2 @Max Alekseyev, congratulations on the Riordan Prize. – Fred Kline 4 hours ago

2 @FredKline: Wow! This is an unexpected place for congratulations. ;) Thank you! – Max Alekseyev 32 mins ago

Strictly speaking, those comments are indeed irrelevant to the topic, and so they are about to be duly deleted in response to the flags.

However, I find it a pity that a note of congratulations and thanks in return are so urgently hit with flags. Such comments are harmless and contribute to a generally friendly spirit which is sometimes missing. I'd feel the same way about dealing with a good joke in a comment: yes, technically such might be considered "too chatty" according to SE guidelines, but who cares?

Plus, I was glad to have learned in this way of Max's winning the Prize, and would like to second those congratulations to him.

"self-conscious guys" -> "self-conscious men and women". Also note the assumption that the OP is male. – Greg Martin 20 hours ago

@GregMartin (a) I use "guys" as a unisex idiom (b) it is not hard to find out who the OP is – Yemon Choi 19 hours ago

Your intention might be for "guys" to be a unisex idiom, but that doesn't make it one. – Greg Martin 10 hours ago

Maybe I better should not as a non-native but...I changed "guys" to "folks" as I think it should be (more) gender neutral but otherwise rather similar. In any case, it seems to translate to the "gens" which might have been what Joël would have written in French. – quid 6 hours ago

@GregMartin Fair point. – Yemon Choi 4 hours ago

@GregMartin - I suppose this is getting more and more off-topic, but it is a fact about modern American English usage that the word "guys" can be used in a gender-neutral way. See, e.g., economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/10/slang – alex 2 hours ago

@alex maybe so, but while the text under your link says: 'But it doesn't go into the fact that in modern American English, "guys" in the plural can be directed at a mixed-sex or even an all-female group.' please note it says "directed at," not say "refer to." Indeed, it later says explicitly: ' "Guys" works as a vocative to an all-girl group: "Let's go, guys!" But it doesn't work as a noun referring to them: "The guys are coming over". (Perhaps some people use "guys" this way for women, but I don't think I've heard it.)' And the latter is the usage present. – quid 58 mins ago

Another fact: We control what language we use. Another fact: Language affects culture, and not always for the better. Using male nouns/pronouns to represent all genders has a long history, of course, but it reinforces our stereotypes that maleness is the "default" human status and femaleness is some sort of add-on. In particular, this reinforces the stereotype that math is a man-thing. And that stereotype is extremely harmful. That is why I choose not to hide behind the "fact" you mention. – Greg Martin 57 mins ago

The same point is made on the SE site for English Language & Usage: "Is 'guy' gender-neutral" – quid 55 mins ago

Although I have no wish to drag things on further (Greg is welcome to email me if he feels this would be profitable, salutory, etc) I suggest that since the text has been corrected, the whole discussion starting with Greg's first comment be moved to chat, so as to avoid someone coming along in a few weeks' time and restarting arguments devoid of initial context. – Yemon Choi 23 mins ago

Also this is a test to see if or who is following.

Is there anybody out there? :-)

21 December 2013, 9:09pm UTC

Second Edit : the message below is about the first version of the question, before it was deeply edited and changed by Todd Trimble. I have nothing serious to complain about the new question.

Okay, let me weigh in by saying that this question is a disgrace for this site.

I have nothing against question about mathematical education, and nothing against question whose answers are primarily opinion-based. But I have a strong hostility against opinion-based question that shows such a contempt for the facts, especially when the asker is "leading a campaign" (quoting his own words) for some cause, however legitimate, and seems more interested into advancing his cause than in searching for the truth. (Why? Probably it's my personal history, coming/fleeing from a country where the basic distinction between fact and opinion is even more forgotten tham elsewhere, but whatever).

So the question of whether Euclidean geometry should be taught or not in Elementary/Middle/High school or their equivalent is legitimate. But as for a pure question of math, one should not rush to answer before the fact expressed in the set-up of the question are recognized as correct.

The facts in question are the affirmation that there were, I quote, << a series of articles in France in the 1960s, authored by the Bourbaki's, preaching the abolition of Euclidean Geometry (EG), as the main mathematical area in high schools of France. Some of the titles of these articles were: "A bas Euclide", "Euclid is dead", "Euclidean Geometry must go" etc. >>

Despite my asking for precisions or references, none was given. Now such an affirmation should be substantiated. While I am certainly ignorant of many things in the history of Bourbaki, what I know makes the OP's assertion highly unlikely. For one thing, Bourbaki as a group was never concerned with high school teaching. As for individual members (since I guess they are what the OP calls "the Bourbaki's"), the ones I can think of couldn't care less about high school program. And perhaps I didn't drink enough today, but even with the best will I can't imagine someone like Cartan, or Serre, or Koszul, signing an opinion in say "Le Monde" with title "A bas Euclide!".

I am voting to close (again), obviously, until the facts are substantiated or retracted.

edited after some comments by the OP. The OP has given some references, but they are just about one talk given by Jean Dieudonné, when he was not anymore a member a Bourbaki. Now there have been perhaps 100 Bourbaki members over the years, and it is probable that any opinion $o$ on any subject has been at some point of time held by one of them. This is of course not enough to conclude that "Bourbaki has made a campaign in favor of $o$" Examples: "Bourbaki has made a campaign against the financing of IHES by the ministry of defense". No, Grothendieck did.

[Comments to follow]

Over a year ago, we had an extensive discussion about migrating to Stack Exchange 2.0. I remember feeling that just about everybody was in support of migration at the end of it. (I'm going to re-read the thread in case there are any important pitfalls I've forgotten about, but I haven't yet.) My feeling is that migrating will be almost entirely positive, though I expect this post will generate some fear about moving to 2.0. For what it's worth, aside from writing and running a really good Q&A engine, the SE team has been exceptionally generous with their attention and resources over the last 3 years. They want the MO community to be happy.

The main objection last year was that people really liked our current meta, but the folks at SE said that they've baked the SE-style meta into the framework. So we decided to work out some tools for dealing with a two meta system. Then academia season started and we all had to get back to work. Since then, I've become increasingly of the opinion that a pure SE-style meta is the way to go. While our discussion-style meta was certainly invaluable for hashing out community norms, I don't think there was anything in the last year that wouldn't have been well-served by an SE-style meta. Not only that, there would have been a huge benefit: proper integration with the main site. Cf. Dick Palais's comment here: "[T]he problem is that almost no MO users look at meta.MO so it is nearly useless to post it there."

The moderators and I pinged the Stack Exchangers about migration recently. It seems like there is no obstruction to migrating. Here's a summary from Joel Spolsky (SE cofounder/CEO):

Hi Anton!

Here is a summary of my current understanding regarding migrating MathOverflow.net to Stack Exchange 2.0.

1. The terms under which MathOverflow is operated will shift from the "Stack Exchange 1.0" model (under which the site is operated by Fog Creek Software as a service but the data, users, etc. are owned by you) to the "Stack Exchange 2.0" model (under which the site is a community within the Stack Exchange network, owned and operated by Stack Exchange).
2. We will upgrade MathOverflow to the latest software and join it to the Stack Exchange network.
3. Unless explicitly mentioned otherwise in this agreement, MathOverflow will operate like any other Stack Exchange site.
4. Current MathOverflow moderators will remain MathOverflow 2.0 moderators.
5. Before we finalize the migration, we will create a sandbox for you to test the migration. This will be a fully-functioning, fully operational version of MathOverflow running under the latest Stack Exchange software, which you can play around with and test before we have actually moved mathoverflow.net over. Any changes made in the sandbox will be lost when the real migration takes place.
6. The moderator team may submit additional Javascript to Stack Exchange which, if it does not compromise the technical integrity of the network, will be inserted into the footer, allowing some minor modification of the site that is unique to MathOverflow.
7. You will retain ownership of the domain name mathoverflow.net, but you will delegate the DNS operation to us.
8. Should you choose to migrate off of the Stack Exchange network:
   • We will provide the usual creative-commons data dump (which removes all private user information such as passwords and email addresses) complete as of to the migration;
   • We will return DNS control to you;
   • We will implement a system by which MathOverflow users can authenticate with our servers in order to reclaim their account on your new server.
   • Note that our privacy policy would not permit us to give you any user's email, password, or other authentication data if you are not an affiliated entity, thus, we would essentially have to get each user's permission on a one-time basis to transmit their credentials to you. In practical terms this could be as simple as a permission dialog that we present when users first attempt to log on to your server authorizing us to transmit the user's personal information to you.
9. If you don't already have one, I recommend creating a foundation, corporation, or not-for-profit that would own the mathoverflow domain name and serve as the counterparty. That way if something happens to Anton we know who is taking care of the domain name and who has the right to migrate out.

Does this sound like a workable plan?

I asked Joel if we could add a "no ads" term. He said that wouldn't be a problem. Aside from that, everything looks good to me.

To the question "how many mathematicians are there" , anybody with a strictly positive IQ can smugly retort "Define mathematician !" and go away convinced that he has dealt the question a death-blow.
The point is exactly that the question asks for some well defined proxy for being a mathematician and then deduce some number for that altered definition.
I was exhilarated to discover (more than two years ago) that four brilliant answers did exactly that and the amazing conclusion is that all these answers give the same order of magnitude: there are about 100000 mathematicians on earth.

What are you saying? You disagree, now that I made you aware of that result? Too late, you can no longer give your counter-arguments as an answer nor as a comment because five users (on a site with more than 18500 registered users, among whom are at least four Fields medalists) on this site have decided that it is now forbidden to discuss the question any further.

I would like to add that I don't see how a mathematician could not be interested in those numbers at a time when positions are not particularly easy to get.
And who else but MathOverflowers will give you the answer?

Finally and more generally I would like to emphasize that some "soft" questions should be more welcome than the hard, tough, technical ones, which some macho users are so eager to publicize as the only ones they will tolerate. Here is why:

I think that more than half of the 32000 questions here could be answered by just Pierre Deligne , Ofer Gabber and Terence Tao if they so wished and had the time: my point is that there is no lack of expertise in the world, but I'm not sure that even these luminaries could answer my question as well as our community taken together: a manifestation of the wisdom of crowds
And this is why soft but unmistakenly mathematical questions should only be closed with the utmost care.
Moreover the huge number of users due to the success of our site makes it preposterous that just five people with no special legitimacy other than having passed the low barrier of 3000 "reputation" points can prevent all other users to interact with a question.
(I know there are constraints due to the software but I am sure that any clear policy adopted by users on closing questions can be implemented just by being stated: this is a civilized site!)

I cannot reproduce your equality in Mathematica: your rhs is about 49, see code: N[(-Zeta'''[1/2]/Abs[Zeta[1/2]] - 3 Zeta''[1/2] Zeta'[1/2]/Abs[Zeta[1/2]]^2 - 2 Zeta'[1/2]^3 Abs[Zeta[1/2]]^3 - Pi^3/4)/7, 30] – Per Alexandersson 2 days ago

@Per I don't have Mathematica. Is it possible you are working with low precision? This Wolfram Alpha query returns error 10^(-15): wolframalpha.com/input/…z_2z_1%2Fz_12^2+-2*z_1^3%2Fz_12^3+-+pi^3+%2F+%284%29%29%2F7%29%2Cz_3%3DRiemannZeta%27%27%27[1%2F2.0]%2Cz_2%3DRiemannZeta%27%27[1%2F2.0]%2Cz_1%3DRiemannZeta%27[1%2F2.0]%2Cz_12%3DAbs%28RiemannZeta%281%2F2.0%29%29 – joro 2 days ago
1

@Per: you are missing a / in the second to last term. – Jack Huizenga 2 days ago

@Jack: Thanks! – Per Alexandersson 2 days ago

[Closed] Huge Relief Unlock/Jailbreak iphone 5,4S,4 iOS 6.1.2 and iPad 4,3,2 Untehtered Produced

That [Closed] was put there by the original poster. The one that the software inserts is put at the end of the post. I suspect the idea was that folks would think it had already been closed and therefore not bother to click through and vote-to-close it.

Fortunately it looks like enough people voted it down to kick it off the site.

Anyway, I thought it a tactic worth noting so that people are aware of it. And to remember (not that it seems needed given the speed this one was dealt with) that even if a spam post is closed, there are other actions that can be taken that will speed its exit (though possibly not pursued by a bear) such as voting down and flagging as spam.

Question: What is the best way to keep up with these answers to older questions?

As far as I can tell, a new answer will bump the question to the top of the front page, but the turnover there is very high, so it is easy to miss. It does not seem that a new answer bumps the question to the top of tag-specific pages, which would be much more helpful for this purpose. The tag-specific RSS feeds do update when new answers are posted, and this is the only way I have found to somewhat deal with the situation.

I have a few related questions of a more general nature. Occasionally, new answers to old questions are very interesting, especially if the question had not received a good answer due to being difficult. However, it seems to me that such answers may sometimes receive little attention due to the issues described in the previous paragraph. Beyond the obvious consequences, it also leads to reduced scrutiny of what might be a very technical or difficult answer, possibly leaving doubts about its correctness.

Related questions: Is there some way to bolster the attention these answers get? Are there some plans for the future of mathoverflow which seek to address this issue? Do other people even consider it to be an issue?

I saw no edits, and the worst thing about this particular question was OP's peculiar insistence there had to be a closed form, and maybe a mild tone of impatience about the time OP was waiting for an answer over at MSE. But how is it blatantly offensive?

(Another question from OP seemed more obnoxious, as various versions of the question seem to be "baiting" mathematicians. (Incidentally, I didn't see an easy solution to that other question, having to do with $\int_0^1 x^{x^x} dx$, although it's easy enough to get confirmation from Mathematica that that's greater than $\log \sqrt{\pi}$.)

Answer by user "VA" to question http://mathoverflow.net/questions/14613 :

"This is just to add 1% to Dmitri's 99% complete answer. Change the coordinates to $w_0,\dots, w_{n-1}$ defined by the formula

$$ w_i = x_0 + \mu^i x_1 + \mu^{2i} x_2 + \dots, $$

where $\mu$ is a primitive $n$-th root of identity. Then the ring of invariants is the subring of monomials

$$ w_0^{k_0}\dots w_{n-1}^{k_{n-1}} \quad \text{such that}\quad n\ |\ k_1 + 2k_2 + \dots (n-1) k_n$$

and a set of generators can be obtained by taking minimal such monomials (i.e. not divisible by smaller such monomials). And relations between these generators are of the form (monomial in $w_i$) = (another monomial in $w_i$). That's a pretty easy presentation by any standard.

P.S. This works over $\mathbb C$ or any ring containing $1/n$ and $\mu$."

Notice that this answer, while not adding any new ideas, noticeably improves upon the exposition of Dmitri's one. It is voted +3, so I am surprised the author was able to delete it in the first place...

to prevent MathOverFlow from pushing it back to the front page periodically. The question is no longer relevant.

At the time of reading it, I felt unable to reach a conclusion of which side had the stronger case, but I've always been curious about this and particularly what has transpired since. My general question would be: has the apparent disagreement been resolved by now, and if so, how?

Such a question might be considered controversial for MO (just as the debate was controversial for the Bulletin). In addition, this is not a question arising from my own research; it's more like idle curiosity on my part, so I'm afraid the motivation for the question is not very strong, except that I like to see mathematical issues resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Is such a question acceptable for MO, or could it be made acceptable?

I know generally features are not implementable in the current software. Is adding social media sharing an easy thing to tweak, or should we just wait for MO 2.0?

So why am I rambling about this here? Well, MO is the largest research level community that I know of on the Net, and seems to be a pretty great place. I don't see any rudeness, nor any propensity for it. So, my questions are:

• What is your stance on rudeness/civility? Do you allow harsh comments/personal attacks in the context of a technical discussion?
• What are your thoughts on "civility is detrimental to technical discussions"?
• If you require civility everywhere, how did you (as a community) manage to uphold that without alienating good community members who disagree? Or was this a non-issue for you?

These questions are mainly directed to the community, though input/advice from MO mods would be great!

Also, I'm not sure if this question is on topic for your meta--after all, it doesn't help your site in any way. Please let me know (and close the thread) if it isn't :)

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/117889/shortlists-and-job-offers

which I think deserves to be discussed here.

I think this is way off topic for MO. I will refrain from voting to close as I can see from this and other examples that there is an incredible pent-up demand for this kind of discussion which doesn't seem to have other outlets. I wish the AMS or a similar organization showed some leadership to create a forum for discussions about the profession. Is there any AMS officer among MO users?

We often hear good things about how MO is useful in a mathematician's daily work. "MathOverflow is like the colleague down the hall" is something I hear very often. Our founder Anton once said: "I want(ed) MathOverflow to be useful for me!" Other moderators, including myself, have been caught saying similar things here and there.

I would like to know how MO is useful for YOU!

(Input from "lurkers" is especially welcome! Note that meta.mathoverflow.net is completely separate from mathoverflow.net. You don't need a MathOverflow account to post on meta. Even if you do have a MathOverflow account, your meta account is not tied to it in any way. Anonymous posts are also welcome.)

I have asked a question regarding usefulness of mathematical open problems. The question got closed immediately , Can someone tell me why ? Now I noticed a serial down-voting. Why is that so ?

Anyway here is the question .

Thanks !

Warning: This is a sensitive topic! Please stay on topic and be respectful...

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/116201/does-bourbakis-and-grothendiecks-approach-to-mathematics-survive-today-clos

I don't think it deserves to be re-opened. I'm not so sure if it should be deleted. But this could be a borderline case people want to discuss.

It seeems to me that someone or some group is very consciously going round upvoting questions which have been closed and downvoted as off-topic, presumably on the grounds that these have often been asked by people who just didn't read the FAQ but meant no malice. Or perhaps someone strongly believes that negative vote totals for new users are overly censorious/unfriendly/exclusive/elitist/reactionary?

Is this just my imagination?

I think this is happening more often now, for some reason, so having the usual arguments at some accessible place would help being nice when closing those questions.

˄  
3    Question:
˅    How do I celebrate?

˄  
5    Answer: 
˅    Friday night party with your math pals.
✔

Out of general considerations, as well as being (one of) the reason(s) for this concern, I would like to ask the community for opinions on this matter, and in particular I would like to ask those for whom this should be a concern to voice it, if possible, including a reason for it.

Some remarks:

1. This is not intended as a general debate on anonymous usage of MO (this has happened in the past, and in case somebody should like to restart it, s/he can count on my participation, but please do not start it in this thread). Only whether the act of voting is a specific concern is the subject of this thread.

2. How frequent are anonymous users that vote: this is a bit hard to tell as it depends on ones precise definition of 'anonymous', and which one is relevant depends on the precise reason for the concern. In any case, under most typical definitions, a few percent of the entire voting user pool (although there are certain ramifications to this question that would increase this percentage to a more significant fraction, though perhaps I should not digress).

3. This debate is not entirely abstract, since at least I am willing (in certain ways) to react to concerns that should be raised. However, which line of action would be useful to address the concerns depends on their precise nature, the reason for the concern. Thus, please, supply it.

Source and context:

The concern was raised by Gil Kalai in a discussion with me in the meta thread of the "Common false believes" question (towards the end). I did not quote him here directly, since this would more or less make it necessary that I also rigth away 'reply', and this would make this starting post a bit long and potentially push the discussion in a certain direction. [@Gil Kalai: could you please reraise your concern here, even if only by coping it, thank you.] That he is only/specifically concerned about the voting, however, informed the precise phrasing of this post (I hope I am not commiting a misinterpretation, yet it seems very clear).

Summary and repetition:

This thread is for opinions and concerns regarding the fact that anonymous users vote to close and reopen questions , not about anonymous users in general.

Personal note: I intend to participate in the discussion, but likely not initially (it depends a bit; I will reply to questions that diretly involve/address me and supply factual information (to the extent I am able to) in case the need should arise without delay, except for the inevitable one).

FYI: Got email notification which was marked as spam by the widely used anti spam software spamassasin.

Here is the log:

  From: MathOverflow <info@mathoverflow.net>
  Subject: *****SPAM***** 1 Question Has 1 Answer - MathOverflow
  X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.1 (2007-05-02)
  X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=9.3 required=6.2 tests=BAYES_99=6.1,HTML_MESSAGE=1.8,
    MIME_QP_LONG_LINE=1.396 autolearn=no version=3.2.1
   X-Spam-Report:
    *  6.1 BAYES_99 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 99 to 100%
    *      [score: 0.9963]
    *  1.8 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
    *  1.4 MIME_QP_LONG_LINE RAW: Quoted-printable line longer than 76 chars

I can live with this and don't complain, but more aggressive spam settings might bury the email deeper.

I think it would be nice if we could migrate our existing linked images into imgur.

It's possible to do this "by hand". For example, I edited one of Joseph's posts in the sandbox 2.0 site http://dev.mathoverflow.stackexchange.com/questions/103719/lattice-cube-minimal-blocking-sets, and just copied one of his existing URLs to an image, clicked the "add new image" button, selected "from the web" and pasted that same URL. You then need to do a little cleanup to replace the old URL with the new imgur link. Of course, because this is an edit, it bumps the post to the top of the front page, and can't really be done "in bulk".

Alternatively, quite likely we could ask the SE team to migrate all of our existing images, before the new 2.0 site goes live. I'm not sure that they'd be willing to, but I wanted to ask here if people think this would be a good idea before making a request. Any objections?

[Edit (Anton): you will only be able to visit the above link after setting the beta authorization cookie by following this link]

I just heard through the grapevine that we've unfortunately lost user 9062 to the inevitable ebb of time. Since many members of MO are acquainted with him, I hope it is not outre to share this sad news here.