User talk:Nerd271

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Nerd271, good luck, and have fun. — Newslinger talk 11:17, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Nerd271, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Nerd271! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Doctree (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:05, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Hyperbolic substitution

Your reversion message of "this version works just fine" to my edit to the hyerbolic substitution section was rather... unhelpful. My initial interpretation was "don't you dare touch this sacrosanct text". After some time licking my wounds from that initial burn (I'm new to editing Wikipedia), I've stepped back and decided that I was reading too much into the rejection, so let's open up a small discussion to hash out which of my changes are deemed acceptable.

My initial "be bold!" attempt at a rewrite combined several different tweaks. Since the content of my version was just as good as the original, I must conclude that the objection was to its style. The most glaring difference in style was my use of a horizontal layout for equation chains, and I suspect that it was this that triggered a "no!" reaction to your sense of aesthetics, and you didn't look any further for any redeeming features of my rewrite.

So, dropping that reformatting change (which I feel is a minor issue that I'm fine with letting go of), here are the changes I was making:

1. Add links to pages documenting the identities being invoked. While the linked pages do not themselves give any better direct insight as to where these identities come from, presumably they reference proper sources. (I have not followed the sources on those pages yet, though I plan to do so as time permits.)
2. Add a small bit of text emphasizing that this is but one example of the use of hyperbolic substitution; this is left implicit in the original, and I feel it could be misleading to someone reading this this section in isolation (e.g., after following a link).
3. Make small adjustments to the equation chains used: break things up so that in each step is only one of: substitution of identity, algebra, and calculus.
4. Rather than stating the identities used an introduction followed by a wall of equations, introduce the identities as prose in the place they are about to be used. It was while trying to make this flow well that I shifted to using the horizontal equation chain format. I'd have to experiment a bit more to see if I can make this work right with vertically stacked equations (my initial attempts came off as too clunky, before I went horizontal), or if I need to abandon the idea altogether.
5. As far as demonstrating hyperbolic substitution goes, the sinh^{-1} result is a good stopping point. I'm not clear on why continuing on to the ln-form derivation is desirable (if I were writing the section from scratch I wouldn't bother mentioning it), but I presume that someone finds it helpful. However, I want to break it out as an addendum to the main derivation, not show it as "the" conclusion.

So, rather than getting into an edit war, I wanted to run this all by you to see if there is anything in this list that is an automatic "no" for you. Engeer (talk) 23:07, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Starting a sentence that is not a quote with an ellipsis is a red flag. Adding more explanations is helpful, unless you are belaboring the point. Here, we are already showing pretty much all the steps. But also remember that filling in the details is, or should be, left as an exercise to the reader. So I am fine with cutting some steps out. Also see this section of my talk page for a sample of how to add in-line notes.

As for the inverse hyperbolic sine function, I honestly prefer the explicit expression involving the natural logarithm, which, in my personal experience, is more commonly used.

Remember that as a Wikipedia editor, you have your own sandbox. Play with it if you are unsure how the code is going to turn out. Good luck! Nerd271 (talk) 11:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

There's something strangely satisfying

seeing someone else restore an article to your version, isn't there? Maybe it's just me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, I was dismayed, disappointed, and confused when I saw the article deleted. But I was too tired to do much and I planned to try to convince that moderator to reconsider. The problem, I thought, was to avoid raising suspicions of me being a sock puppet. But since enough people have persuaded him of the value of the page, however unready for main space, there was nothing for me to do. For the record, it was a group effort, like pretty much everything else on Wikipedia. Each new version does not necessarily erase the old. Nerd271 (talk) 16:15, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Wait a minute! Was that supposed to be a criticism? I don't get it. I was just trying to be nice. Nerd271 (talk) 20:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

No, it was just my thought when I saw your "thanks" for [1]. If I notice someone reverting to "my version" somewhere, I take it to mean they thought my version wasn't crap. Or at least less crappy. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:34, 29 May 2024 (UTC)