tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (attribution on MO contact undergraduate project)

Will Jagy comments on "attribution on MO contact undergraduate project" (14702)

Will Jagy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:22:48 -0700

Thank you, Nick. I hoped you might notice this Meta thread, in case your college email address no longer worked. I apologize for making this public to this degree, but I had little idea what to do. I should be done with a draft of the final section in a few hours, I will email that to you, Gerhard, and my co-author. An early version is on the arXiv, I have only a few posts there so it should be easy to spot the right one. Actually, I have a pdf of that as well, why not email that too, it will give context. As I said, my proposed section is a separate Latex document, a page or two expected. Anyway, if I have not said it, the identities that pop up from your REU project data are really very nice, you did good work. And good luck at Chicago.

Nick_Salter comments on "attribution on MO contact undergraduate project" (14701)

Nick_Salter — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:44:42 -0700

Hi Will,

I received your email, but given that this discussion is now being carried on in public as well, I thought I would post here for the benefit of the community. First of all, let me say that I am grateful for your willingness to involve me in this process at all. That being said, I don't have a strong opinion. Gerhard's suggestions seem reasonable.

Nick

Will Jagy comments on "attribution on MO contact undergraduate project" (14700)

Will Jagy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:12:17 -0700

Thanks, Gerhard. It did not occur to me that the "success stories" thread would have samples. I like your approach, it is short, and that is key for this. I had not worked up the sample language yet, I usually try to let the mathematics guide the prose. But my co-author asked for sample in Latex by Wednesday, the plan now being that i send one final section (one page) with the identities, one without, if he thinks the identities and attribution will pass the referee without comment we put it in. Again, the phrase you supply with alpher, bethe, gamow, is precisely where i was uncertain.

I may not have a correct email address for Salter anymore, I sent him something asking about his wishes, but he just graduated and may not check that address anymore. If he sees this thread perhaps he will post something. For whatever reason, Kevin James never answered me, although he does keep documentation of the REU programs online and, presumably, keeps in touch with the kids.

Gerhard, I found a half dozen suitable citations, plus Anton posted on Jan. 17, 2010 including
http://mathoverflow.net/attribution
which gives a simple format for the citation proper. I like Steve Huntsman's post of Sep. 13, 2010, he also includes MO participants in his Acknowledgements.

Anyway, let me email you something tonight or tomorrow, I can also put part of that here if anybody else has posted.

grp comments on "attribution on MO contact undergraduate project" (14698)

grp — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 23:09:00 -0700

There is a [sticky] meta discussion of MathOverflow success stories which point to how others cited MathOverflow-induced contributions. If you provided a sample text, that would make it easy for others to critique and refine. To get the ball rolling (I choose theta to be pi/2), here is a suggested phrasing.

One of the authors acknowledges Nick Salter (cf [NSMO]) for questions and data which led/to the formulation of identities alpher, bethe, and gamow.

[NSMO] place here some appropriate citing of MathOverflow, as well as any personal communication with Nick Salter.

If either James or Salter want to further promote the Reu results, a citation to those web pages would be appropriate, otherwise leave it at MO and personal communication. In My opinion.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.06.05

Will Jagy comments on "attribution on MO contact undergraduate project" (14692)

Will Jagy — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:50:36 -0700

It appears one of my papers has been accepted pending revision of the final section, which is going to be shortened and renamed "Concluding Remarks.". I told my co-author again about some similar, very pretty, results I worked up from data sent to me through an MO question by young Nick Salter. The data was collected for a Summer REU project at Clemson, anyway, here are many links:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/8326/is-there-an-approach-to-understanding-solution-counts-to-quadratic-forms-that-doe

http://www.math.clemson.edu/~kevja/

http://www.math.clemson.edu/~kevja/REU/2009/Participants.html

http://www.math.clemson.edu/~kevja/REU/2009/Research.html

http://www.math.clemson.edu/~kevja/REU/2009/mod_forms_reu_write_up.pdf

The short story is that I contacted Salter, always cc'ing Kevin James. There is no evidence that James ever read any of my emails, certainly he never replied to me. Salter sent me a three page Latex summary of his own and his raw computer data. I told him a different way to look at the data, what I believed it meant in the end, and the very nice identities I found. I suppose I thought I could coach him through positive integral forms, genera, and the Siegel weighted representation measure. At that point Salter replied that he had lost interest in the project.

So, any help with language and, especially, Latex and Bibtex for this would be appreciated. If I cannot satisfy my co-author that this will raise no eyebrows, then it simply will not be included, as there is then no adequate reason to disturb an accepted paper.