ProofWiki talk:Current events

I think a list of lecture notes would be helpful, at least for me. Perhaps a different page though... --Linus44 04:30, 28 February 2011 (CST)

Like, er, wow, that is extreme ... excellent idea, wnat I'll do is put lecture notes as a separate page, and then we can link to it from the Books page. --prime mover 13:17, 28 February 2011 (CST)

Making the proof structures more rigid

Is this really a good idea? Not the title itself but the suggestions in that section. I'd rather see focus on human readability of proofs rather than overly terse and formal approach.--79.200.79.29 10:09, 17 September 2011 (CDT)

Introduce yourself and put an argument together to defend your position. I can't argue with an anonymous poster. --prime mover 12:05, 17 September 2011 (CDT)

No offense but if it is about arguments the person doesn't matter. I thought my comment was self explaining, but may it was not or just misjudged the project goal. But if it is meant as repository for proofs with student or simply interested people being at least one of primary audiences, then the "human readability" is more important than an overly rigid formalism.--79.200.79.29 12:32, 17 September 2011 (CDT)

I couldn't disagree more. Rigid rigor is far more important than "human readability", whatever you mean by that. The problem with trying to make proofs "human readable" is that rigour often suffers in that approach. And besides, on what level do you need to be "human readable"? There's always going to be some level at which the reader is assumed to be mathematically literate. Is it at the stage of writing "plus" instead of "$+$", or do we replace all occurrences of $\forall$ with "for all", or what?

Using purely mathematical language you can be precise. If you can't read the mathematical language and have to have it in words instead, then maybe it's appropriate to have someone go through and translate into easy words, in a completely separate section.

Basically, the point of this site is to provide a repository of proofs. It is not a homework help site. If you can't understand the language the proof's written in, and are unprepared to follow the links back to pages describing the things you can understand, then you're wasting your time studying mathematics in the first place.

Rant over. Can you point me towards a page where you don't understand the proof and want it put into simple language? --prime mover 12:48, 17 September 2011 (CDT)

I wasn't talking about myself (hence the rant was somewhat pointless) but potential target audiences. The rigour (and language) of standard textbooks should be good enough from my perspective, but as I understood your report you want to push a formalism far beyond that (towards a mere symbol manipulation roughly in a sense of Hilbert's program). Such an approach surely improves the option a computerized handling of proofs, but it impairs the readability for humans.--79.200.79.29 14:09, 17 September 2011 (CDT)

Well that's as may be. I've seen this argument before, but apart from "I don't think you should do it like that," I haven't seen anyone actually show me an example where it's not done the way they like it and want it changed.

I expressed a suggestion that a rigid structure to the shape of a proof page is advantageous to the ability of an automatic system (tailored specifically to this rigid structure) to be able to interface with it. This has raised counter-arguments along the lines: "Other people (but not me) might be put off." When these people come and say "I don't understand page XYZ, can you put it into English for me? My mathematical level is failed 8th grade" then we know who this potential target audience is. But at the moment it's some hypothetical "other people" who may or may not (in this metaphorical context) exist.

Sorry, but there comes a limit at which one needs a basic level of understanding (or a wishing to understand) to be able to pick up on this stuff. But what we do offer, and what we have got, is an unbroken link back to those original concepts which form the bedrock of the concept in question.

And my question as to who you are still stands - no deliberately malicious offence is specifically intended here, but it makes a difference as to how seriously I take your arguments. The internet is full of trolls, timewasters, idiots and other nuisances, and it is easier to get a handle on where a person is coming from if one knows a bit about whom one is talking to. --prime mover 14:39, 17 September 2011 (CDT)