please leave that commentary out, it is unfair, and completely ignores your misrepresenting of the context of your discussion with me.  — sbb (talk) 21:59, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

In many cases even putting a space is wrong if the integrand has an interpretation as a differential form. Being overly opinionated about this is definitely bike shedding. Tazerenix (talk) 22:21, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Drive-by gnome –DE

By "drive-by changes" I intended to be descriptive, not insulting: someone popping in briefly to make small changes (including things like twiddle with the markup or style of a page) and then moving on to the next page, not making significant substantive content changes or sticking around to work on a particular article extensively. Sorry if I gave offense. I myself make tons of what I would consider "drive-by" edits all the time, and don't consider that category to be inherently bad. But I'm happy to use some alternative name for such edits if there's a better one. –jacobolus (t) 22:17, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

It is completely bogus to call \mathop{}\! semantic markup. It is obfuscation of what should be a thin space, pure and simple. There is no good reason for it. Standard advice from mathematical typesetting books is to use a thin space here, not an invisible operator with negative space . —David Eppstein (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd also agree that \,dx should not be changed to \mathop{}\!dx. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 22:59, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

• "[saying \, is a common standard approach is] categorically false" → What? That's what everybody I know who types LaTeX does (except of course for those people who don't care at all about how their equations are typeset and don't even bother to include a space; and for the two or three people who have defined a custom command for the d that includes the spacing).
• " [\mathop{}\!] serves as a semantic identifier" → What? Semantically, this expression makes no sense whatsoever.

Malparti (talk) 23:15, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I have read the discussion above and at User talk:Sbb#Please_do_not_replace_'\,'_spaces_with_'\mathop{}\!'_in_integrals, and I agree with the view of most editors here so far. \,dx is a good, ordinary, effective style, which is and should continue to be acceptable throughout Wikipedia. \mathop{}\!dx is overcomplicated and has no upside, and it should not be used. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

+1. —Kusma (talk) 06:43, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

The integrals above do not render identically for me; the first has a thin space between the $e^{x}$ and the $dx$, while in the second the $x$ of the $e^{x}$ overhangs and practically touches the $d$. catslash (talk) 01:05, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Which math rendering mode are you using? You might be hitting a bug in the "MathML" renderer, which is generally an inconsistent mess and varies from browser to browser. Here's what it looks like with the current default "MathML with SVG image (server side MathJax rendering)" math rendering system (which you should pick in your appearance preferences if you want mathematics to look correct as authors intended on English Wikipedia), $$\int e^{x}\,dx\qquad \int e^{x}\mathop {} \!dx$$ and here's what the same thing looks like when you let your browser render it with MathML –jacobolus (t) 01:41, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Aside: I think this incantation perhaps originated with this stackexchange answer. Apparently the goal is to make a command for differentials which works in any context, whether in an integral or any other expression, without a need for an explicit space. Needless to say, this doesn't apply in our situation where we can't define commands and all minor tweaks are necessarily explicit and in-place. –jacobolus (t) 17:38, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Interesting bit of archaeology. It's still a gross hack but at least in that context there's a reason you might want to do it. Not here, I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:29, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Major improvement in biography articles of indian mathematicans

wikipedia needs an improvement on articles related to indian mathematicans like Bhāskara II where the Mathematics section is filled with inaccuracies and no citations.I have tried to improve by adding reliable sources and improve it but it needs more improvement (especially in calculus and arithmetic sections) in scholarly level so I need a mathematician to review these articles on Mathematics section and make it improve. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 09:57, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Except for "featured articles", "good articles" or articles where one currently can't improve much because of lack of sources as of now, every other math articles on Wikipedia need a lot of improvement! Even the ones about basic concepts, such as Functional or even more basic ones, from elementary calculus or linear algebra... There are articles about major mathematicians that are in a really poor state too... ~2026-47741-66 (talk) 00:39, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Steven R. Finch is now live

FYI. Cheers! BD2412 T 21:27, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that One-form (differential geometry), which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 September 2026 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Information page for "Multiplicative graph"

The page image (in information page) for this article displays File:Category SVG.svg. This image was used for comparison with the ordinary category, but since multiplicative graphs do not require either the compatibility axiom nor the associativity axiom, I believe it is inappropriate to display it as a page image. Perhaps, is it better than not displaying anything at all? I know how to hide the image. (See mw:Extension:PageImages#Can I exclude certain page images?)--SilverMatsu (talk) 01:59, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to learn what is an example of a multiplicative graph (however, reading the Example section didn't help me). Hence, I'd appreciate a page image depicting in some way such an example. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:27, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

I can't think of any specific examples of multiplicative graphs, but since there aren't enough examples, I've added a section for inverse morphisms. Since a morphism of multiplicative graph can have several inverse morphisms (that is, inverse morphisms are not unique), I'm not sure if it's appropriate to call the image a diagram.--SilverMatsu (talk) 02:35, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

I added a "reflexive quiver" to quiver. But, quiver seems to be a term from representation theory rather than category theory. So, it might be better to add this under the section heading "reflexive directed graph" to directed graph.--SilverMatsu (talk) 02:49, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Possible duplicate

I found in Wikidata, under the name Peter B. Rhines, two entries Q130667788 and Q24091075. It is difficult to compare as the parameters are mostly without references. Can somebody investigate to see if it is the same person and a merge is needed? Pierre cb (talk) 22:27, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Same middle name, same employer, and looking up the mathgenealogy entry for the "mathematician and physicist" one finds that the research interests appear the same as well. I have merged them and restored the "oceanographer and geophysicist" short description. This sort of duplication on Wikidata is quite common. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:28, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. With so many VIAF id between the two, I could not decide. Pierre cb (talk) 13:02, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

ChatGPT and Navier–Stokes equations

You may be interested in Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#ChatGPT and Navier–Stokes equations. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:09, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Relatedly there seems to be a lot of spam-adjacent behavior happening with recent OpenAI press releases — see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Twelve13 . Some of this has been reverted but more eyes on it would be good. --JBL (talk) 01:05, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Looks like ChatGPT writing advertisement for ChatGPT. Tercer (talk) 19:54, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Fermat's Last Theorem is currently full-protected for related reasons. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 08:31, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Placement of display math and chem formula

Discussion of changing the local CSS to so that display equations respect the long term consensus of left-alignment with indentation once T271001 is rolled out seem to be going nowhere fast. So I've opened a discussions at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Placement of display math and chem formula to reassess consensus.

Your input there is welcome. Salix alba (talk): 22:40, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

RfD on Counit and Co-unit

At Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 September 11 § Counit. Talk page watchers' input would be appreciated. J947 ‡ ^edits 01:18, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Underpopulated categories

Category:Unary operations, Category:Binary operations and Category:Operations on numbers seem to be quite underpopulated (though it is also not entirely clear whether any function qualifies as an "operation"). I have also adjusted some categories of Category:Exponentials, and it might be useful to have a separate Category:Exponentiation for the more classical concepts, also including things like Eighth power down to Fourth power, Cube (algebra) and Square number. 1234qwer1234qwer4 14:07, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to work on this if you want, though I'm not sure anyone other than the people diligently creating and populating them interacts with categories at all. –jacobolus (t) 19:27, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at RSN that may be of interest

This discussion at RSN concerns sourcing related to Category:Lists of things named after mathematicians and may therefore be of interest to some of you. --JBL (talk) 17:34, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Prime-counting function

Could an uninvolved editor familiar with analytic number theory review this discussion?

I would particularly appreciate a source-based assessment using the published references discussed there and of the recent preprint.

Please comment at the linked article talk page so that the discussion remains in one place. Thank you. ~2026-48852-20 (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

A degenerate example of a Spherical tiling

I can't figure out what this means, in a discussion of a "Limiting case" of a uniform edge-to-edge tiling of the sphere:

A spherical monohedron $\{1,1\}$ with one vertex, one face, and no edges is the most trivial regular tiling of the sphere.

There exists a monohedral degenerate case $\{1,1\}$ where the surface area covering a sphere by one hosohedral lune of form $\{2,1\}$ (or equivalently, two monogons in $\{1,2\}$ dihedral arrangement) is represented through a face opposite a polar vertex antipode. This realization is self-dual on its only mirror by swapping the vertex and centroid through a central inversion, with a rotational symmetry of order two that acts as the universal covering space of the projective plane. As dimensional elements in this limit of symmetry, the dual axial vertex-face arrangent in the "monohedral polyhedron" $\{1,1\}$ is the simplest (and most trivial) regular tiling of the sphere.

References

I tried asking the author, user:Radlrb33, to elaborate in sufficient detail that I could make sense of what this is trying to say, and after being asked for specifics I gave extensive detailed feedback about what I personally found confusing in the first sentence, but they thought my confusion was "excessive", "demeaning", "deceiving", and finally declared that there is "no point in communicating with [me]", saying that they "do not want to interact further", because I was "aggressive, assuming, and unacknowledging, as well as evasive. Tic toc".

Can someone else figure out what this passage is trying to say, and explain it (just on a talk page would be fine) in a way that, say, an undergraduate math student can understand? Thanks. –jacobolus (t) 09:16, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

It is saying (rather badly) that there is a degenerate tiling by a figure with one face, one vertex, and zero edges. While that seems worth mentioning, someone should check the cited source (or otger potential sources). The "action of the universal covering space" is incompehensible though. The non-trivial deck transformation is the antipodal involution, not a rotation. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:47, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

"degenerate tiling by a figure with one face, one vertex, and zero edges" I did follow this far from the figure caption, and was able to surmise that the point diametrically opposite the single vertex is the "center" of the single face. I just don't understand any of the rest. What the source says is: "In fact, the universal covering surface of the projective plane is the sphere, and its fundamental group is of order 2, generated by the central inversion." I can't figure out what the projective plane has to do with this single-vertex tiling of the sphere. –jacobolus (t) 09:55, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

NB. An accessible version of the cited source: https://archive.org/details/introductiontoge0000coxe/page/384/mode/2up?q=%22universal+covering%22 Preimage (talk) 17:31, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

the author, user:Radlrb33 Ha, good luck. (Sorry this is not constructive.) --JBL (talk) 10:59, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Request for comments on Draft:Mario Wüthrich

I have written a draft biography of Draft:Mario Wüthrich, professor of actuarial science at ETH Zurich, known mainly for the Merz–Wüthrich formula for one-year reserve risk and for work on discrimination-free insurance pricing. He is also editor-in-chief of the ASTIN Bulletin. The draft is in the AfC queue, but since reviews take weeks I would be grateful for comments from editors familiar with mathematics biographies in the meantime.

Points I am unsure about:

• Notability. I have relied mainly on WP:NACADEMIC: named result used in industry practice, editorship of a journal, and a number of society prizes. I would like to know whether the independent sourcing for the Merz–Wüthrich formula is strong enough, since much of the biographical detail comes from ETH and RiskLab pages.
• Weight. The section on his collaboration with Łukasz Delong is probably disproportionate for a biography and could be cut down to a sentence or two, with the papers left in the publication list. I would welcome a view on that.
• The paragraphs on his early probability work (Brownian motion in a Poissonian potential) are the part I am least confident about summarising correctly. If anyone working in that area could check whether the description of the fluctuation and percolation results is accurate and not overstated, that would be very helpful.
• Length of the awards and publications lists — whether these should be pruned to the most significant items.

Any other comments on tone, sourcing or structure are welcome. Jryblyw (talk) 23:29, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

My comment: AI-generated text is forbidden here, both for writing articles and for making discussion page comments and requests. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, but why do you think I used AI? Jryblyw (talk) 00:44, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

GPTZero says it likely is. Also, do not remove threads that include comments by other people, as you just did here. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:46, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Okay, but it is widely known and proven that GPTZero is flawed. It is even scientifically proven. See: "Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?" by Sadasivan, Kumar, Balasubramanian, Wang and Feizi. Jryblyw (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

and biased against non English speakers! Jryblyw (talk) 00:53, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

What previous accounts have you used on Wikipedia? --JBL (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Noting for anyone who wants a laugh the response to this question: --JBL (talk) 01:06, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Well it’s super obvious because you’re talking about text you allegedly wrote yourself as if someone else wrote it, and because humans don’t do things like . Please familiarize yourself with WP:LLM, and stop dissembling. --JBL (talk) 00:52, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for info, I will take it under consideration in the future. Jryblyw (talk) 00:57, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

wikipedia is firmly against ai generated content and ai bots like gpt 4 or any other is considered as unreliable Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 09:32, 14 September 2026 (UTC)