That is what I'm asking. For a bunch of people, I store all correspondence in separate folders (one for each person). When I want to send the same email to 3 of them, I'd like it to save that email in all 3 folders.
Back when I used to read the newsgroup, this was not a rare query from users.
The mutt mailing list consists almost entirely of friendly, informed, and detailed answers to questions from people of all skill levels, so I think your original comment is unfair and as it disingenuous, particularly for someone who may interested in trying mutt. Actually, it's not. While I never was on the mailing list, I used to post quite a bit on the USENET newsgroup. And there was (perhaps still is) one expert user who would say those exact things in a very condescending manner to newbies. I'm sure he single-handedly drove many people away from Mutt.
I'm a Mutt user. My biggest complaint is that I can't save outgoing emails to more than one folder based on the list of recipients. I've known others on the USENET newsgroup whine about this, as well. Is this a feature Pine/Alpine has?
In fact, out of curiosity, what does Pine/Alpine have that Mutt doesn't and vice versa? (Let's ignore interface issues).
True, but remember that/. is not necessarily a good cross section of Wp users. I would argue that on average,/. users stand a significantly higher chance of needing/wanting/understanding proofs or highly scientific documents than the average Wp user (hence my suggestion about user controlled document complexity). That's fine. There's no criterion in Wikipedia (I think) that states that a given article should be of interest to most people.
It's a pity we can't tag sections of Wp articles depending on their complexity, and allow the user to specify how much complexity they want to see (or even go so far as to have complexity levels for different subjects, and have a user preference page for it). I have no idea what the folks who develop the MediaWiki software feel regarding these topics. I can understand their desire (if they have it) on keeping the interface simple. I myself wish the interface was better. I see pages littered with "citation needed" tags. I wish I could, with a click of a button, not see a number of those tags (as specified in my preferences). They can really clutter up the space. There's also an issue with Category bloat. Consider this category: Articles lacking sources from July 2007. Now does someone who's interested in one of these pages really want to see this as a category? Perhaps they should create a separate section for "Administrative categories" and not pollute the regular categories section.
The examples you cited are indeed interesting. But what if Wikipedia has an article that states the thermal conductivity of material X? Would anyone really care to see the data that was used to produce that? I'll give you a hint - even physicists/material scientists in that particular field are not interested - as long as the paper was peer reviewed, and the result established, they're happy.
it's actually sort of backwards, since mathematical proofs *explain* mathematical results, but scientific data is *explained by* scientific results. That actually varies. Sometimes experimental data appear first, and a hypothesis is put forth to explain it. Other times a hypothesis is out there, and experiments are carried out to refute/support the theory. In my field it is quite common to see papers - particularly from experimentalists - where they conducted an experiment, got results, and published them along with a tentative explanation. They didn't know what to expect a priori - they just were curious. I wonder what happens if we do this...
Yes, indeed I did. But I tried not to have my view imposed on you when I wrote the summary here. I was curious to know what everyone else thought. For the record, here is my comment:
Delete. I feel only notable proofs should be kept in Wikipedia - not proofs of notable theorems. The proof of infinitude of primes is notable - it's often the first proof by contradiction many encounter. Cantor's proof is also notable (and again, may often be the first of its kind seen by students). Both of these may also have had a great deal of historical significance. The proofs provided in this article are in no way special. Yes, totient functions are important, which is why there is an article on them. The proofs of its various properties are just details. I agree that it should be transwikified - Wikibooks if there is a book on number theory being worked on there. Beetle B. (talk) 23:56, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
In retrospect, I chose a bad headline. I wanted this to be a discussion not on whether they should have proofs, but on what criteria should be used to decide which proofs to include - for which there was little, but not much discussion. It seems many here want Wikipedia to allow all proofs.
Another analogy no one pointed out is that when scientific results are posted on Wikipedia, is it "acceptable" to post along with them the raw data from the respective research journals (ignoring copyright for a moment)? Is this a valid analogy, and if not, why not? In a sense, that data is "proof" of the "correctness" of those scientific results.
To muddle the waters further, I actually went to the totient proof page looking for something, and reading one of the proofs did help me with my work...
I posted a comment on this on that page. Basically, I felt that most proofs themselves are not notable enough to have their own entries. Some are - and I can see including them.
I'm not concerned about space or clutter - just whether people here think any possible proof should be included in Wikipedia. Apparently, many do. I'm not sure they realize the magnitude of what they're saying.
But for a theorem, the proof is the source. If you don't include the proof, then no one has any way of knowing the validity of your claim. Sure they can - simply put a link to the proof. PDF, another wiki, etc. Wikipedia has a lot of scientific content. For a given scientific result, should they provide the data (graphs, etc) from the original paper in Wikipedia? (Ignoring copyright issues?) Is it an analogous situation?
More precisely, in the infinite limit, the error is confined to a set of measure zero. The "overshoot", though, remains there in the infinite limit. People will get the wrong idea from the article. Someone questioned this earlier - here's what it says in the Talk page:
Doesn't the overshoot remain (though with zero width) in the infinite limit? If so, then the arguments in the second paragraph should be changed since they are false.74.98.54.54 19:12, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
No the overshoot does not exist at all in that case. "An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous" is correctly stated. Cuddlyable3 10:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC) As I said, I'll probably fix it one day. The reason I haven't is that a Google search repeats this claim all over, and few Google hits actually state that the overshoot remains in the limit. So I keep telling myself I'll find my textbook and just copy the proof verbatim.
Incidentally, and I may be wrong on this, I don't think you can ever get a discontinuous function from sines and cosines - even in an infinite limit. Maybe other continuous functions can do it, though.
Most people who argue it is biased don't realize anyone can hit the "edit" or "discussion" button on the top. Perhaps they realize that their "corrections" will be removed within the hour.
I've been to a very large number of articles where this happens. Somehow, the Wikipedia process of arbitration simply fails to stem this.
1. Making it seem like I did an assload of research on my own, with lots of good sources cited. WP does most of the work for me in not only providing reasonably realiable sources (well, most of the time), but also due to NPOV policies I can get sources which are from different perspectives, and offer a comprehensive coverage of citations in my own work. 2. Didn't mention the Wikipedia they don't want to see 3. No plagiarism, since I didn't quote anything from WP itself but only from the sources it used. Everything I did followed the letter of academic honesty, if not the spirit. And I'm fairly sure the professors are just fine with your strategy. I'm amused at your point 1: Teachers don't care (or at least good ones don't) if you spent a lot of time looking up references. They just care that you can find them - not how long it took.
And they don't really have a problem with you using Wikipedia towards this end. Why should they?
I can tell you don't understand why they don't allow citing Wikipedia articles. You seem to be looking at these assignments as a chore: Do X amount of work to get final product - the grade. The issue is one of trust and reliable sources. Wikipedia is a source, in a manner of speaking. But so is the gossip at the party I went to last night. That party had lots of smart people, so if someone disagreed with someone else, he would argue with them, and occasionally come up with a "reference" to back himself up. But one accurate view did not get the support of the majority of the members in that party. So the final erroneous verdict was that it wasn't true.
That's all Wikipedia is: A very structured conversation among a large number of people, with some rules which aren't always followed or applied. And it's that last bit of unequally applying the rules that worries everyone. It has its uses, for sure.
But hey, would you find the following scenario acceptable? A student cites a Wikipedia article. The teacher goes to it, clicks on the "discussion" page, and finds a lot of the cited material being disputed (and was so at the time of the citation). Can the teacher penalize the student because in a sense, the source does not agree with what the student claimed?
2. If it's OK today it could be complete bullshit tomorrow, and your quote will be seen to be *not* in the original article. Not a valid concern. Wikipedia has a "cite this article" link that will cite the particular version of that page. If someone changes the content, and the teacher decides to check the citation, he/she will see exactly what the student saw.
So, what exactly is wrong with citing an encyclopedia? Encyclopedias - be they Wikipedia or Britannica - have been known to contain errors and biased viewpoints. Neither has the rigorous peer reviews that you may find in journals.
But I guess the simple answer to your question is that they are not a source. Encyclopedias generally do not contain original work. They just are a reference of other people's work, but they may not be cited accurately. So you should just use an encyclopedia to find the "other" work and read that instead.
(For anything serious - few people care for class reports).
Think of it this way: If Bob comes to you and states an outrageous and scientific/historical fact, you don't automatically trust it. He then claims to have read it in Nature/{some history journal}. The question then is that, not really knowing Bob and how critical he is at reading (or trustworthy he is in not mangling data for his cause), do you just accept his word or do you check up the Nature article yourself?
But seriously, I wish Wikipedia had an option (or does it?) that allowed me to quickly (via Javascript, say) turn off all those citation needed tags on a given page. They're just plain ugly, and I think I'm smart enough to know that if it doesn't have a proper reference attached to it, then it automatically needs a citation. I don't need to have it tell me explicitly.
I have issues with that tag altogether. It's applied liberally, but not equally. It's simply another way of calling into question something a particular user may not want others to trust. It's an explicit way for me to say, "Yeah, you can say that - but can you prove it?"
I've even seen it used where the sentence was claiming that a certain entity did not exist. How do you cite that, and do you need to? Can one prove nonexistence?
If an article states, "There have been no known instances of snuff videos" (snuff being with intention for profit) - is it not ridiculous to put a Citation needed tag on that?
No, every fact on Wiki has a link back to a source. That source might be a primary source, or it might be hearsay, or a first-person witness statement... with the inherent biases therein. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Yes, every claim on Wikipedia has a source - and it's the IP address of the person who posted it.
But if you meant to say verifiable, then you're dead wrong. Articles I read are littered with claims and no references at all. It doesn't say "eyewitnesses". Just makes the claims. Have you never seen the "citation needed" tag (which, IMO, is a heavily politically abused tag)?
Some years ago, I looked up the page on the electron. On the table on the side, it listed its mass at about 9.11E-30. That's off by a factor of 10. I checked the history. It had been that way for a relatively long time (at least days, but I think it was a few weeks). I corrected that one.
Even worse, the article on Gibb's Phenomenon states:
The overshoot is a consequence of trying to approximate a discontinuous function with a partial (i.e. finite) sum of continuous functions. A finite sum of continuous functions is, by definition, continuous, and therefore cannot approximate the discontinuity (and the area "near" it) to within any arbitrarily chosen accuracy. An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous, and hence, does not exhibit the Gibbs phenomenon. Which is just wrong. A square wave (the example on the page) exhibits Gibb's Phenomenon even if you take the infinite sum. A true square wave simply cannot be represented as a Fourier series at all points.
I'll probably fix that one some day. Not in the mood to get into an edit war right now (apparently someone before me tried).
(Not saying any other place is better - I've found an occasional grave "error" in Mathworld as well).
In my undergrad, if a teacher assigned his own textbook for the course, he was required to donate the amount he would get in royalties (from that class).
This is just like GIMP trying to take on Photoshop. When you're a kid, Adobe prices seem so off-putting that you can't see why people wouldn't flock to the free alternative. When you're doing a real job involving print work, you simply don't think twice about paying Adobe for the required feature set, intuitive UI and better workflow. Yes, real professionals are more than welcome to use Maple. But an avid math amateur like myself is not going to pay the huge fees they ask for once I'm no longer a student.
As far as scripting languages go, MATLAB's is not particularly easier to learn than Python's is. The only edge MATLAB and Octave have is better documentation. One need not learn the Python language in detail to do the equivalent calculations. You could skip classes altogether, for example. Just need to know basic functions, loops, list processing, etc.
Yes, for a MATLAB user, switching to Octave is easy. I assumed that the original person did not know MATLAB, given that he was using VB.
For me, it's a toss-up between Octave and SciPy. I'm leaning towards the latter purely due to the language: Easier to write and read. Additionally, I have access to any Python library for my code. It wouldn't surprise me if the amount of development going on in SciPy exceeds that of Octave.
Dump both and use NumPy/SciPy. The language is nicer, and I have not found any serious compromise on speed. In fact, on very unscientific tests, the interpreter for NumPy was much faster than MATLAB's.
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That is what I'm asking. For a bunch of people, I store all correspondence in separate folders (one for each person). When I want to send the same email to 3 of them, I'd like it to save that email in all 3 folders.
Back when I used to read the newsgroup, this was not a rare query from users.
I'm a Mutt user. My biggest complaint is that I can't save outgoing emails to more than one folder based on the list of recipients. I've known others on the USENET newsgroup whine about this, as well. Is this a feature Pine/Alpine has?
In fact, out of curiosity, what does Pine/Alpine have that Mutt doesn't and vice versa? (Let's ignore interface issues).
Yes, indeed I did. But I tried not to have my view imposed on you when I wrote the summary here. I was curious to know what everyone else thought. For the record, here is my comment:
Delete. I feel only notable proofs should be kept in Wikipedia - not proofs of notable theorems. The proof of infinitude of primes is notable - it's often the first proof by contradiction many encounter. Cantor's proof is also notable (and again, may often be the first of its kind seen by students). Both of these may also have had a great deal of historical significance. The proofs provided in this article are in no way special. Yes, totient functions are important, which is why there is an article on them. The proofs of its various properties are just details. I agree that it should be transwikified - Wikibooks if there is a book on number theory being worked on there. Beetle B. (talk) 23:56, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
In retrospect, I chose a bad headline. I wanted this to be a discussion not on whether they should have proofs, but on what criteria should be used to decide which proofs to include - for which there was little, but not much discussion. It seems many here want Wikipedia to allow all proofs.
Another analogy no one pointed out is that when scientific results are posted on Wikipedia, is it "acceptable" to post along with them the raw data from the respective research journals (ignoring copyright for a moment)? Is this a valid analogy, and if not, why not? In a sense, that data is "proof" of the "correctness" of those scientific results.
To muddle the waters further, I actually went to the totient proof page looking for something, and reading one of the proofs did help me with my work...
I posted a comment on this on that page. Basically, I felt that most proofs themselves are not notable enough to have their own entries. Some are - and I can see including them.
I'm not concerned about space or clutter - just whether people here think any possible proof should be included in Wikipedia. Apparently, many do. I'm not sure they realize the magnitude of what they're saying.
Perhaps - I was referring to university-level professors.
No the overshoot does not exist at all in that case. "An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous" is correctly stated. Cuddlyable3 10:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC) As I said, I'll probably fix it one day. The reason I haven't is that a Google search repeats this claim all over, and few Google hits actually state that the overshoot remains in the limit. So I keep telling myself I'll find my textbook and just copy the proof verbatim.
Incidentally, and I may be wrong on this, I don't think you can ever get a discontinuous function from sines and cosines - even in an infinite limit. Maybe other continuous functions can do it, though.
I've been to a very large number of articles where this happens. Somehow, the Wikipedia process of arbitration simply fails to stem this.
2. Didn't mention the Wikipedia they don't want to see
3. No plagiarism, since I didn't quote anything from WP itself but only from the sources it used. Everything I did followed the letter of academic honesty, if not the spirit. And I'm fairly sure the professors are just fine with your strategy. I'm amused at your point 1: Teachers don't care (or at least good ones don't) if you spent a lot of time looking up references. They just care that you can find them - not how long it took.
And they don't really have a problem with you using Wikipedia towards this end. Why should they?
I can tell you don't understand why they don't allow citing Wikipedia articles. You seem to be looking at these assignments as a chore: Do X amount of work to get final product - the grade. The issue is one of trust and reliable sources. Wikipedia is a source, in a manner of speaking. But so is the gossip at the party I went to last night. That party had lots of smart people, so if someone disagreed with someone else, he would argue with them, and occasionally come up with a "reference" to back himself up. But one accurate view did not get the support of the majority of the members in that party. So the final erroneous verdict was that it wasn't true.
That's all Wikipedia is: A very structured conversation among a large number of people, with some rules which aren't always followed or applied. And it's that last bit of unequally applying the rules that worries everyone. It has its uses, for sure.
But hey, would you find the following scenario acceptable? A student cites a Wikipedia article. The teacher goes to it, clicks on the "discussion" page, and finds a lot of the cited material being disputed (and was so at the time of the citation). Can the teacher penalize the student because in a sense, the source does not agree with what the student claimed?
But I guess the simple answer to your question is that they are not a source. Encyclopedias generally do not contain original work. They just are a reference of other people's work, but they may not be cited accurately. So you should just use an encyclopedia to find the "other" work and read that instead.
(For anything serious - few people care for class reports).
Think of it this way: If Bob comes to you and states an outrageous and scientific/historical fact, you don't automatically trust it. He then claims to have read it in Nature/{some history journal}. The question then is that, not really knowing Bob and how critical he is at reading (or trustworthy he is in not mangling data for his cause), do you just accept his word or do you check up the Nature article yourself?
++ for humor.
But seriously, I wish Wikipedia had an option (or does it?) that allowed me to quickly (via Javascript, say) turn off all those citation needed tags on a given page. They're just plain ugly, and I think I'm smart enough to know that if it doesn't have a proper reference attached to it, then it automatically needs a citation. I don't need to have it tell me explicitly.
I have issues with that tag altogether. It's applied liberally, but not equally. It's simply another way of calling into question something a particular user may not want others to trust. It's an explicit way for me to say, "Yeah, you can say that - but can you prove it?"
I've even seen it used where the sentence was claiming that a certain entity did not exist. How do you cite that, and do you need to? Can one prove nonexistence?
If an article states, "There have been no known instances of snuff videos" (snuff being with intention for profit) - is it not ridiculous to put a Citation needed tag on that?
But if you meant to say verifiable, then you're dead wrong. Articles I read are littered with claims and no references at all. It doesn't say "eyewitnesses". Just makes the claims. Have you never seen the "citation needed" tag (which, IMO, is a heavily politically abused tag)?
Even worse, the article on Gibb's Phenomenon states: The overshoot is a consequence of trying to approximate a discontinuous function with a partial (i.e. finite) sum of continuous functions. A finite sum of continuous functions is, by definition, continuous, and therefore cannot approximate the discontinuity (and the area "near" it) to within any arbitrarily chosen accuracy. An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous, and hence, does not exhibit the Gibbs phenomenon. Which is just wrong. A square wave (the example on the page) exhibits Gibb's Phenomenon even if you take the infinite sum. A true square wave simply cannot be represented as a Fourier series at all points.
I'll probably fix that one some day. Not in the mood to get into an edit war right now (apparently someone before me tried).
(Not saying any other place is better - I've found an occasional grave "error" in Mathworld as well).
In my undergrad, if a teacher assigned his own textbook for the course, he was required to donate the amount he would get in royalties (from that class).
SciPy/NumPy is a good alternative to MATLAB type stuff. It's no match for Maple, for example - and it's not trying to be. They serve different ends.
As far as scripting languages go, MATLAB's is not particularly easier to learn than Python's is. The only edge MATLAB and Octave have is better documentation. One need not learn the Python language in detail to do the equivalent calculations. You could skip classes altogether, for example. Just need to know basic functions, loops, list processing, etc.
Yes, for a MATLAB user, switching to Octave is easy. I assumed that the original person did not know MATLAB, given that he was using VB.
For me, it's a toss-up between Octave and SciPy. I'm leaning towards the latter purely due to the language: Easier to write and read. Additionally, I have access to any Python library for my code. It wouldn't surprise me if the amount of development going on in SciPy exceeds that of Octave.
Dump both and use NumPy/SciPy. The language is nicer, and I have not found any serious compromise on speed. In fact, on very unscientific tests, the interpreter for NumPy was much faster than MATLAB's.
And the outcome of all this was...?
Your method would be defeated by not having an expired visa.