Talk:antirational

RFV discussion: February 2014–January 2015

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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antirational

The math sense. Note that google:"antirational field" and google:"antirational" site:arxiv.org turn up nothing relevant. I therefore suspect that this is not a term used in math but a word invented for the context (see the quotation in the entry) and not used anywhere else.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:55, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to RFV a sense that has no definition. I think it should be speedied. --WikiTiki89 17:06, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

A definition can be found in the sole attesting quotation. This should not be speedied. Even if there were no definition, a RFV would still be meaningful, asking this question: are there CFI-enough CFI-fit quotations for a technical mathematical sense of "antirational"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually when I made that comment I didn't realize there was already one citation. --WikiTiki89 18:45, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

There's another cite (snippet only for me), but note that the definition is different from the one in the cite in the entry! I'm guessing this one, too, was used ad hoc.​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I think it might not be independent from the other citation, either. The citation currently in the entry is attributed to Masayoshi Nagata, and the book you just linked to says "Our definition differs slightly from the one given by Nagata [11]." —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 00:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Granger I don't think that necessarily disqualifies it from being independent (if the authors were not actually collaborating on it, which is most likely not the case since the definitions are different). Everyone who uses a word has to have read or heard it somewhere and by your logic, that would every word in every language unciteable. However, since the definitions are different, we can't count them together for three citations anyway. --WikiTiki89 06:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I've added three cites to the citation page. They are clearly the same sense; at least two of the authors give a citation to Nagata. I think the citation found by msh210 is also valid; slight differences in definitions do occur with mathematics authors but this is clearly much the same concept and should be counted as the same sense as far as dictionary entries go. It is rather similar to the inconsistency over whether zero is included in $\scriptstyle \mathbb {N}$. SpinningSpark 20:16, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

• Personally, I think there is something ridiculous about trying to include advanced mathematical terms here. If they really need TeX-work to be properly readable (I just added a bunch of nowrap's to the in-article quotation) they should probably be a WP article and then just a vague definition here with a link. If no one can bother to write a WP article on the topic or put it to use, it's probably not really worth having here.
• I have no idea how to interpret CFI "independence" in the mathematical context.
• I'm not, for example, going to add the mathematical notions of "mouse", nor associated terms "premouse", "real mouse", "weasel", and so on. And Spark is correct, minor variations in mathematical terminology is entirely normal. The idea of splitting Wiktionary senses down to mathematically distinct senses is absolutely ludicrous. We have four mathematical senses of curve, which is frankly three senses too many, but if you believe in splitting based on exact mathematical definitions, then there should probably be about 100 distinct senses listed. graph correctly has two mathematical senses, but it too can probably support 100 distinct senses.
• The basic source of confusion on this point is that "definition" in mathematics is a technical term with a very precise meaning, but it is not the same as "definition" in lexicography. See my earlier comments on Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion#group_action. Choor monster (talk) 20:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Failed; removed.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:38, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

How has that failed when three cites have been provided? SpinningSpark 05:26, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

You might not like it, and you might still think it should be deleted, but you can't possibly say that it has failed verification. SpinningSpark 14:57, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

He may have neglected to look at the citations page, or was just being picky about the spelling. I also found this which can be added as a third citation of the hyphenated spelling and then the entry can be recreated at anti-rational. --WikiTiki89 15:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I'ver restored the entry. We can speculate forever over what msh210 does not like about the cites. They really need to place a rationale here so that we have the opportunity of finding better cites, it is pointless trying to double guess. It strikes me as more a case of "I don't like it" than an actual failure to verify. SpinningSpark 17:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I reverted you. Out of only five citations that we have gathered, three are hyphenated. So if you want to recreate, do so at the hyphenated entry. --WikiTiki89 17:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• The two snippet citations, one from Mathematics of the USSR: Izvestija, one from Chinese Journal of Mathematics citation are close to useless. It is totally unclear what is going on. Are these papers, for example, just summarizing something of Nagata, or contributing a footnote, so to speak, or are they actually something independent? I can't doublecheck the articles, since I have no clue who the authors are or what the titles are. I can't physically browse them either, since today's modern libraries have 99% of their journals in storage somewhere. Choor monster (talk) 18:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I haven't checked, but a little thinking revealed that the second snippet is from the following paper: MR0732868 (85j:12009) Kang, Ming Chang ; Roan, Shi-Shyr . A note on cancellation problem. Chinese J. Math. 11 (1983), no. 4, 61--67. According to MR, it's a new proof of the 1967 theorem of Nagata, so the odds are high they are repeating Nagata with some variation. Whether this is "independent" by our standards, I have no idea. (Curiously enough, Nagata has a paper in the same journal, same year, but it is obviously not the snippet.)
  • For the record, Nagata introduced the term (with a hyphen) in this 1967 paper, free download. Choor monster (talk) 19:52, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • And I have now found the first snippet: MR0439970 (55 #12851) Vlèduc, S. G. The coefficient ring in a semigroup ring. (Russian) Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 40 (1976), no. 5, 955–968, 1199. English translation: Math. USSR-Izv. 10 (1976), no. 5, 899–911. This paper definitely seems to be independent of Nagata, the reference was apparently provided as a courtesy. Choor monster (talk) 12:57, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I declare this discussion closed. Some mathematical sense has been demonstrated, but since there is no definition, there is nothing to verify; the citations themselves seem to be insufficient to formulate a definition. If someone can come up with a definition supported by those citations, it may be added. — Keφr 14:06, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

On the topic of individual mathematics disciplines/authors/papers having idiosyncratic "definitions" of things which don't correspond well one-to-one to lexical definitions, I just came across this quotation attributed to Poincare: "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things." - -sche (discuss) 00:01, 18 September 2015 (UTC)