User talk:Catherine Woodgold

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Welcome

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun!

You can find some more information about our collaboration groups if you follow this link CZ:Workgroups.You can always ask me on my talk page or others about how to proceed or any other question you might have.

Kind Regards, Robert Tito |  Talk  17:48, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Economics

As for Jan Pen's book "Modern Economics" its economics is not as modern as the title implies; most of it is an updated re-explanation of what had been already published. If you like the subject, try STIGLITZ, you can read some articles online for free:

• STIGLITZ, Joseph. More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington Consensus. The 1998 WIDER Annual Lecture. Helsinki, Finlândia, 07/1/1998.
• STIGLITZ, Joseph E. There is no invisible hand. London: The Guardian Comment, December 20, 2002.

Articles badly in need of proof reading: Economics, History of Ancient Economics, Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Asimakopulos.

To understand the basic principles of Economics

• ECONOMICS 100 ONLINE. Department of Economics at the University of Toronto<copyright K.J. Rea, 2000-2003 all rights reserved>. (A great "primer" to understanding the basic principles of Economics).

The article Economic Theory which should deal with those topics is still not written on CZ. To understand the basic principles of Economics meanwhile I suggest the reading of ECONOMICS 100 ONLINE by the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. It is a gret "primer" for helping anyone to understand Economics. (contents copyright K.J. Rea, 2000-2003 all rights reserved)

Economics has been completely re-arranged...

Many of your suggestions have been incorporated. The article has been sub-divided. Please feel free to edit any of it. J. R. Campos 11:06, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Hélas ! Finally somebody is writting on Economic Theory; we already have Supply and demand !

You are very welcome

Please feel free to edit whatever you feel is worth editing. Your editions definitely improved the level of my articles J. R. Campos 11:20, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

Infant growth and developmeny

Really appreciate your correction of spelling errors. On the other hand, please discuss changing of sentences. Of course the baby can be hurt unless the head is molded, but if the mother did not walk upright she could easily have a pelvis that provided a larger opening, and although that needs to be made clearer, changing the wording simply to the "baby emerges" loses the concept entirely. Similarly the way the muscle process sentence is now written it may sound better, but the meaning is not correct, it appears as if the muscle and bone have some kind of conscious arrangement with each other. I know that sentence was lousy, as I said, I was writing it rough. Could you kindly put your suggestions for a better phrase or sentence on the talk page rather than just changing the article? thank you, Nancy Sculerati 14:44, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

It's ok to "be bold" and edit articles. If the new edit loses some meaning, it will get modified further and improve the sentence even more. keep writing!! -Tom Kelly (Talk) 15:42, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

When in doubt, take it to talk. Stephen Ewen 16:52, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

Hm, it seems Nancy and Tom are disagreeing here. I think they are both right, however. Particularly in the context of a well-developed article like Biology, Nancy is right to say that, if what might have seemed to be a copyediting change actually changes the meaning of a sentence, it is better to make suggestions on the talk page. I do this myself all the time, and I highly recommend it. Tom, however, is right to imply that it is possible to take this practice to an extreme. It's hardly as though you need to get permission for every edit. Often, maybe usually, it's better simply to go ahead and make the change. If people didn't do this quite often, nothing would ever get done!

It's an art, not a science. --Larry Sanger 16:54, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

Yes, I agree with Dr. Larry Sanger. The other thing to consider is that Dr. Nancy Sculerati would have improved the sentence later -- She is one of the most active writers on CZ and helps edit/copy edit many, many articles. She has a great command of the English language. Everyone is very busy and we often write draft versions and get back to correcting them later. It's great when people contribute when we are away, however. I was just trying to keep spirits high! Go team, "break" (common American-sports hundle closing expression) -Tom Kelly (Talk) 17:36, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

I can get touchy, and I apologize, myself. thanks for reaching out, Nancy Sculerati 10:02, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Life is alive

Life has now moved along so that content editing is possible. Yes I do recognise version 1.1 is still not actioned, but it can be. Actually it would do good for you to start talking and doing changes for version 1.2. It would make people realise why your proof argument which is very similar to mine opinions is worth implement at least in part, or as an equivalent policy. In any case don't hold back, but my advice is to make small suggestion and concentrate one one part of Life at a time. But also do the research. I do know about limit cycles and chaos theory, and attractors, but what is need is specif example where they have been applied to life. The actual understanding of say, metabolism is hardly up to the ambitions of the mathematicians and computer modellers. I suspect they are concepts for other articles. We need also bridges to the primary biology literature. David Tribe 20:05, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

complex number comments

I tried to reply to your thoughtful comments on Talk:Complex number with inline indented comments. I'm not sure how well it came off. Greg Woodhouse 21:12, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Approval Editor Assistant

Catherine, I don't know if it would interest you to assist me as a copyeditor? I need someone reliable to copyedit me, and to handle list announcements. Are you interested? Nancy Sculerati 19:28, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Au contraire

Your suggestions and edits to the articles I've been working on have only improved them. I'm grateful for your input. Greg Woodhouse 23:02, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

About Primes

Hi Catherine and thanks for a reply :) I do see that the introduction only uses a symbol for mutiplication and is not difficult to follow. Of course everyone has an individual opinion. I would myself, remove any symbols from the introductory paragraph. If 3 dot 3 had to appear, I would use the words themselves, 3 times 3 equals nine, in the introductory paragraph. As the article developed, I would define and then use more symbols until a dedicated section toward the last of the article was just filled (from a newbies view) filled with symbols. I didn't know myself that prime numbers are an important part of cyphers and codes and internet technology and found that fasinating reading. But Ididn't need mathmatical proof to understand the concept laying below it. :) You know, on one hand is proof. On the other hand is the concept being talked about. I walked into the open doors where it said, "what's the use of prime numbers" and won't walk all the way over to the other side of the gymnasium where the proof guys are butting heads about symbology. lol Terry E. Olsen 10:42, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

'e' or 'a'

You may be right, but since Sébastien (sp.?) is a French name, I guess I kind of assumed it was an 'e'. Greg Woodhouse 08:18, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

well-defined

Actually, well-defined has a fairly precise meaning. Suppose we define $\mathbb {Z} _{2}$ as the set of equivalence classes of integers where $a$ and $b$ are said to be equivalent if $a-b$ is even. Then, if we choose a representative $a_{1}$ of the class containing $a$, we know that there is some $n$ such that $a-a_{1}=2n$. If we choose anotherf representative, say $a_{2}$, there must be an $m$ such that a$-a_{2}=m$. Now, fix a $b$. Since

$(b-a_{1})-(b-a_{2})=a_{2}-a_{1}=(a-2m)-(a-2n)=2(n-m)$

the difference between $b-a_{1}$ and $b-a_{2}$ is also even or, said differently, they belong to the same equivalence class. This is just another way of saying that the difference of $b-a$ is independent of the represntative we choose for the equivalence class of $a$ (and similarly for $b$). In other words, subtraction is well-defined - it doesn't depend on any arbitrary choices. Greg Woodhouse 18:10, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

well-defined take 2

Suppose we have complex function, $sayf(z)=z^{2}$ and we want to know its integral along the unit circle $C$ (a closed path in a region where the function is differentiable). In order to do this, we need to select a function that parametrizes $C$. One such function is $\gamma (t)=e^{it}$ where $t$ ranges from $0$ to $2\pi$. This is one way of parametrizing the unit circle, but by no means the only one, it is an ecample of an arbitrary choice. But having made this choice, we can write

$\int _{C}\nolimits z^{2}\,dz=\int _{0}^{2\pi }\gamma (t)^{2}|\gamma \,'(t)|dt$

The integral on the right is just an ordinary (real) integral which we can evaluate (it turns out to be 0). But what if we had chosen a different parametrizations, say $\gamma _{1}$? it turns out that it doesn't make any difference, that's what the funny looking $|\gamma \,'(t)|$ in there is for. Intuitively, this makes sense, too: If the parametrization "slows down" we'll be picking up "more" data points (in a finite approximation, that is) the derivative will be smaller, and the two effects cancel eachother out, making the actual integral independent of the parametrization. But this is something that must be proved, and in so doing we would be showing that the integral is well-defined - there is no ambiguity in the purported definition.

Now, you asked about something else. The natural numbers (positive integers) have the property that any subset $S\subset \mathbb {N}$ has a least element. This is often expressed by saying that the order on the natural numberrs is well-founded. The property of being well-founded is different from the concept of something being well-defined.

I don't know if this helps, but being well-founded is a mathematical property, it is something that can be said to be true or false about an ordered set like $(\mathbb {N} ,<)$, but "well-defined" is a meta-mathematical concept. It isn't something that is true or false about the objects we study in mathematics, but it is something that is true or false about statements we make in the language we use to talk about mathematics. Meta-mathematics is just a fancy term for talking about mathematics. Greg Woodhouse

The descrirption of well-definedness (how's that for a neologism?) you gave sounds pretty good to me. How about this? Something is well-defined if you can find it regardless of the map you use. Not all maps are the same, but once you get your bearings, all correct maps should agree on the location of yuour chosen destination. Greg Woodhouse 08:02, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Gödel and maps

Are you trying to make me think or something? Using the metaphor of maps, I'd say that Gödel's incompleteness theorem amounts to saying that if you try to include every detail on a map, you can't avoid introdfucing errors along the way. Greg Woodhouse 08:06, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Google algorithms

I don't know what algorithms search engines use so I don't know what's most likely to work. --Catherine Woodgold 17:14, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Google algorithms are known and the essential mechanics of them can be found on the Net; I accidentaly stumbled into them doing some research, but they are beyond my math comprehension. If you can use them, probalbly I can try to find them once again for you. J. R. Campos 22:26, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

J. R. Campos 22:26, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

natural family planning

Catherine, I remeber seeing that you have an interest in lactation and natural family planning. I have been involved in writing a bunch of new articles, many are related to sex and to contraception, and some to infertility. I just created Natural Family Planning. I hope that we can cover both decreasing chances of another baby (contraception) and increasing chances (overcoming infertility) in this one article. I put a bunch of references on the talk page, I can help with the medical (ovulation timing, peer reviewed papers) stuff. Will you please co-author?Nancy Sculerati 13:04, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

TeX versus non-TeX mathematical notation

Hello. I don't think it's a good idea to indiscriminately convert non-TeX mathematical notation to TeX. Unlike the way TeX is NORMALLY used, the way it's used here causes material that's in TeX to appear in a different font from surrounding text, often comically gigantic, and often improperly aligned.

For example: $e^{\int _{0}^{1}1\,dx}\,$. On the browser I'm using, the e in the preceeding expression is not aligned with the surround text but instead looks like a subscript.

"Displayed" TeX, as opposed to "inline" TeX, looks good:

$\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {dx}{x}}.$

Michael Hardy 22:22, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

There's no easy answer to this. However, I'm impressed by the arguments at [1] (TeX versus HTML section). If <math></math> is put around things, it's meaningful, and can later be translated by "the server" or "the browser" into other formats or display methods. For example, a blind person might have a program that translates math formulas into something they can perceive, such as speech sounds. In contrast, formulas in html are very much dependent on a specific behaviour of the server and browser, and later versions (or current, different browsers) might display them in a way that means something different from what the writer intended. The browser might not recognize that it's a math formula at all.

In the example you give, the e is the base and the rest of the formula is an exponent. It looks to me that the formula is displayed correctly except that the whole formula is too low down in the text. That is not necessarily a defect; it allows the line of text to be more compact with the other lines of text. It may not be ideal. But it doesn't look very bad to me.

Basically, as I see it, it's the responsibility of the writer to indicate that something is a math formula, and it's the responsibility of the browser to display it correctly. If a browser doesn't display it very well, then complaints can be sent to the writer of the browser (or if it's open-source perhaps one can fix up the browser oneself) and then the browser will be improved and there will be less of a problem with other formulas in the future. Catering to the idiosyncracies of current browsers is not a reliable method: it can give unpredictable results both with other current browsers and with future browsers, and takes away some of the incentive to improve the browsers.

So, my opinion is that it's best to put math tags around all math symbols. Perhaps more people could be brought into this discussion (on the math forum perhaps), and some consensus can be worked out.

It's good to see more than one active mathematics editor, by the way. Even if I disagree, I think the point you bring up is valid (there's no one easy answer) and that by discussing among a number of people seeing different sides of the issue, a better final decision is usually reached. --Catherine Woodgold 08:32, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

Since this very issue has been discussed at great length in various Wikipedia discussion forums without anybody improving the browser software in the ways you suggest, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting. In some cases, "inline" (as opposed to "displayed") TeX looks truly hideous. In at least one way, citizendium has done better than Wikipedia: (let's try this....) $\alpha +\beta +\gamma =\pi /2$ (OK, on this browser, these characters don't look unduly big, so score one point for citizendium. But the lower-case pi looks like a small capital pi, and that's plainly wrong.) Now lets try some other things:

a²+b+c=3    (wrong)

a² + b + c = 3    (wrong)

a²+b+c=3    (wrong)

a² + b + c = 3    (right)

a² + b + c = 3    (wrong)

$a^{2}+b+c=3\,$    (right in some contexts, wrong in others according to some respectable authorities)

blah blah blah $a^{2}+b+c=3\,$ blah blah     (if there's anyone who doesn't find this one hideous, I'm tempted to prescribe euthanasia)

blah blah blah $a^{2}+b+c=3\,$ blah blah    (this one is also hideous—apparently as soon as you put in a superscript this happens).

$\alpha +\beta +\gamma =\pi /2$

blah blah blah $\alpha +\beta +\gamma =\pi /2\,$ blah blah blah

blah blah blah $\alpha ^{2}+\beta +\gamma =\pi /2\,$ blah blah blah

blah blah blah $\alpha +\beta +\gamma =\pi /2\,$ blah blah blah (this one looks bad despite the fact that the same thing in the paragraph above looks good; but this time the lower-case pi looks right)
blah blah blah $\alpha ^{2}+\beta +\gamma =\pi /2\,$ blah blah blah

Do you have any rough estimate of the number of hundreds of times you've pointed out these differences to newbie wiki editors? In my own case I lost track long ago.

Are you impressed by ALL of the arguments on the page you cite, including the ones about the advantages of html over TeX? Michael Hardy 17:49, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

---

I've posted most of the comments above at CZ Talk:Mathematics Workgroup, where I see someone else had just raised a related point. These issues should be of interest to everyone who edits here. Michael Hardy 18:41, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I created CZ:Formatting_mathematics in the hopes that all such debates can be gathered there in one easy-to-find site. - Greg Martin 15:59, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. It's a good idea to post a note in all the other places people are discussing it, telling them where the one place they're supposed to be discussing it is. --Catherine Woodgold 19:41, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks

for suggestions. Rememver the move function leaves a redirect at the original. I hope you're right and I WAS annoyed at losing some history detauils. In a bit of a hurry as I have to go to work. Im leaving a bit of tidying upup in the talk pages for Chris Day or whoever to fix ,. Dont have time now! David Tribe 20:29, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

but dont you then lose all the earlier history log from the approved version? David Tribe 20:38, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I think MOVEing the page as you suggest is better, but a departure from what we've done before. It would be good to argue for preservation of logs along your lines and make sure everyone knows it's standard (a new standard) and described in the Approval regulation pages. David Tribe 21:10, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

Yes that the argument for doing it the old way, so you have different advantages either way. David Tribe 07:12, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Definition of surface

I'm sorry for being so slow to respond. I promised myself that I'd see the prime number and complex number articles through to approval, but since then I've been a bit, well, lacking in ambition, so far as Citizendium is concerned. I'm also having a hard time deciding what I want to do next. That being said, I agree with most, but not all of your examples. In particular, I would not consider $\scriptstyle \mathbb {Q} \times \mathbb {Q}$ a surface, because if interpret "surface" to mean two dimensional manifold, then every point has to have a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open set in $\scriptstyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}$, which is not possible in this case. At any rate, I don't know what to do here, because the article is a link from Euclidean geometry, and there really is no general notion of surface in Euclidean geometry, just spercial cases like the plane, parabaloid of revolution, etc. Greg Woodhouse 10:48, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

on the one hand

Both "on one hand" and "on the one hand" are correct. I'm willing to believe that "on the one hand" is more standard ... especially after noticing the example in this dictionary entry! Change it if you want. - Greg Martin 15:57, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Don't need to ask me about improving my English!. Go ahead. I'll squeell po'itely if I think its worse.! david David Tribe 16:11, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

One of the joys of working a while on the wiki is that you gradually get to know people, and understand what direction they are coming from. Please do not worry about editing my text (unless its text that has a long history of struggle and took days to get to a refined state, like a pile of carefully polished fruit.) I know that if its wrong I just say so in a direct way to you, and you will respond as you see it and we'll quickly find out what's the best. BTW it looks as if your page moving suggestion for version 1.1 is now the rule!. Great. better make sure the rules have you version in them, and what better person to do this than YOU. ! (sorry for shouting!). ;o))) David Tribe 16:58, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

As the Djinni said, "Be careful what you wish for" David Tribe 17:48, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

Audience level in math and science

I guess I'm looking for an opinion here. The discussion of audience level in the forums has grown increasingly tendentious. So much so, in fact, that I'm beginning to wonder if there's much point in even writing anything that presupposes more than a typical high school education by way of background - at least for subjects that are at all mathematical. Ironically, one of the reasons I wanted to become involved with Citizendium is that I wanted to try my hand at making difficult topics accessible, but it is all relative. A statement attributed to Einstein, namely, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler," has been my guide here. But it just doesn't seem acceptable. Truth be told, I'm trying (unsuccessfully, obviously, since I'm writing this) to hold back my anger and frustration. A rexcent comment about the word "multiple", followed by a highly condescending remark on the part of someone else to the effect that it takes practice to write for a wide audience, make me wonder if this is the place to try an address so-called difficult topics. Greg Woodhouse 18:40, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

Welcome back

Catherine, I'm very happy you've returned. --Larry Sanger 19:36, 27 January 2008 (CST)

I see that the article I wrote, Logarithm, is still not approved; the changes I made and/or proposed to Bacteriophage still don't appear in the approved version; and the hours of work I did proofreading Talk:Contraception (medical methods)/Draft apparently don't even appear in the draft version: at least, I don't see my name anywhere in the edit history of the draft version. You encouraged me to propose changes on the talk page first if I thought they might be rejected. I proposed changes on the talk page, and they have been rejected -- unreasonably, I think. I don't expect all my suggestions to be accepted of course, and I don't need an explanation for every comma etc., but the wholesale rejection without explanation of my suggested edits is discouraging. I very much appreciate, however, the message from Gareth Leng at Talk:Contraception (medical methods)/Draft about the fine points of hyphenation. --Catherine Woodgold 12:17, 3 February 2008 (CST)

You're referring to some very old matters. I know that when I said you should propose changes on the talk page, I was talking about a specific case that centered around some editors who weren't satisfied with your work. I was not making a general rule that you were to follow--such a rule would be ridiculous. So, if you like, you can get started again. Ping people on the talk pages of the above articles, and if no one responds, go ahead and make the changes yourself. This is a wiki, after all. It isn't and definitely shouldn't be a system where you "submit" your edits, which are then "accepted" or not. I know in the past it might have seemed that way. But if we can't trust our authors to know when an edit is suitable to be included in an article without discussed ad nauseam first, then we'd be giving up on the wiki model.

I would encourage you to seek advice from Gareth on any problem cases. He has a nice way of brokering reasonable solutions. --Larry Sanger 21:37, 5 February 2008 (CST)