Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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How to re-ask an old question?
I would like to know whether there has been progress in the last five years on the 2011 question H^4 of the Monster. Given the discussion there (and also given what else I know of the field), it seems ...
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Currently, is it possible to have relevant question under the latex tag
A question using the latex tag was recently posted, which received a number of down votes and comments which directed to post on tex.stackexchange.com.
MO predates tex.stackexchange.com and so at ...
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Why do we need the general-mathematics tag?
I recently came across the general-mathematics tag. It has no usage guidelines, nor do I think it should exist. Do any of you know the historic reasons for its existence, or think it should stay as it ...
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Is this combinatorial semigroup theory question suitable for MO?
The question is here.
For convenience:
Let $S=M_n(\mathbb{Z}_2)$. Let $D^{(n)}_2$ be the matrices in the rank $2$ $\mathcal{D}$-class of $S$. Find
$$N_n=\left\lvert\left\{\begin{array}
\, e &...
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edits with links to material under restricted access
I have seen several times people editing a post to add a link to an article under restricted access/behind a paywall. By this I mean that the article is on some site requiring a login/payment before ...
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Question was deleted, I'd like to know the answer or contact the poster
This question (now deleted) asked for a way to compute generators for $I \cap \mathbb{Z}[z_1,\ldots,z_n]$ as an ideal of $\mathbb{Z}[z_1,\ldots,z_n]$, given generators $f_1,\ldots,f_m \in \mathbb{Z}[...
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A tribute to the owners of the set-theory golden tag
In this slightly unusual and relaxed post,
I would like to express my admiration for
our all-time top rep user Joel David Hamkins,
in the spirit of the jon-skeet-facts post
from the sibling ...
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1
answer
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How to ask the same question with additional hypothesis
In a recent question I've asked if a claim I've make could be true, a user answered with a counterexample and so I've accepted his answer.
Now I formulated some additional hypothesis under which I ...
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Companies accounts allowed?
The following account looks like some kind of SEO trick.
https://mathoverflow.net/users/106607/nilead-web-design-company
It doesn't seem that I can flag accounts for moderator attention, hence this ...
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Examples of mathematical exposition arising from MO answers
I could imagine that several very long Mathoverflow answers have eventually turned into expository papers. For example, I have posted this (unpublished) expository paper on the arxiv about various ...
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Why all the negativity?
I've been on this site for several years and I appreciate the site a lot but I don't like to post here anymore because no matter what I write I get some kind of sarcastic comment, or put-down, or ...
user10290
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A remark on the abc conjecture
It went/goes something like this:
"It [the abc conjecture] resembles a false proposition in that A GREAT DEAL of results would follow from its veracity".
I may have read it in the comments of a ...
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Garbled MathJax in some old questions [duplicate]
In several old questions/answers I have seen in MathJax the combination \\, where it obviously should be \, and also ...
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Apologies re image links update => bumping
In the days before StackExchange used i.stack.imgur.com for images, I had linked quite a few images to my college's web server. Now all those links are broken, and I will eventually move them to i....
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MO in the Notices of the AMS
On page 333 of the March 2010 issue, John Baez wrote that "MathOverflow has become a universal clearinghouse for math questions."
The March 2017 issue features an interview with Prof. Ken Ribet--the ...
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News of potential interest to the MO community
Occasionally, there has been a suggestion to start a meta question to collect information that might be of interest to the MO community. This is an attempt to start such a thread.
Is there any news ...
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How to deal with answers that should be comments by users with not enough reputation to comment?
Several times I have seen answers that should be comments posted by new users without enough reputation to comment. Sometimes they know it should be a comment, and say so.
Sometimes these get the ...
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May I know why is my question on hold when it is clearly research-level?
This is my question
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/262039/central-properties-of-the-integers-mathbbz-over-other-structures-with-sum
I think the question is clear enough and it is easy to ...
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Thread for asking about suitability of math.SE question on MO?
Often there are questions of the type: "I have posted this question on math.SE. No satisfactory answer so far. Would this question be suitable for MathOverflow?"
People ask this in various places:
...
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Are users pingable from questions/answers?
There is this extremely handy feature - you can ping any user participating in a comment discussion with @. In my recent question A "prequestion" about meromorphic representations of ...
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Is it possible to get an internship or may be admission to a graduate program on the basis of activity at MO?
Well, it is amazing to find some of the greatest figures of mathematics at MO (including Field medalists) and even more startling is the fact that they have put queries too.
So, I was left wondering ...
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How to deal with questions referencing/promoting questionable/'fake' research?
This morning, the following question involving the Riemann Hypothesis was posted:
The Riemann Hypothesis Proof
(in case it gets deleted: here is its content, albeit in a less readable form)
It was ...
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What is the position on titles using \displaystyle, \dfrac, etc.?
I am much more familiar with math.SE. On that site there are explicit guidelines about LaTeX in titles and things like \displaystyle, ...
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Comment / Down-vote / Vote to close -- in what order, with what delay?
If I see a post that I think belongs on MathStackExchange, what should be my first response?
a) Comment to the user
b) Down-vote
c) Vote to close with suggestion of migration
And how long should I ...
user44143
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1
answer
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Editing signed posts
The post homomesy and asymptotic behaviour currently ends with "regards, A. Leverkühn". My impression is that the MO policy is not to sign comments, much less posts, but removing this seems like a ...
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Using other alphabets/writing sytems for author names
The following question
Fractional-order Rellich–Kondrashov Theorem
uses the Cyrillic alphabet to write "Kondrachov", and I wanted to know what was the policy of the website concerning this vaguely "...
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Why do we link to Twitter, Facebook or Google+ below every question?
I edit this old feature request of mine, in the hope that mentality have evolved and some consensus can be reached and some action be taken:
After each question on MO (with no answers yet), we can ...
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Community Peer-Review in Mathoverflow
I was recently surfing around the Physicsoverflow and I have to admit I was impressed by their Review section. I could not help myself from thinking how -and if- such a feature could also be ...
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Merging old duplicates?
New to meta, so apologies for any breaches of etiquette.
I've just noticed that these two old questions are duplicates:
Smallest permutation representation of a finite group?
Smallest n for which G ...
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Is there any third party search engine for MathOverflow?
As has been discussed in this meta post, there is a third party search (with $\LaTeX{}$ support) engine for Mathematics Stack Exchange. I was wondering whether there is search engine with similar ...
user57432
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Users with many questions having negatives votes
I am a bit hesitant to bring up this issue, but since it does bother me a good deal here goes. It has similarities with this other meta question but with a more objective edge maybe.
It is a fact ...
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Use full name instead of just family name if the family name is too common
I deleted the original post on MO and put it here.
Unlike the western counterpart, Chinese family names have fewer varieties. So you can see many Chinese mathematicians named as Zhang, Wang, Li, etc....
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Formatting: Diacritics outside of Formulas
I recently tried to write the name of the French mathematician Gâteaux in the correct way, i.e. with a circumflex over the first 'a'.
Using MathJax formatting inside inline math or in formula, that ...
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Locating a question on zero-one vectors in the kernel of a matrix
I remember there was a question posted to MO about maybe two months ago or so which was, essentially, about the existence of zero-one vectors in the kernel of some matrix. Can anybody help me to ...
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Celebrity usernames
The question "naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties" (naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties) recently received an apparently useful answer from a user with the name "...
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"what is" type questions
is it acceptable to put questions of the type "what does ... mean?" or "what is ...?" on MathOverflow. For example?
what is the moduli space of higgs bundles?
what is a Picard-Viessot extension?
...
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What about talking about life? How to work, manage, organize, and so forth?
My question comes from a general an recurrent observation on MO (and more generally in the real academic life):
doing research (in mathematics) is a whole ecosystem, full of different tasks and ...
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Splitting a question
I recently asked a rather broad question, with four parts. I quickly received an excellent answer which solved three of them, but the fourth seems to be less related than I thought, and is still ...
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Guidelines for contacting author of paper directly as opposed to asking on mathoverflow
Every now and again I will have a very specific question about a paper or book, for which I think there is a high likelihood that only the author(s) of the paper or book can give a definite answer. ...
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Redirection for off-topics posts
At the moment there are three choices in the Closing > Off-Topics > Migration tab.
Shouldn't the other stackexchange websites
http://matheducators.stackexchange.com and https://hsm.stackexchange.com/...
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The tags (transcendence) and (transcendental-number-theory)
There exist tags transcendence and transcend.-number-theory (probably shortened from transcendental number theory to fit 25 characters limit for the tag name). At the moment, the tag-info is empty ...
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"Conley index " as a tag
Is there a tag which can be related to methods on Conley index theory?I could not find a tag with this title.
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How to Ask Multiple Very Specific Questions About New Applications of an Old Theorem
This question is a different flavor of this one, the difference being, that I am not looking for help in understanding something.
My "problem" is, that while ramping up my knowledge about the ...
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Is it worth editing old posts to add links for references?
I always appreciate when citations to papers in MO answers/questions have a hyperlink — it’s very convenient for the reader, especially in cases where the referenced paper is non-trivial to find.
...
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Editing an old post to add MathJax
Sometimes I come across an old post which does not use MathJax. Is it OK to edit such a post if the edit improves readability?
This question (and its answers) motivated this post. I know some users ...
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Why was the question on the history of $y=y(x)$ put on hold?
It seems that we are still accepting questions on the history of mathematics as well as on notation. Why was this one not considered to be of research level on these two tags? I have checked the help ...
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Using MathOverflow to get new results in your research and publish them afterwards
So, MathOverflow is mainly used for posting research problems. Assume I have a research idea on which I want to write a paper. I developed it to some extent, but I am stuck somewhere and I post the ...
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Are well-posed questions about the mathematics job search on topic at MO?
When MO was young, it quickly became the dominant forum for mathematical discussions. At the time, the scope was pretty much "anything that is on-topic at a department Tea". For example, we had ...
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Why are there no dates on community wiki questions
While "ordinary" questions have their birth time readily visible above the original poster name, it seems like the only way to find out when a CW question has been asked is to view its revision ...
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Border line MO-Math Stackexchange
Occasionally there are questions that are beyond the level of Math Stackexchange(they get few views and no responds) but also for whatever reason the consensus on MO is that such questions don't quite ...
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