User talk:Revolver

Contents

1 References 2 Net (mathematics) 3 New Mathematics Wikiportal 4 Welcome back, and nice work on Concrete category 5 Professor 6 {{structure}} 7 AIDS 8 Fraction 9 question about compactifications

References

Dear Revolver,

You are doing a really great job and putting a lot of atenntion on the topology pages, among other things, thank you! I have a suggestion. I read on Wikipedia, at Wikipedia:References that in cases where attribution -is- possible it is highly desirable. It allows verification by others, allows readers to learn more, and provides a mechanism for assessing the strength and neutrality of claims made in articles. So my suggestion, as a long-term project, would be for you to maybe add a reference to a book on some topology pages. What do you think? I would do it myself, but I am not a topologist (rather, an applied mathematician), and have no books about topology, and neither did I touch this subject in years. Oh, and if you think this idea make some sense and that you might one day get to it, I think there exists some specific Wikipedia references style. Again, thank you for doing a great job! --Olegalexandrov 16:11, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Net (mathematics)

Dear Revolver, I read that the page linked to above needs attention. Since it is a page in topology, and since you are very good at topology, I thought I would let you know about it, in case you want to take a look. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 23:53, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It looks pretty good, but it could use some cleaning up and a bit more about the relation between nets and filters — these two concepts really are "two different sides of the same coin". Revolver 14:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Welcome back, and nice work on Concrete category

Revolver: Welcome back! I just noticed your recent editions to Concrete category, good work (thanks for correcting my typo too). I didn't know that "The Joy of Cats" is available as a free downloadable pdf. I just noticed that the cover of my copy is starting to come off, It's good to now have the PDF version :) George Strecker was my dissertation advisor, and coincidentally, I was just talking to George and Horst Herrlich who's visiting him in Kansas at the moment on the phone on Monday (about Wikipedia among other things). It is good to have you editing again. Regards Paul August ☎ 14:27, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Professor

"By any means" was too much (I don't put much thought in to summaries), but a post-doc is so different from typical undergrad internships it just doesn't seem right to use it in such fashion. I suppose there is no other word to use. Also "get back to me when you're on the ph.d. job market" is completely unnecessary. --Stratton 09:17, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for the unnecessary comment. It was worded in a condescending way, and I should have put it more diplomatically. Still, I stand by the intention of the comment. It seems that you're taking the "typical undergrad internship" as a model for what an "internship" is. But that is just one type of internship, at a certain level. At the level of undergraduate research, it may seem that all ph.d. researchers are working on the same plane, with equivalent skills, experience, and even networking and social bonds. This is far from the case. The difference between "junior researchers" (those fresh with a ph.d. with only a thesis or at most a paper or 2 under their belt) are not at the same level of skill, experience and networking as "senior researchers" with dozens of papers published and a knowledge of the industry. Graduate school teaches many things, but there is still a lot to learn immediately after graduation. How do you go about looking things up? Writing them up? Networking? Becoming familiar with standard journals/publications? How do you submit things for publication? Correct errors? Apply for research grants? And on and on... These are all things learned AFTER the ph.d., and one of the main jobs where a lot of people learn these things is in a research post-doc (or any post-doc). This satisfies the definition of the term "internship", which means a type of guided study by superiors. Junior researchers and senior researchers may not appear to be that different to you, but there is a difference. And in the current job market (this is where my poorly worded comment came in), a post-doc is usually a _required_ stepping-stone for someone who wants to be a serious research mathematician, i.e. one focuses primarily on research, not teaching. In this sense, a research post-doc is very similar to internships in medical school or law school. Revolver 10:20, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

{{structure}}

Hi Revolver. I am kind of biased against templates. And I get even more biased when I see a page with two templates, one under another.

So, I want to ask you a favor. Would explain to me in a few words what is the gain at having two templates on some pages, like Geometry, also, with a rather overlapping set of articles. Does that outweigh the extra space and clutter at the bottom of the articles?

Note that I don't want to put this as a criticism. I am really curious what makes you think the templates are a good thing. You can reply here, I will keep a watch on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov 03:26, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I didn't start these templates. I'm not sure how good an idea they are, to be honest. I figured, as long as they are there, I'd improve them. The fact is, if templates like "structure" and "space" are going to exist, geometry will be at both of them, because if anything exemplifies what we mean by "structure" and/or "space", geometry does. So, if templates are going to exist at all, there are going to be multiple templates at certain articles. If this bothers some people, maybe we should try to eliminate templates altogether. I'm not necessarily against that.

The reason I changed these 2 was it had strange things. Monoid and group were listed at the structure template, but these are redundant, being already covered in a sense by abstract algebra, also things were missing (model theory, harmonic analysis). You could put 101 things at the structure template, so I tried to pick the most general and important. Same for the space template. Revolver 03:32, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Question: what purpose do the templates serve that is not already served by category schemes?!? Revolver 03:34, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

None!!! :) But please note, this answer is from a person who hates templates. I would be happily deleting one of the two. Would you like us to discuss this matter at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics?

And sorry for inserting the template in here, I forgot to put the nowiki tags. Oleg Alexandrov

It's okay. It's certainly worth mentioning. The only use I can see for them is in didactic tables, say for calculus or linear algebra, you want a series of articles for people to read through in sequence, and this would be good to have on the article page, say. But just general categories of things seems redundant, already accomplished by categories. Revolver 03:39, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. I will post this tomorrow. Oleg Alexandrov 04:16, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

AIDS

I am happy to accept your point that the Group is not the same as dissident movement. I have adopted your suggestion to make a separate article on the Group. Sci guy 17:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Fraction

please see Talk:Fraction (mathematics) — MFH: Talk 18:15, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

question about compactifications

Yes I think you are correct. A space has a compactification iff it is Tychonoff. Paul August ☎ 16:09, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Revolver, I've looked again at the question you asked about whether the "category HComp of all compact Hausdorff spaces is a full reflective subcategory of Top; the Stone-Čech compactifications serve as the reflections." As I said a top space needs to be Tychonoff to have a compactification. Nevertheless, HComp is a full reflective subcategory of Top, the reflections are just not the Stone-Čech compactifications. As you said HComp is a full reflective subcategory of Tych. But Tych is a full reflective subcategory of Top. It follows that HComp is a full reflective subcategory of Top. If X is a top space, then its HComp-reflection, would be the Stone-Čech compactifications of the Tych-reflection of X. I hope this clears things up a bit. Paul August ☎ 02:19, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for the clarification! Revolver 13:55, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)