→ 2 messages moved to ­Trash

Sorry to have asked anything of you, @Xander.

@flawr Yes it is

Note How to prove that there exists any non negative integral solution to this equation is one more attempt to cheat on the current USAMTS math contest. I've provided the details in a comment there, and flagged it, but it may take some time for the flag to be handled. I've voted to close, so perhaps we can close & delete it in the meantime if need be.

Bit unfortunate to see that this question went into the HNQ It did give some folks entertainment , but I've just closed it because it went into that queue, and I don't think it's an accurate reflection of our on-site content that I would like to broadcast to the other sites.

@JohnOmielan One more close vote left.

People are questioning if this is a duplicate. The books requirement is not a part of the duplicate target, but only one answer here , and very little discussion, has gone around it. If it isn't a duplicate, then it's probably too broad as written, so would anybody like to help me close this for the correct reason? It's come from the reopen-thread on meta.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title (95): Is the area of the parallelogram the solution set of this Differential Equation? [Illustration](youtu.be/O85OWBJ2ayo?t=1338) by Lucas Perasolo on math.SE

@JitendraSingh Great thanks! I wanted to ask about this question. While it is short, it contains all the necessary information. I posted it as a self-answered question after solving it because I thought other people might also be interested in this.

A commenter pointed out that it seems the people who reviewed this question probably just were not aware that it was self answered. - So I was wondering how should I proceed with this question? I don't see any reason for it not to be open.

I have the impression that the reviewers didn't consider it was a self answered question, and probably just voted to close when they saw that the question wasn't very long, without considering the complete context.

@flawr: self answered questions need context as well. Self answering is not meant to generate a solutions manual consisting of a problem statement followed by an answer.

@ParamanandSingh What kind of context would you wish in this question?

That's exactly what quid was refering to I htink:

As a first how did the problem originate, say from an exercise, or assignment or just by arm chair thinking.

> (...) I think there is no point to insist that somebody includes an attempt in the question-post, when at the same time they provide a full solution in an answer-post.

Next what are possible options available to solve the problem.

An attempt is not necessary but if it is included fine.

But my point is, for a self answered question it feels completely futile to come up with an attempt if you actually have the whole solution, don't you think so?

Then don't give attempt

But give more relevant details

I wish I could show you an example of one of my self answered questions, but somehow that sounds like self advertisement

Please do! I just don't see how adding anything here would not just add unnecessary noise that distracts from the actual problem.

Ok wait I will post a link

Check this. I made my answer there as community wiki but this is not a norm or necessary

The question itself arose via discussion with a user in comments to some other thread. Links are provided in question.

Thank you!

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body (95): Curvature and plane by Gauss Riemann on math.SE

@ParamanandSingh so would you say explaining that i couldn't find another satisfactory answer to this problem on MSE would provide sufficient "context"?

@ParamanandSingh I find that proof very well writen btw!

@SmokeDetector It seems that \alpha followed by \prime triggers the SmokeDetector :)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-latin title (81): 𝑃((𝐴|𝐵)|𝐶)=𝑃(𝐴|𝐵∩𝐶) by ajcodes on math.SE

@TeresaLisbon Not surprisingly , this post (finally deleted) got again an undelete-vote. And sadly, it will be undeleted over and over again (if it will be possible at all to delete it again). But at least thank you for all you contributed vanishing this post at least for some time.

To make it clear : That this "proof" received so much attention is bad, but this is apparently how this world works. The newspapers write a lot of bullshit , often intented to raise their edition. I do not want to speculate whether this is the case here. The alternative would be a bad research , which would be no better.

But I see no merit to give this "proof" an additional platform, even if here it is made more than clear that this "proof" has no merit whatsoever. Experience however shows that bad publicity unfortunately is usually "water for the mills" of nonsense. The modern physics was heavily struck by this phenomenon and math should not have the same destiny.

this was apparently reposted although the error was clarified in the comments.

D

@flawr Hi, and thanks a lot for being receptive, it was good to see the conversation you had. I haven't really written self-answers, but the way I like to imagine it is this : you need to imagine that a different person is asking the question, and a different person is answering it. So that way, you're sort of still having to fulfill the asker's job i.e. providing context, and the answerer's job i.e. answering the question! I think this format makes the question better to read, but of course...

... it is an opinion, which seems to be the majority as well. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that you are able to improve your question. Let us know if you have further concerns or roadblocks, and good luck with your question!

@Peter I think there's too much debate over that question, and eventually I think it will need a moderator lock, the way it is going!

@Peter I'm struggling in this question, because I really don't know what context to ask for. I am not voting to close, because I am not able to pinpoint a particular thing that is missing. It just seems to be a misunderstanding of a theorem, that has been stated. I think answers have to explain "why" the misunderstanding if OP can't do it, unfortunately. This is a bit of a middle ground question for me.

D1, D2, D3.

D4, D5, D6.

D7, D8, D9.

D10, D11, D12.

C1, C2, C3.

C4, C5, C6.

C7, C8, C9.

C10, C11, C12.

Avalanche! On it now.

Thank you!

This question seems to have an edit one of the Ds from above, it may still not be on-site but if so, we can try to look for reopening.

@TeresaLisbon It's off-topic. It's basically nonsense.

@user21820 Good point, I don't think the gist of the question is on-topic. Apart from one duplicate question that I think had a very good answer which the duplicate didn't have, I've voted to delete all the Ds. But none of them are fully deleted yet, so more people will have to go through the queue.

@amWhy @ArcticChar @Peter @TeresaLisbon: Note D5.

@flawr: well, a lot of questions get closed as duplicate and sometimes the asker argues (by editing their question) that the dupes don't answer his query and gives some details as to how their their query is different. Often the question then gets reopened.

@flawr: so if you can mention that there is no satisfactory answer in some related similar questions, it does help.

@TeresaLisbon I don't agree it is middle-ground. Not only was the question reposted, it is arrogant, twice saying that a theorem is wrong without even citing the source nor asking for help rather than just saying other people are wrong.

I agree with your comment, of course, but the question should be closed and deleted if the asker doesn't put in a good effort.

@user21820 But "arrogant" isn't a reason to close, right? I mean, isn't it a presumption on our part that OP is arrogant vs the fact that they've just misapplied it and have just written something rude without considering it? I would agree if they had a rude comment towards another user on the question, but my problem is, I don't quite know what "effort" to ask for. It seems to be like one of those questions where the material is really very far over the asker's head.

@TeresaLisbon It isn't, but there is a very clear "no effort" flavour here, and compounded with arrogance makes for a smelly brew.

@user21820 In that, I will agree with you. I won't close this question because of my conundrum that I don't know what to offer the OP as improvement for this question, but I think it will be closed as stated, because many people will share your sentiments.

@user21820, @TeresaLisbon: I don't assume arrogance, but posting the same thing twice without really trying to figure out the comments is something like pestering.

The question is now closed.

By the way, I can detail why I say "no effort"? (1) They didn't cite the source; (2) they didn't explain why "assumption part holds". Just supposing things don't automatically make something hold, and I think anyone who actively tries to show "a≤b+ϵ for all ϵ>0" would realize the problem.

@user21820 I will use your comment while trying to formulate an improvement comment. By the way, @ParamanandSingh thank you both for your attention to this question. I would have provided a close vote had the question not been closed now!

@TeresaLisbon Sure, up to you.

On the other hand that theorem has become so famous on mathse that other more important theorems might be feeling jealous

@ParamanandSingh Which theorem?

$a\leq b+\epsilon $ theorem

Lol!

I don't like the attention it has got on mathse

As if that's the most important thing in real-analysis

@ParamanandSingh I personally would just delete it, but I can restrain my finger for a while. If you also have half a mind to delete, we can pick one of us to put a vote.

Let's see if the asker posts for a third time or improves their question. If they post again let's go for delete.

@ParamanandSingh They posted again because the first was deleted.

Yeah i can gather that. Maybe wait for some time

@flawr: By the way, I have a (slightly) different opinion from Teresa concerning self-answered questions. I see no problem as long as: (1) it is written by someone who has sufficient expertise in that area; (2) the question and answer contain content that does not exist on Math SE and is difficult to find on the internet; (3) the question includes motivation in terms of usefulness or interest to the community.

(1) excludes for instance posts on real analysis by students who cannot distinguish ∀∃ and ∃∀.

(2) excludes duplicates.

(3) excludes random questions that only the asker and his/her friends care about.

@user21820 D5 is gone.

@amWhy Thanks!

@ParamanandSingh Thanks, I'll keep that in mind in the future.

@flawr: and I really like the way you participated in the discussion. Thanks for the same. Enjoy the pleasure math has to offer you on this website.

@ParamanandSingh Agreed.

@user21820: i dont know what will happen to D5. It's deleted right now. Maybe it needs a lock from mods

@TeresaLisbon Thank you. Yes I do see that the context is some requirement thtat I just wasn't aware off. I have used this website for a few years now with mostly a positive experience. In this particular case I just got a little bit irritated of that closure without much feedback. (I usually try to add a comment when I vote for a closure unless it is a dupe.)

@ParamanandSingh Maybe you can try flagging it.

Let me check the time line to see the number of delete/undelete cycles.

@user21820 All D's are deleted now.

D (actually, 1 downvote is sufficient).

@amWhy Thanks!

@user21820 I appreciate your perspective too. In my opinion a motivation isn't actually necessary, but I see that the consensus on the site does not match that. And I guess for the site itself it might be beneficial this way.

@ParamanandSingh Thanks for your (and everyone elses) input too!

@user21820: flagged D5

@flawr You're welcome!

@TeresaLisbon Arrogance IS a reason to close a question, the "be-nice" policy has its reasons. With this repost with the repeated claim that the theorem is false together with the fact that several users pointed out the flaw in the earlier post is a clear attack against those users stating that they have no clue and are not be able to see the "obvious flaw" in the theorem.

@Peter If you have the earlier link, do post it so that we can all be busybodies and see for ourselves the ignoring in the first thread. =)

@user21820: thats a new word for me: busybody. Will use in word games in cafe and tavern

Could someone clarify for me what question, exactly, is the source of so much current commentary?

@Peter I didn't acknowledge that earlier and agree with it. With this foresight, I would have probably closed the question. It's been a testing day, I've had some real trouble on meta today, so I don't mind taking the lessons into tomorrow!

@ArcticChar Maybe , you can help me since you noticed the earlier post as well. I cannot find it at the moment.

I found it, it is here.

@TeresaLisbon This is supposedly the second one according to Arctic's comment. We don't know where the first is.

@user21820 Oh sorry, I'll find the first one shortly.

@TeresaLisbon Teach us how you do it, by the way.

@user21820 I'm not able to find the old one using the mod tools , it's too old. But this one, I just found it because I remembered the text from Peter saying it had come before. So I just found that link!

With "obvious flaw" , I did not intent to repeat a phrase. The quotation marks are just for the fact that there is no flaw in the theorem.

Could someone please clue me in, given my overlooked but now pinned message here? @user21820, @Peter, @TeresaLisbon ??

@amWhy Yes, sure. So this particular question was posted to request for its closure, and I was initially very reluctant because I couldn't come up with a suggestion for what to improve in the question. Then user21820 and Peter guided me towards doing this, and we also noted that the rude nature of the asker in claiming the question was wrong did reflect an unwillingness to be open towards they being wrong, which would violate the be-nice policy. With that the question closed, and...

... it has two delete votes.

I cannot find it now. Probably it's deleted. But the old question is exactly the same, with the same 4 and 5. If I remembered correctly, it is answered.

here

@Peter Thanks! Okay the verdict is completely clear now. It is an absurd question and I will deliver the final vote.

It received, by the way , 4 reopen-votes.

@amWhy I missed something, and during the analysis : the question was asked before , and it is above. It has been deleted, and since I missed it, I now realize that the be-nice part of things actually rings more truer than initially. I would say we can delete the new question as well now!

So, just to make it easy for us to find again: Absurd question claims that a basic real analysis theorem implies "5 ≤ 4", and was reposted here.

Thanks!

@TeresaLisbon I have already made it go.

@user21820 Right, both are gone, and we will be on the lookout for further repeated questions of this kind. Very productive , this discussion, from my point of view.

@TeresaLisbon I now see that one has to know this earlier post to understand why it is arrogant (or even beyond that). As a single post, it would just be a fallacy of the author.

@Peter Correct! The first post completely reinforced the point you made, and I missed this first post, so I had to make conclusions based off the second post alone, which is why I was hesitant. If I'd put the two together, I'd have never said half the things I did!

By the way, exiting to try and work some Sunday night magic in my code, see you all!

@TeresaLisbon If it is off-topic, it should be deleted. There are some extremely uncommon circumstances under which we will close and lock off-topic questions because they are important enough to preserve. I have not seen a convincing case that this is one of those questions.

@JohnOmielan Thanks, I've handled it.

\o @Xander

@flawr (a) Self-answered questions still need context. (b) The question is almost certainly a duplicate (that is, I would be shocked to discover that it had never been asked on Math SE before).

Not quite a Math SE link, but the following question on Cross Validated is a near duplicate: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14483/…

Also related: math.stackexchange.com/questions/4006168/…

And this one, too: math.stackexchange.com/questions/1329547/…

@user21820 I mean, I suppose that this depends on how you feel about the law of the excluded middle...

@XanderHenderson Wait, what depends on LEM? I'm missing something.

@flawr Not my area of expertise, but this looks also similar (if not a duplicate): math.stackexchange.com/q/3917996/42969

@MartinR Yes it's the same thing. And I don't know what's the point of saying "one-dimensional" when X^2 is also one-dimensional...

But the post you liked is a bad question too?

Alright I got to go, see you all!

@XanderHenderson (On a short visit, will exit again) I think I'm not quite able to understand what "extremely uncommon" means, and I was testing the waters with that question because I found it "extremely uncommon", even if a little off-topic. I think I've been convinced I was wrong, but I will wait for an example of an extremely uncommon occurrence before raising one the next time!

@user21820 Doesn't the usual argument come down to a contradiction? Suppose that $a > b$, then $a-b > 0$, so there exists $0 < \varepsilon < a-b$ such that $a > b+\varepsilon$. Contradiction.

Doesn't this rely on the LEM? (Again, foundational logic is way far away from what I am really comfortable with, so I am happy to be told that I am being an idiot here.)

@TeresaLisbon The stupid Batman equation question is an example of a terrible, off-topic question which has been preserved because it was deemed "of historical significance" to the site.

I don't like the varepsilon @XanderHenderson, but your argument is fine :)

@ParamanandSingh What's wrong with $\varepsilon$?

@MartinR there are a few near-/dupes, all that I have seen so far were very unsatisfactory

Need to type more : the extra "var" @XanderHenderson

@ParamanandSingh The aesthetics of \varnothing, outweighs the milliseconds needed to type "var". I'm with @Xander on this!!

@flawr It looks like the same question to me. And you wrote that “... there was no other question about this particular problem available”. You could have written “I have found this ... and that ..., which are similar questions but the answers are unsatisfactory because ...”

@ParamanandSingh But the default $\epsilon$ is so ugly...

Ditto $\varnothing$ vs $\emptyset$.

Yikes, I meant "\varepsilon".

@XanderHenderson Agreed!

@XanderHenderson Indeed. (And I plead guilty for abusing the “star” ...)

@MartinR Yes, I see that many people think that such a motiviation is necessary, but I do not agree with that.

@flawr You are welcome to disagree, but if you want to participate on Math SE, then you will need follow the rules. If you think that your policies are silly, then I would invite you to find another forum (reddit? Quora? your own blog?).

Alternatively, you could bring up the question on meta, and see if you can change the consensus opinion.

The discussion here is a good place to start: math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28241/…

@XanderHenderson absolutely, I did update the question and as I mentioned I do inted to provded that to satisfy those rules.

I also fail to see how Martin R's proposed duplicate is not a duplicate. Martin R's question is also of low-quality, but it already exists on the site and has been answered...

And this answer is (mathematically) almost the same as the self-answer you gave.

@MartinR Exactly! Editing only to add "by the way, I've also answered it, so look there for context" to the question, more or less, does not improve the question, @flawr.

I mean if someone would have commented that they thought it was a dupe I would have considered this as perfectly acceptable, what I found strange was that it was closed without providing any specific reason, which was why I asked about it here.

@amWhy I do not intend to do anything else to this question as I deem it very unlikely that it would ever get reopened. I wrote it because I think it would be valuable for MSE and I learned that I have a different opinion than the community seems to have about that, and I'll leave it at that.

@flawr In addition to being a duplicate question, it is utterly without context. The general rule is (1) if a question has no context, close it, else (2) if the question is a duplicate close it.

My point is, even if the question is a duplicate, it still needs to meet the site's standards.

As I said, I don't see a point in providing even more context, and I understand that the community thinks differently. I'd gladly delete the question but as far as I know it is frowned upon, isn't it?

@flawr I would encourage you to delete the question you asked, but repost your answer as an answer to the suggested duplicate target.

@Xander How is the weather in AZ? I read a piece yesterday that engineers may need to lower the amount of water diverted from the Colorado River to AZ, which worries farmers in AZ. I hope this fall lessens the heat, at least.

@XanderHenderson It appears I cannot delete it, should I flag it for a mod to do it?

@amWhy We are in a terrible drought, which has been ongoing for almost two decades. Water is a problem.

Though we did get a good monsoon season this year, which helped.

@flawr It is not necessary.

(and you can't delete it because you accepted the answer)

ah, thanks, didn't know that!

But I would still encourage you to post your answer in response to the linked dupe-target. While it is mathematically similar to one that exists, I think it is of better quality (in that it takes a little more time to explain what is going on).

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body (95): Half planes and curvature. Let $\alpha:I\to\mathbb{R}^2$ a curve parametrized by arc length and let $s_0\in I$ such that $k(s_0)=0$ and $k′(s_0)\neq0$ by Gauss Riemann on math.SE

@XanderHenderson Yikes! What is the "monsoon" season, or when was it in AZ? I know it in reference to e.g., India. I'm guessing a period of sustained rain?

@amWhy No, we get cell storms.

So there are these massive cloud formations which drop an inch of rain in 20 minutes, and then the sun comes out again.

sgsup.asu.edu/basics-arizona-monsoon-desert-meteorology

@XanderHenderson Ahh, I see. Thanks for the link! Very informative.