[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of body (43): Change of variables question? by picklemonster99 on math.SE

@amWhy ???

All I can see is some drivel there.

If there is something that needs my attention please be specific.

I'll be back in not too long.

Oh, great, @quid! If that's all you think it is, going back to the previous page in the mods' office, then, then what can I say, except that you are free to go back to all your priorities elsewhere. Please don't let me stop you!

@amWhy I will.

@amWhy : I have to agree here with @quid. It is best to avoid any participation in that kind of discussion. Some users have so much patience and time that they can keep on pestering indefinitely.

@SmokeDetector I'm not sure if this occurred because of the smoke detector in this room (and I can't view the question anymore, so this is going off of memory), but the question which was just deleted seemed to be on the right track to me.

It wasn't a perfect question, but the user was new and after an edit the equation no longer was an image. Although the questioner didn't include their attempt, it was probaly because they couldn't (they sketched the function) rarther than because they didn't make an attempt themselves.

If it were just up to me, I would help the user with their question, but not upvote it either so it has less of a chance to appear in someones Google search.

one vote needed to close this PSQ

close PSQ

I have upvoted both the comments from Jyrki. Let us keep it closed and not delete

@ParamanandSingh Same, I've put a comment asking people not to answer the question and that I will help the user if required.

Besides, whatever happened in the moderators' chatroom today was inexplicable! Although it would have made Xander's job far easier if quid did join in.

Completely bogus answer was accepted...

@user21820 Voted to close and downvoted both question and accepted answer. The OP is a user who used to at least write tolerable questions all those years ago when I started out on the site (I think late 2016/early 2017 or so). I use to actually look out for their questions, not to answer them but to read and understand them. Amazing, really. I think an impostor has taken over the account.

@TeresaLisbon I recognize the username; this user seems to post some okay questions and some questions with little effort, with no apparent pattern. I agree with closure. (I forgot to close-vote just now as I was preoccupied with the wrong answer!)

One more delete-vote needed on the wrong answer!

@user21820 Actually, this user has been asking questions like "which mathematicians were criminals?" and "which mathematicians made a lot of writing mistakes" in recent times, which were closed as being off topic.

Some really odd questions in there. Also,@user21820 , happy Good Friday, if you happen to observe it.

@TeresaLisbon Oh really? I wasn't aware of that because I didn't look at their recent questions.

@TeresaLisbon I don't observe it, but I enjoy the day off, and same to you!

@user21820 Oh, I actually don't have the day off! Work from home it is.

C/D

@TeresaLisbon Oh. Well I am also going to do a bit of work, but not much.

@Peter That user and that topic again?!? I voted as "not about math" because now it doesn't even have amusement value.

@user21820 Nice! I think that while relaxing, you often get your best ideas. Speaking of which, @Peter's post above contains another user who has been going bonkers over fancy infinities. Recent answers and questions indicate a tendency to think outside the box, but well outside the mathematical universe as well. Voted to close that for the "other" reason.

Hi @TeresaLisbon

I'm almost new to MSE site.

I have a question

@amirali Hey, how are you? Are you ok coming to a different chatroom, so that if the discussion is off topic we can go there?

Fine thanks. yes if you prefer I'm ok to go another room.

Sure. Do come here

Thanks!

PSQ?

PSQ

@TeresaLisbon: the last PSQ you linked already came up in my close queue. Needs 2 more votes to close

@ParamanandSingh Sorry, was on the PSQ crawl!

@TeresaLisbon: the discussion in math mod office was not worth participating. Someone should have put a ban on such pestering.

@TeresaLisbon: no need of sorry. One can't usually figure out if a question came in someone's review queue.

@ParamanandSingh Agreed. It became a rant after some time, and while I think the user maintained some civility in the starting, towards the end heads were lost. But I must blame James Grime, who is the person that directed them here. Also, I feel bad that such a user was subject to abuse. There is a way of doing things that should be far more civilized and yet to the point.

Of course, James was acting in good faith, but I think that he should also be informed that this forum is not for such purposes, because otherwise he'll just keep sending more people here.

@TeresaLisbon I think, the first PSQ is OK. It is hard to show effort here , without already knowing the solution which turned out to be far easier than it appeared on first sight. Technically , there is lacking context , but I see no problem in this case.

C/D

C/D

C/D Very old post , and a long way to even a closure. And again some people insist that 1/0 can be made meaningful which is just wrong.

The claimed convention 1/0=0 is particular weird, that makes no sense at all.

@Peter Thanks. I was not a 100% sure for the reason you mentioned, so I had put the question mark. It is always difficult to judge situations when there is an answer showing the question in a poorer light, so that's why I put the question mark. I've retracted my close vote,and voted to close the others you mentioned. The very first question of the three is open for deletion, with my delete vote added.

Another problem with such a question is that we are inconsistent with our treatment of such questions. For example , see here : it's obvious that f(x)=x is a counterexample, yet no answer points that out, so instead we've actually got one pretty decent answer, and the question has three upvotes. Anything could have happened if an answer came in five minutes and went like : take $f(x) = x$

@TeresaLisbon Actually, this answer provides the example $f(x)=x$.

@JoséCarlosSantos Great point. However, that answer came about an hour after the others, and all the other answers came within eight minutes of the question being posted. Those answers created the first impression that maybe the effort of the author was enough. There was a comment giving a suggestion, but even that came after the answers, I believe.

@TeresaLisbon It's strange indeed that the authors of the first answers did not even consider the identity function.

@JoséCarlosSantos Yes. Actually I was there when the question came, and I wanted to say this in a comment, but I stopped myself because some other work came about!

@ParamanandSingh The user in question, asked me (see his addressing me) when they first arrived. I began interacting because at first their questions seemed innocent at first, shorthly thereafter, I pinged mods, Xander interacted, was fed up, and a new user commented inappropriately, I flagged, and the flag was removed. quid showed up long after I stopped participating, and you well see at least 16 more repeated comments he made after I left. quid was clueless, and after the fact, so if didn't want

@JoséCarlosSantos Then I check the answers, wow, $\sin(x)$? What? Then one of the answerers says "f, as I think, is not constant". I found that "as I think" very interesting.

to interact, that was his choice. I had not interacted for some time before quid finally appeared. Please don't address and scold me about a situation you aren't aware of, nor of the course of events. We've seen this behavior in other users who spiraled into crankery on main, ranting on meta, and taking pages and pages up in chat.

Too little effort IMO in this question

@amWhy I went and took a look at the chatroom transcript, and what I take out of it is that the user became more and more reluctant to admit that MSE was not the place where their job should be done. I think the situation could have been nicer, but I did not know about the new user who added an offensive comment that had to be flagged. That's like injecting poison into the conversation : no more can you interact like you were doing so. That user deserves more than comment removal in this light.

@TeresaLisbon Indeed. I had not known the asker's grievance until interacting slightly. He admitted it had to do with a post that got unfairly deleted outlining the results of his researches, but had no real question. And the feedback he got there, was precisely what he was challenging in the mod's office, again, repeating himself, etc., That's why I sought out a mod from among pingable mods, and Xander came to the rescue. Any way thanks for you perceptions!

@amWhy To continue with that bad user : It is a pathetic habit to interfere in a conversation with the degree of impoliteness as that user did. To do it with a swear : that's simply unacceptable.Just because another user is being adamant with their choice, doesn't mean that we can stoop to whatever level we want to silence the user.I just found the whole incident drawn out,as I mentioned earlier, but that's not our fault.That's the fault of the asker and his/her adamancy.I think we did our best!

@TeresaLisbon I think we did our best as well.

@TeresaLisbon The effort is not even existing. A classical PSQ

PSQ

@TeresaLisbon If we downvote a few more times, then we can delete it early.

@user21820 Let's get it done!

It's at 0 now.

PSQ to delete.

@user1729 Gone.

@amWhy: If my comments seem as some sort of scolding I am extremely sorry. I just think that engaging with such users (the one associated with pronunciation of numbers in base $2^n$) only gives them more ammunition to spew more trash.

Anyway hope mods will take some action on such incidents.

@user21820 @TeresaLisbon the PSQ can be deleted now.

@ParamanandSingh Thanks, one more vote needed!

@user21820 Teresa's PSQ is gone!

This nonsense is up for deletion too.

@user21820 only one more delete vote needed.

Thanks!

@user21820 I don't see what is so objectionable/nonsense about that question. It is simply asking if $|[0, 1]|=|[0, 2]|$. There may be a deeper confusion, but confused people asking question is kind of what this site does (otherwise they wouldn't ask questions).

Close. Low effort, solution has been already given in the comments.

@user1729 The problem with that nonsense is that it is not the first time.

@user21820 The question is gone.

@TeresaLisbon: Thanks!

@user21820 Welcome!

@vitamind the question has been closed, AND now deleted!

Identified as duplicate

@user21820 From that user, or just that question appears occasionally?

PSQ to close

Some other PSQ's to close: 4086770, 1986680, 2094609, 2044072

...and some more: 2057970, 2142508, 1985648, 2060536, 2068759, 2087056, 2145084, 2083873

Sigh, another rambling "answer" again flagged as VLQ (perhaps the queues fare better this time)

@BillDubuque Why don't you just downvote and delete-vote and post here, which would be much faster than VLQ?

@user1729 I think from that user; even high-rep users cannot see deleted posts that they don't have a link to, so I can't even be sure since my memory isn't perfect.

@user1729 That PSQ is now closed and up for deletion.

@user1729 Same for 2044072.

Close

@user21820 Yes, that'd probbaly work better. It's now self deleted.

@BillDubuque Oh that was unexpected.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Post is mostly images (15): Mean value theorem. Rolle's theorem. Can you help me pls with this problem? ✏️ by user411287 on math.SE

@user21820 Community feedback seems to be working better as of late. If the account is an AI bot then they must have trained it for that (the answers often read like some of those AI bot generated papers that occasionally get accept to VLQ journals .. I kid you not).

@BillDubuque Lol? That would be sad. I thought it was a real person, just that it was a middle-school kid or something.

@user21820 I confess at times I really think it is one of those bots pulling our leg. I've seen all sorts of cranks and crackpots and this breaks the mold.

Haha.

@BillDubuque @amWhy @vitamind @user1729 This post ought to be flagged as non-an-answer since the link is dead and it didn't even answer the question. Can you help flag?

@user21820 The entire post has been deleted, and with it, that answer.

Please delete.

@amWhy Actually just the answer was deleted (by Xander), but thanks! Thanks @XanderHenderson for the super quick action!

@user21820 Oh, I guess the answer was long enough it appeared to me, while viewing the answer and seeing all that dead space immediately afterwards, I thought it was the entire page. That's all I cared about, was its deletion.

For that matter, viewing the question, I sort of wish the question was deleted, @user21820

@amWhy I too, but it's so old and so highly upvoted that it is surely almost surely hard to get moderator consensus...

@user21820 Yes, I understand that. I was just thinking wistfully, but likely would not enforce its deletion because standards for questions were weaker back when asked and anwered.

@amWhy Ah, indeed.

Close/Delete, and this

Downvotes needed for deletion

Would this be an answer to the question given?

Lacks context?

PSQ with apparently wrong answer from high rep user

Duplicate, likely not worth keeping

@TeresaLisbon No it isn't. It's like turning to wolfram alpha to return it's result. As a comment to confirm, it's fine, but not as an answer. I dv'd, particularly after their comment below their answer: to all the humans to think there should be a cute human proof..., which seems to have since been deleted.

@amWhy Thank you : that's going in the little pink notebook then!

Did you notice my comment, low in the sequence of comments?

"....[username]...I've noticed a trend with you: Thou doth protest too much."

@amWhy HAHAHA! Serves 'em right.

@TeresaLisbon I smiled as I wrote it!

@amWhy I'd have a grin wider than the Pacific ocean if I were you!

@TeresaLisbon hahaha! Indeed!

@TeresaLisbon I agree that that post is NOT an answer because as a commenter already stated Mathematica can give Wrong Answers. It's up for deletion now!

@amWhy The comment about a "cute human" proof is in the answer itself, and is not a comment.

@XanderHenderson: You can be the final delete-voter if you like; not unilateral!

@XanderHenderson Thanks! I was thinking I might have been imagining that when I looked at the comments again! That answerer is so off-putting!

Or they're off-pudding, and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from their addiction to pudding! ;D

@user21820 @TeresaLisbon, @Xander That non-answer is now a "deleted-answer".

Great.

Thank you. Now, here's another PSQ!

@ParamanandSingh I know you had no ill intent! (I don't think you could have ill intent, or ever act on it!) But there was no exchange between quid and I and no position stated by quid for which he argued, "I think it is better to ignore the situation so as not to inflame it." He seemed nothing more than upset that I bothered him by pinging him. And I pinged him long before things settled down, thanks to Alexander's comments, and another site's moderator. I agree with your position, but

@user21820 I tend not to cast delete votes unless it is really really clear cut, since only another moderator can undelete a mod-deleted post.

your position was yours, and not quid's, so I was puzzled by your "taking sides with quid" when I hadn't even argued with quid. In any case, for the most part I agree with your position, but also no that "The surest way for evil people to triumph is when good people do nothing. So "hands off at all times" can be a cop out, and surrender.

@XanderHenderson I know. Thanks for replying anyway haha. =)

@XanderHenderson We didn't need you anyway, ha ha! ;P

:D

@amWhy But something needs to be done about that particular user. I understand that they are a very good researcher and probably a very good teacher, but something has to be done. A rap on the knuckles is very much a necessity.

long way, but should be eventually deleted

@TeresaLisbon Are you replying to my reply to Paramanand, or the user today who wrote a non-answer?

@amWhy Oh sorry : the user who wrote a non-answer, the PSQ answerer.

@TeresaLisbon Unfortunately, I was continuing my comments to @Paramanand, but Xander posted before that post, and I failed to write @Paramand in the continuing comment. But surely the sentence "The surest way for evil people to triumph is when good people do nothing" applies to the non-answerer, who has quite an established pattern crude responses to other's comments, arrogance, flaunting his flaunting of non-compliance, indeed, so I do very much agree with your position in this particular case!

This question, from a user with over 1K rep, is unacceptable.

To avoid confusion : The question should be deleted , I apparently accidently marked the answer.

@amWhy open for deletion

@Peter v to c from me.

@Peter Also, note a comment from Rob Arthan who regularly backs up underdogs, and answers in unhelpful ways that counter other answerers all pretty much in agreement.

"1/0=0" in model theory. What a nonsense !

@amWhy The point is, I now believe that for this particular user I have the statistics to back up my claims. SIXTEEN answers to PSQs which have either been deleted or downvoted , in the past 7 days, out of which two days had no activity. That's more than 3 per active day, and comes close to a quarter of the user's output. That is an astonishing statistic!

@TeresaLisbon Indeed.

@Peter Nonsense of the highest cardinality.

@TeresaLisbon That's a new one.

Ironically, the (now deleted) answer hits the nail on the head and is the best what has been said about this question.

@Peter Actually I agree with deletion of the answer, based on the fact that it was not clear enough what exactly it was showing.

@user21820 And what about the question ? Do you agree it should be closed ?

@Xander and @Teresa, and @user21820, and @Peter and @user1729 : Ivor just unilaterally undeleted his post: math.stackexchange.com/a/4086974/9003. I've already voted a second time to delete. The only thing that is going to stick the delete, if put through again, is if Xander votes to delete, even if as the third delete vote.

Ivor did not undelete the answer.

It looks to me that it was undeleted by davidlowryduda .

@XanderHenderson Oh okay, I assumed he did. Me bad.

Rob Arthan is actually correct in some sense, but his comments are very abstruse, so I'm not surprised if few people understand him. The basic idea behind his comments is that if you look at Th(ℝ), namely the FOL theory of the reals, it refers to the theory over the language of ordered fields with the signature (0,1,+,·,<), without subtraction or division. Now both − and / are definable over Th(ℝ), but you have to make a choice in defining x/0...

@XanderHenderson That's strange. I understand entirely that you would want to get into a delete undelete war with a moderator.

@user21820 Thanks for the info.

@amWhy Indeed.

It turns out that it doesn't matter what you do, because all the theorems that we are interested in already have inbuilt conditions, such as ∀x ( x≠0 ⇒ 1/(1/x)=x ). Note that this is not just something that can be handwaved off because it is equivalent to ∀x ( 1/(1/x)=x ∨ x=0 ). Now to avoid this issue, we have a few options. The one that is consistent with FOL is just to define x/0 as some random rubbish, since it doesn't affect the truth-values of the theorems we care about.

In this light Rob's comments make sense. But I can bet that hardly any of the readers of that thread would know it, so it's true that his comments are not really helpful to the asker.

This PSQ now belongs to the Hot Network Questions, and it has 4 upvotes and 3 answers.

Another is to not use FOL, to avoid apparently dumb theorems like "∀x ( 1/(1/x)=x ∨ x=0 )". But the alternatives are quite painful to formalize. One is to use guarded conditionals, which is my personal favourite, but it's definitely significantly more complicated than the usual FOL.

@user21820 This "arbitary" and "forced" definition of 1/0 does not convince me.

@Peter I didn't say it should. This is why FOL is not actually very natural. But you must learn about the significant difficulties with all the alternatives we have come up with so far, before you appreciate that the FOL way (even if quite silly) is still the most elegant.

@Peter To answer your other question about whether the post should be closed, I am on the fence because there is actually a logic-based answer to the underlying inquiry and it is not just a silly question.

zyx's answer gets closest to giving such an answer. Unfortunately, like Rob's comments, it is way too terse....

But the key term is there if the asker is interested, namely "propagation" of "undefined" or the like.

@JoséCarlosSantos I improved the title (formerly it did not describe this particular question, so was entirely uninformative), downvoted, and voted to close. I suspect it will shortly be off of the HNQ

@JoséCarlosSantos Closed now. 3 more downvotes before it can be deleted.

@user21820 Great. Glad for the downvotes and close votes; typically including mathjax in the title, which was actually an improvement of the title, takes it out of the HNQ, to prevent further upvotes to question and answers from drive by SE users.

@amWhy Your opinion ? Is defining 1/0 = "rubbish" math ?

So a user has written an answer which is not one, then complained about it getting deleted, got it undeleted and abused somebody in the process, and will now go and mutter somewhere else. This is an emotional matter : ONE SIMPLY CANNOT TAKE THE SITE FOR A RIDE LIKE THIS. I feel helpless in this matter.

As much as I understand that users have their own background, I feel that MSE has been taken as a rubbish dump by that user for way, way too long. Please let me know if any more statistics need to be collected, but I plan to revolt and get something to occur regarding this incident.

@TeresaLisbon I understand your frustration, but keep calm and stay cool (while you prepare whatever mountain of evidence of problems). =)

@TeresaLisbon I agree with you; it is not just feedback or observation to enter into a computer, this behavior impacts other users, demoralizes some, and emboldens other agressive users.

@user21820 Trying hard. Really. But this is a user I've been tracking for a long, long time.

@user21820 I understand @Teresa. I literally shed tears at times on this site, and I know others to do, or they spend the first half hour in bed trying to make sense of the flagrant abuses, which face no consequences, over and over and over. I can count on one time, over the course of ten years, the number of users suspended more than a month for poor quality answers. I was suspended once for a month do to "being too confrontational wrt to abusive users".

@amWhy You mean "on one hand" right?

@user21820 :( Yes... I hate typos, or thinking out of sync with my fingers, cuz they're so little opportunity to edit.

Yea, I make tons of errors even though I sort of check before pressing enter.

We all need to flag more inappropriate, arrogant, demeaning comments, because mods measure urgency and degree of intervention by the number of flags they receive. One flag on one thing is essentially dismissed. Mods are gun-shy, drag their feet, and as you saw today, some mods actually support the trouble makers, but are more apt to go down hard and the "interveners", go figure. We aren't the ones doing what we do out of self-interest. That attribute belongs only to rep hunters.

@amWhy This user and another user we've seen before are just invective machines and PSQ answerers as far as this site is concerned. The pattern is the same : answer a PSQ, get a downvote ,ask why, insult, get the answer deleted, maybe undelete it. I promise to not be confrontational. This is not my style. But yes, I swear to the heavens above, on a good day, நா பத்திரகாளியா மாறுவேன்.

@amWhy I think we should coordinate with respect to flagging as well. What say, @user21820?

(The Tamil phrase is : I will become Bhadrakaali (an angry Indian goddess)). Saying it in Tamil gives me the chills.

@TeresaLisbon Google told me you said "I will become a journalist". Nice joke, google!

@user21820 Oh, darn. I was dying to check Google by typing "April Fools' Day", because they've been known to inject some unexpected, but sort of obvious jokes on the searcher.

@user21820 Oh, amazing. The word for journalist does come close, let's not forget that Bhadrakaali is a proper noun so it's unlikely that Google can translate it. But the word for journalist actually comes close : it is "பத்திரிகையாள". See, the first three letters match. So that's why the translate came out that way!

@TeresaLisbon Aha so google looks at first 3 letters. Way to go. Next year maybe 4 letters.

@user21820 Till then, google Bhadrakaali. I can't post the pictures here, they are a tad explicit.(SCARY).

And once we're done, I'd like if we could actually take collective action together with respect to flagging, and also , if possible, targeting users who we know are egregious, boisterous and nefarious.

Does anyone have any experience constructively discouraging prolific contributors from posting (low quality / FGITW) dupe answers to (low quality) dupe questions, e.g. here is a frequent offender, whom I've had no luck at all reforming.

By "targeting" I do not mean that we drive them out of the site. Let me make it very clear that an improved user is far better than a suspended user. But let's look to constantly improve them. Let's try to bring the good side of them out on the site. So by target, these are the users we have to improve, not throw.

@user21820 @amWhy It can be deleted now.

@BillDubuque Indeed, he is a frequent offender, both I and @Teresa have noted the same. He tends to respond either aggressively, to the most innocent of comments, or else ignore the comments. When downvoted, I've noted, he tends to comment in a snarky manner. If anyone would be capable of constructive conversation, but I think he's been smarky in response, as well.

@JoséCarlosSantos Thanks! It is now gone.

@amWhy I've seen Bill on duplicate duty (cannot be thankful enough for that) and you won't believe what proportion of abstract-algebra and Bezout-lemma questions that are coming into the site each day are duplicates. Some famous PSQ answerers in our list count these questions as a major source of reputation. Literally, one question is like : prove 3x+4y and 4x+7y are coprime if x and y are. The next one is : prove that 4x+5y and 9x+6y are coprime if x and y are. I mean, wow!

And these people literally feed off the inhibition we have regarding calling these as duplicates, to basically Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.

(or whatever you do to copy-paste on a Macintosh).

And I'm finished, the wind is out of my sails. I shall dock here, and sail the rough seas on the morrow. Good night, fellow sailors.

@TeresaLisbon Sleep well!

How do you handle questions of this type? It's a "I have this problem. -> I tried to use this thm but didn't succeed. -> I need an answer" post. I think this question would have been closed immediatly if the OP would have <100 rep. But I think it "scares" people off to close or downvote a question of an high-rep user. Or am I completely mistaken and this post is not as bad as I think?

Please enlighten me. Where do we draw the line between PSQ and "short but good questions"?

@vitamind If it really was of the sort “I tried to use the theorem...”, perhaps that I would do nothing. It depends. But, in this case, that user just wrote “I tried to prove the contrapositive, but it is still not obvious”. I voted to close it.

@vitamind I agree with @JoséCarlosSantos I tend to ask, when askers say I tried x, y, z but it didn't help, I really do prefer them to show at least some work, so we can help determine where they went wrong. If they hem and haw, they likely used "I tried a lot or I tried x, y, z" to try to bypass the effort/context we prefer to see in posts. It is easy to say: To claim something, but if they did try something, they should help us help them.

@JoséCarlosSantos@amWhy Thank you. I agree with you. (@amWhy I sent you a message in our privat-room. Not sure you've seen it.)

Not a question.

Please close this and this too.

Duplicate