[math-fun] Wiki article on Circumscribed_circle
Does anyone know how to deal with Wikipedia? I tried this morning to make a very modest edit to the Circumscribed_circle article, and someone else keeps reverting it back. All I'm trying to do is to add an external link to my article about computing the circumcenter coordinates using complex numbers: http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/FAQ-circumcircle.txt My result is a generalization of the classic formula: R=abc/(4 A), where R is the radius of the circumcircle, a,b,c are the side-lengths, and A is the area. Now consider R,a,b,c to be "vectors" in the complex plane -- i.e., complex numbers. Then the previous formula is |R|=|a||b||c|/(4 A) My formula is: R = -ia'bc/(4 A) where i=sqrt(-1), and a' is conjugate(a). Note that the multiplications in my formula are now _complex_ multiplies. I think that this is a cool formula, and I believe that Gosper thought so, too. Can someone here please help me make this change? Thanks.
Until it's been published in a journal somewhere, you can't. Otherwise it's excluded as "original research". On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Does anyone know how to deal with Wikipedia?
I tried this morning to make a very modest edit to the Circumscribed_circle article, and someone else keeps reverting it back.
All I'm trying to do is to add an external link to my article about computing the circumcenter coordinates using complex numbers:
http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/FAQ-circumcircle.txt
My result is a generalization of the classic formula:
R=abc/(4 A), where R is the radius of the circumcircle, a,b,c are the side-lengths, and A is the area.
Now consider R,a,b,c to be "vectors" in the complex plane -- i.e., complex numbers.
Then the previous formula is |R|=|a||b||c|/(4 A)
My formula is:
R = -ia'bc/(4 A)
where i=sqrt(-1), and a' is conjugate(a).
Note that the multiplications in my formula are now _complex_ multiplies.
I think that this is a cool formula, and I believe that Gosper thought so, too.
Can someone here please help me make this change?
Thanks.
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com
Unfortunately, the only effective way to contribute on Wikipedia is to publish it elsewhere and wait for lots of people who happen to also read Wikipedia to think that your stuff is important. Sometimes "wait" means "more than 5 years". It also helps to think of Wikipedia people as being kind of a niche audience. The real audience is people who use search engines like Google and Bing. I also think that if you link from your article to other related articles online, the process is quicker. Link to other related content, such as the external links presently used by that Wikipedia article, or be more creative and do your own Google/Bing searches to find other useful articles on circumscription (sic?) That means turning your .txt into a .html (hint: you can put "<pre>" around most of it) and submit its URL to Google and Bing (see [1] and [2]). You should do that to all of your publshed content, at the very least adding title and keywords tags, which will get your work noticed much more effectively than being linked on Wikipedia. - Robert [1] http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/website-owner/ [2] https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx On 6/2/12, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Does anyone know how to deal with Wikipedia?
I tried this morning to make a very modest edit to the Circumscribed_circle article, and someone else keeps reverting it back. [...]
http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/FAQ-circumcircle.txt
[...]
-- Robert Munafo -- mrob.com Follow me at: gplus.to/mrob - fb.com/mrob27 - twitter.com/mrob_27 - mrob27.wordpress.com - youtube.com/user/mrob143 - rilybot.blogspot.com
On Jun 2, 2012, at 11:18 PM, Steve Witham wrote:
From: Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> Wiki is infested with content nazis who are intent on enforcing "the rules".
You don't need to put quotes around it, there really are a few rules of Wikipedia, and no-original-research is one of them. I think it's a little rude that nobody told Henry why they were reverting his edit, but that's the attitude a lot of open-source projects have: we'd love you to contribute, but take it on yourself to learn the rules first.
Just to be clear, the 'history' tab on the article shows who (one person: Duoduoduo) undid the inclusion of Henry's link and why: "rv as per WP:ELNO -- not an authoritative source" (the first reversion); "rv again, not an authoritative source. WP:BRD: you could take it to the article's talk page and convince others to support you" (the second reversion). I'm not sure that I understand the "no-original-research" angle. In 2008, I corrected the Wikipedia birth year of baseball-player Irvin 'Kaiser' Wilhelm. In 2010 it was reverted by someone who pointed to 'baseball-reference.com'. In 2011 I re-corrected the reversion but this time I added a reference link to what essentially constitutes 'original research' hosted on my personal domain. So far, it has survived. But it should/must survive because, unlike mainstream sources, my version is correct. ;)
Sorry. The formula should read R = -ia'bc/(4 Area). In this case, R _is_ the (complex) vector to find O from A (A is the vertex opposite side a). For example, if A=1,0, B=2,0, C=1,1, then a=C-B=-1,1, b=A-C=0,-1, c=B-A=1,0. Then, Area = 1/2, so we get: -i*(-1-i)*(0-i)*(1+0i)/(4*1/2) = -i*(-1-i)*(-i)/2 = -1*(-1-i)/2 = (1+i)/2 A+(1+i)/2 = (1+0i)+(1+i)/2 = 3/2+i/2, which is the circumcenter of triangle ABC. My formula is easy to remember, since 1) complex multiplication is commutative; and 2) the prime tells you which vertex you're using to base the "R" vector. At 02:06 AM 6/8/2012, Adam P. Goucher wrote:
My formula is: R = -ia'bc/(4 A) where i=sqrt(-1), and a' is conjugate(a).
The left hand side should be the position vector of A with respect to O, not R. (They are only equal when this vector is real.) Your webpage is correct, however.
Sincerely,
Adam P. Goucher
participants (5)
-
Adam P. Goucher -
Hans Havermann -
Henry Baker -
Mike Stay -
Robert Munafo