cv-pls transformation This is an oldie which I can't make sense of, yet which somehow has 17 upvotes... Calculating a value inside one range to a value of another range‭ - jarryd‭ 2013-04-30 12:20:45Z

@XanderHenderson I think it's asking how to map $[-1,1]\to [a,b]$, presumably in the obvious way

but ew

and judging from the accepted answer, that's indeed what the OP wanted

I can understand up-voting the answer, but that question?

How to greatly obfuscate simply number theory yet attract more upvotes than other much better answers by dropping a lot of big names that they clearly don't understand well. It's sad that some beginners are being misled by such. Recommend downvote and deletion.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, blacklisted website in answer, pattern-matching website in answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, +1 more (261): Solving the linear system $XL + L^TX = M$ efficiently by nancyullivan on math.SE

Does anyone else feel like the trigonometry tag on this question is entirely unnecessary?

@user21820 Why should C3 be closed? Its an honest question, with context, where someone is trying to understand a (flawed) argument.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (62): A question about a step in the proof of Sard's lemma by SharonTTurner on math.SE

This question is a bit strange, not so much because of the question itself but the turn it’s taken in comments: math.stackexchange.com/q/3506860/137524

del-pls transformation No Roomba: accepted answer Finding the transform function of two histograms‭ - Ali‭ 2018-12-10 19:24:31Z

@user1729 The question may be an honest one, but in my opinion has no lasting value for the site. There are far too many cranks and trolls that keep posting nonsense about the famous open conjectures all over the internet, and already some of them are posting answers(!) to other cranky questions, and they also upvote one another.

This question may not have that problem, but it is easy to imagine the situation where we have thousands of questions "I saw X's proof of conjecture C on vixra. Is it correct?"

In the case of this question, I think it should be closed as off-topic but not deleted (because the accepted answer correctly points out the flaw).

I wish to emphasize that this is my opinion, and if you disagree it's fine.

questions of the form "Where is the flaw in this argument?" are certainly substantive, but are they actually useful?

there's certainly instances where it's worth keeping them, but...

@Semiclassical Indeed. I don't mind if the argument is their own proof attempt of a known solved problem (including homework), and they show effort in identifying the flaw or where they are unsure of their reasoning (such as in this case). I don't like it when Math SE gets flooded with useless crank stuff.

I'd say there's also an exception when the argument is wrong in an interesting way

Totally agree.

though that's a very subjective exception

Agree on that too.

it's easy enough to come up with exceptional cases, of course. but "vixra is not a reputable source" is a pretty good heuristic

Yea. It's what happens when the author cannot even get endorsed for arXiv!

the only person you have to convince, to get hosted on vixra, is yourself

@Semiclassical How can it not be reputable?! It has so many high quality proofs of the Riemann hypothesis! :P

@XanderHenderson Ah, you're right. How foolish of me, to doubt viXra!

It has just as many high-quality proofs of the Riemann hypothesis as it has high-quality disproofs. viXra truly is a marvel

@XanderHenderson Actually, RH is nothing. vixra also proves that arithmetic itself is inconsistent.

Then again, inconsistent nonsense proves anything and everything.

M A R V E L O U S !

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