Talk:Mathematics

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mathematics article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (`~~~~`). New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite, and welcoming to new users Assume good faith Do not attack other users For disputes, please see our guideline	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

I have had a go at a more abstract but I think correct definition of Maths.

BozMo (talk)

First of all my compliments to everyone for this page especially the drawings. I have a small question on the drawing for trigonometry. Wouldn't it be better there to leave out the pink third degree polynomial (or something that looks like it) so that we just have the sine wave there? Bob.v.R 11:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of this is good, but it needs a VERY simple introduction and maybe some sections. I agree that it is not simple enough. --Filll 13:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, does anyone see that $2e^{i\pi /3}$ isn't really a complex number? 216.165.37.38 15:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This number is exactly

1+i{\sqrt {3}}

--kidd 20:22, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i think the reason more advanced english is around is to explain things that aren't simple...for instance, math is not exactly a simple subject. 216.57.124.118 23:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)joe[reply]

"complex" tag[change source]

I worked a while today to make the English simpler, almost everything is in the word lists now. Also I though the examples were a little elementary. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:26, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Logic[change source]

Logical reasoning and theorem proving are central to contemporary mathematics. It simply is not possible to give any description of what mathematics is that does not include them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematics can be described as a system of thought about the size of things and their relationships. It's part of what people learn informally during their baby and infant life more formally when they start school. It is part of the communication system developed by mankind to communicate information (facts and opinions) about real things (in science) and about other ideas in other activities. The learning process is not very well understood or explained but it involves getting people to understand mathematical ideas like an organized set of numbers and how to add and subtract them and multiply them and divide them and use exponential notation as a means of describing either real large or real small things. The basic principles of Mathematics began long ago during mankind's early development of communication of ideas about activities involving multiples of things. The Egyptions are noted for their planning and building of the pyramids thousands of years ago. The Roman's are credited with the creation of the roman number set of numerical notation. The Hindu"s are credited with the idea of a nothing (number zero) notation, and an idea called the positional principal together with the number 0 led to the present day method of writing numbers in term of exponential relationship to a base number like is used in both the binomial (base 2) and decimal (base 10) numbering systems. So mathematics involves numbering systems and a lot of rules, and is needed to understand things like the size of things in science and economics and your class studies and your budjet. WFPMWFPM (talk) 02:58, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need of better example?[change source]

The second paragraph contains the line: "For example, if we want to know if a new medicine will help to cure a disease, mathematics is used to answer that question."

The connection between medicine and mathematics are not immediately apparent and may confuse someone new to the subject -- after all, biology and chemistry seems more closely related to medicine than mathematics would be (though, of course, mathematics would be heavily utilized in the research and production of medicine.)

It may be better to highlight how mathematics can be used to describe the relationships between two or more concepts -- such as the relationship between acceleration and speed or between mass, volume, and density. I'm not sure if medicine would provide the clearest explanation for why mathematics is useful or how it is used, as there are many other factors also involved. 216.227.72.180 (talk) 20:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Irrational Numbers[change source]

I noticed there are sections on cardinal numbers, rational numbers, even complex numbers, but there is no information about irrational numbers.64.180.160.235 (talk) 01:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also: 2/3 is listed as a rational number, but it's clearly not... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.48.60.236 (talk • contribs)

A rational number is any number than can be written as a fraction or a decimal with a repetend bar. By these criteria, 2/3 is a rational number. --Isis ♠(talk) 23:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Classification of Article: Mathematics[change source]

This article in Wikipedia:Simple is written and organized very similar to the Wikipedia article w:Mathematics. It is my opinion that the organization is not based on any mathematical standard set by industry, it is my opinion that it is based on the subjective consensus of a group of Wikipedians. I would like to know your opinion on reorganizing the topics and/or categories in Wikipedia:Simple using an objective, industry-based classification system, the Mathematics Subject Classification. The MSC is used by mathematical publishers, including Mathematical Reviews. [1] Henry Delforn (talk) 05:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Study[change source]

I notice that the current definition uses the word "study" and links to the disambiguation page study. What do people think? I'm new around here. None of the pages linked to from study reflects the meaning that we want to use here. Even wikt:study isn't perfect.

I recently had a go at simplifying the lead to chaos theory. I said chaos theory "looks at" things. I think that is simpler than study.

Yaris678 (talk) 19:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Being BOLD[change source]

I've done a bit of a bold rework of the page from a mathematician's point of view (there were some parts that read like they had been edited by someone without knowledge of the subject), and have tried to fix a few of the repetitive sections (especially in the introduction). I agree with the comment above (I haven't resurrected the thread since it was from 2011) about the sections following a rather naive view of the subject rather than a view which better represents the way that the subject is actually structured, but on the other hand I don't want to come in and completely rewrite the page myself in one edit with no input from others so I'm leaving it here for now. I have tried to stick to basic language throughout but of course please feel free to fix up any sections which may be too complex for this WP.

Further edits are of course welcome, I might be back in a couple of days to clean up the next section(s) as well. (My talk page on English wikipedia is the best place to ping me.)

Albeetle (talk) 08:27, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article's intro.[change source]

Just after "Mathematics includes the study of:" there's listed some general ideas in maths, and thereafter " * Multiplication, * decimals"

These seem awfully out of place. They don't have a description like the others. They are an operation, and a set, not fields of maths. One isn't even capitalized. I'll remove these. Complain here.

149.156.124.7 (talk) 20:07, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

proposal of meaning[change source]

Proposal: Start the article with the following sentences instead.

"Math is the science of processing (using) information. Often, you have information available. But this information tells you not exactly what you desire to know. Mathematicians gather templates and recipes that are supposed to tell you the following:

- if and how accurately the desired information can be obtained from the information that you already have

- how to obtain/generate the desired information from the information that you already have

- how much effort it takes to generate the desired information from the information that you already have"

Example: Every day, humans observe the weather. But they want to know the weather of tomorrow. Because of math, they know how the weather of tomorrow can be predicted to high accuracy from today's weather.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:908:1657:A860:F4BF:4DE0:26C6:2E61 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reason: If you think math is about exploring the world of numbers then you are really missing the purpose. The Count (Sesame Street, "Graf Zahl") is about exploring the world of numbers as well, but there are not a few million people working heavily on Graf Zahl. That is because math is far beyond numbers -- but Graf Zahl is not ;)