Will Orrick

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Hi, Will. Thanks for the new article. It's very nice. I did notice one little thing, which I'll fix up in just a minute here – in accordance with Wikipedia style conventions your first sentence really ought to read

In mathematics a regular Hadamard matrix is a Hadamard matrix whose row and column sums are all equal.

In other words, the article's title ought to appear as bold-faced type in the first sentence of the lead paragraph. Not a big deal, but good to know.

Have a great day! DavidCBryant 16:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Line breaks

Hi, Will. I got your message.

In general, browsers won't break to a new line until they hit a space or a new-line character in the rendered text. So if you wrote the formula as E(H) with no intervening spaces you shouldn't get a break between the E and the left parenthesis. I'm not sure if your particular issue is browser specific, or not. With which article did you have the problem? Which browser and OS are you using? Or is the problem as simple as breaking at a space?

When I'm coding formulas in HTML I (usually) take some care to think about breaks at spaces. The non-breaking space character (coded  ) is useful for this purpose. For instance, there's a difference between coding

''a'' = ''b''

and coding

''a'' = ''b''

These should both render the same way (a = b, and a = b), but the second version should not break across two lines (if your browser's working correctly). Oh – there's also an HTML entity   which stands for a "thin space" and also comes in handy in some circumstances.

Sorry to be so long-winded. I hope I've answered your question. DavidCBryant 11:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It must be a browser issue. I'm running Internet Explorer 6.0 on Microsoft Windows XP. Since I'm travelling, I don't have easy access to a variety of machines and browsers on which to test the rendering. The page in which the issue is occurring is regular Hadamard matrix. I typed E(H) as ‘‘E‘‘(‘‘H‘‘) without spaces. Moving or eliminating the quote marks doesn't alter the behavior. If I go to other pages that use function notation, such as function (mathematics), for example, I am able to produce the same phenomenon by resizing the browser window. --Will Orrick 15:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Laurence Klauber

Hi Will. figured I'd just abuse your talk page on this. Margi Dykens at the San Diego Natural History Museum just contacted me and said she has the original diagram on her desk. Here's what she wrote me:

I am even more intrigued with finding out the bottom line about the Klauber mathematical mystery. I have his chart that I was telling you about before out on my desk now---we need to get a photo of it (it is large!) and then maybe send a copy to some math person who could tell us what if anything it signifies in regard to Ulam's spiral. I know it has to do with prime numbers for the simple reason that that is what he wrote on it, but otherwise I am in the dark. It does not show any spiral shapes that I are visible though….

I can meet up with her next week and get it digitized. In the meantime, if you want to chat via email (she's not on Wikipedia yet), you can contact me here. Isara (talk) 21:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Hadamard code

Hi Will, Thanks for your recent edits in Hadamard code, they are very clarifying. Given your expertise in the area, I hope you can help me answer the following questions. It would be really helpful for me so I can clean up these articles (and learn something useful at the same time). I looked into the standard texts, but the answers were either not satisfying or contradicting, so really what I need are better references.

1. Why did Hadamard invent Hadamard matrices? Did he want to develop error-correcting codes? If not, who realized their applicability to error-correcting codes first? Do you know any specific references?
2. The Walsh–Hadamard code is the code that you get from the rows of Sylvester's Hadamard matrices (to be clear, as opposed to the Hadamard code, you just don't take the rows of $-H$). Is the name Walsh–Hadamard code standard (see bottom of that page for a source)? If not, what is the standard name? Do you have any references for the naming issue here?
3. What is the Walsh code?
4. Is there a connection between Hadamard codes and the Hadamard transform that is deeper than the mere fact that they both involve Hadamard matrices?
5. Do you have a reference on the relation between the Walsh function and the Hadamard matrix?
6. I suggest to merge Walsh–Hadamard code into Hadamard code. Do you agree?
7. Also, a Walsh matrix seems to be the same as Sylvester's constructions. Should Walsh matrix be merged into Hadamard matrix?

Thanks! ylloh (talk) 03:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I probably cannot answer most of your questions, but I'll do my best.

1. My understanding is that coding theory got started with the work of Shannon, Hamming, and Golay around 1950 or so. Hadamard's work precedes this by half a century, and was motivated by the derivation of his upper bound on the magnitude of the determinant. He asked whether the bound could be attained by real matrices whose elements were themselves bounded in magnitude (by 1, say). Real ±1 matrices that attain Hadamard's bound are now called Hadamard matrices, although Sylvester had constructed examples 30 years earlier. According to the book Designs and their codes by Assmus and Key, the (non-linear) Hadamard codes described in Hadamard code were constructed by Bose and Shrikhande in 1959. The reference is: R.C. Bose and S.S. Shrikhande, "A note on a result in the theory of code construction" Information and Control Volume 2, Issue 2, June 1959, Pages 183-194. (doi:10.1016/S0019-9958(59)90376-6) An alternative link to the article is http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.154.2879&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
2. I am not familiar with Walsh–Hadamard codes.
3. Googling a bit turned up some sources that appear to use "Walsh code" interchangeably with "Walsh–Hadamard code", but again, I'm not familiar with this area.
4. The decoding scheme mentioned in Hadamard code could be described as "Take the Hadamard transform of the received vector and select the largest component." Like "Hadamard code", "Hadamard transform" can be defined for more general Hadamard matrices. But most people are thinking of the Sylvester matrix when they use the term. The Sylvester matrix allows for extra efficiencies in computing the transform, because of its recursive structure.
5. One reference is http://books.google.com/books?id=Vj6yS6PsAZYC&pg=PA431&dq="Hadamard matrices, sequences, and block designs"&hl=en&ei=5OqFToLVNKro0QGUo8X3Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q="Hadamard matrices, sequences, and block designs"&f=false, J. Seberry and M. Yamada, "Hadamard matrices, sequences, and block designs" in Contemporary Design Theory: A Collection of Surveys, J. H. Dinitz and D. R. Stinson eds. Wiley (1992).
6. Merging Walsh–Hadamard code into Hadamard code seems to make sense. It would be nice to find some good references for Walsh–Hadamard code.
7. My concern with merging Walsh matrix into Hadamard matrix is that the latter already focuses too much on Sylvester's construction at the expense of other methods for constructing Hadamard matrices. Adding the Walsh matrix material would only make this worse. Also, people interested in only Sylvester or Walsh matrices may not need or want to wade through the more general Hadamard matrix discussion. I think that the Sylvester matrix is a big enough topic that it deserves its own article. But it would be good to indicate clearly that Sylvester matrix and Walsh matrix are the same.

Part of the problem is that there is too little communication between the engineers and the mathematicians, with the result that the literature of each field has its own terminology. Now quantum computing theorists are working in this area, and are using the terminology differently as well. Now I have a question for you: At the top of the Hadamard transform article, one sees the line "Not to be confused with Walsh matrix." I think I must be one of the confused people the author of that line was trying to warn. The matrix used in the Hadamard transform article looks exactly like the Walsh matrix to me.

Will Orrick (talk) 16:41, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers! I'll soon start editing the articles in question appropriately. As for you question, yes, I was confused by "not to be confused with Walsh matrix" as well. I think someone just wanted to point out that Walsh/Hadamard matrices are different objects than the Hadamard transform. Anyway, this group of articles needs some streamlining. Since you feel that the Sylvester/Walsh-Matrix discussion in Hadamard matrix is already too large, why not move all but the essentials about this to Walsh matrix (maybe renamed to Sylvester's construction of Hadamard Matrices) and have only a relatively brief discussion in Hadamard matrix with a link to the main article. Also, the Sylvester matrix seems to be the different from Sylvester's construction of Hadamard Matrices, right? ylloh (talk) 19:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the belated reply. "Sylvester matrix" does indeed appear to be different from "Sylvester's construction of Hadamard matrices". I think that a separate article on Sylvester's construction (perhaps an expansion of the Walsh matrix article, as you suggest) would be a good idea. I'm still undecided about the naming of such an article. If "Walsh matrix" is the common name in the engineering literature, I wouldn't want to step on any toes by renaming it, despite the fact that Sylvester clearly had priority. I will try to do some searching around in the engineering literature to see what the conventions are.

I've just added a bit to the "Construction" section of Hadamard code. There was some incorrect information about parity-check matrices that you deleted in one of your edits; I was motivated to try to figure out what it was that the original author had in mind. Since the information I've added concerns the generating matrix rather than the parity-check matrix, that can't have been it, so I'm still in the dark. It may be that the statement "Alternative constructions for the Hadamard code use its parity-check matrix" should be deleted entirely, unless someone can make sense of it. Will Orrick (talk) 13:08, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

It's almost two years later now, but I finally got around to doing this merger of Hadamard code and Walsh-Hadamard code. See Talk:Hadamard_code. Thanks! ylloh (talk) 22:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Cite journal and harvtxt

Re this edit summary: the way to make {{cite journal}} work with {{harvtxt}} is to add the |ref=harv parameter to the cite journal. But in that case it was better to use {{citation}} as you did: the formatting between cite journal and citation is different — mostly in that cite journal. uses. lots of extra. periods. in the middle of the citation. — and it's better to keep the formatting consistent. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:10, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

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On 11 July 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article IM 67118, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that a clay tablet at the National Museum of Iraq, dated to c. 1770 BCE, shows a calculation that uses the Pythagorean theorem—twelve centuries prior to the birth of Pythagoras? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/IM 67118. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, IM 67118), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

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Thanks

Thank you for fixing the issue on the baudhyana sutras. But I have also noticed that the middle part is still uncited and the paragraphs which have citations cannot be entered. Please kindly fix the issue and make sure that the citations can be entered without issue. Xiwxopswwjdbb (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Which paragraphs specifically lack citations? As far as I can tell most paragraphs have at least one citation and most have more than one. Also, what do you mean by "cannot be entered"? Will Orrick (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Si.427

You said here "grandiose claims about the geometric significance of Si.427 were splashed all over the press, but appear to be greatly exaggerated". Just wanted to see what do scholars think. Beji, S. (2022) A Geometric Formulation and a Series Approach for Estimating π with Remarks on a Sumerian Tablet. Advances in Pure Mathematics, 12, 587-599. https://doi.org/10.4236/apm.2022.1211045 said "We consider Si.427 from a different viewpoint and examine its geometric properties rather than its contents by establishing definite ratios or non-dimensional numbers." 🤷 Infinity Knight (talk) 00:25, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Serdar Beji does not appear to be a historian and his paper is not published in a history journal. Furthermore, the publisher, Scientific Research Publishing, has engaged in unethical practices numerous times in the past and is considered to be predatory. Beji refers to Plimpton 322 as a "Sumerian tablet", which indicates to me that he doesn't know much about the subject of ancient Mesopotamian mathematics. It also suggests that the paper was not properly refereed, if indeed it was refereed at all. I would not consider anything in this paper reliable as a reflection of the scholarly consensus on Mansfield's work or on the mathematical significance of Si.427. Will Orrick (talk) 00:54, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Serdar Beji was published at the "Advances in Pure Mathematics (APM)", an international journal dedicated to the latest advancement of ordered algebraic structures. The goal of this journal is to provide a platform for scientists and academicians all over the world to promote, share, and discuss various new issues and developments in different areas of ordered algebraic structures. The specific paper is supported by 7 references and still you're saying it is not reliable for the Geometry claim? We're taliking mathematics here. One needs to be a historian for that? Any sources for your unethical practices claims? I am confused... 🤷 Infinity Knight (talk) 08:41, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Ordered algebraic structures, seven references—all very impressive. I guess it's legit. Will Orrick (talk) 11:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Crystal gazing is a popular pastime and works best when the Sun is at its northernmost declination. Immediately before the appearance of a vision, the ball is said to mist up from within. Common knowledge. Infinity Knight (talk) 20:10, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Champernowne constant

The IP editor doing the revisions is an LTA account User:Xayahrainie43 -- if you look at the article history you'll see that they've been reverting to the same version since at least September 2021. I'll request page protection. JBL (talk) 18:03, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

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