Talk:Point–line–plane postulate

Notability

This topic is not "mathematically" notable for several reasons that I will mention in a moment. However, there is a possibility that it is "educationally" notable, but none of the external links that I have seen added to the article are reliable secondary sources. What would be needed is a textbook which uses the expression, or some state approved curriculum which uses the expression. In fact, it would be nice to have someone track down the first use of the expression. These types of references would establish the use of the expression in some pedagogical circles, and so, establish the notability in that arena.

Mathematically there is no reason to bundle these three axioms into one statement and no mathematician would do so. They do not provide an axiomatic basis for Euclidean 3-space. An additional two axioms are required for that (an axiom providing for angle measurement and an axiom equivalent to the parallel postulate). Semantically, calling these three axioms a postulate is akin to calling a dictionary a sentence which contains all the words of the language. Mathematicians are much more careful with the language they use to describe things.

This expression seems to come from that group of textbook writers who, whenever they come across a statement they don't want to prove, turn it into a postulate so that they don't have to. This is always done in the name of "the students aren't ready to see a correct version, it's just to technical for them". Some of that may be needed at low levels, but the practice is clearly dishonest and serves ultimately only to dumb down the subject. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 03:38, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

This, erm, "postulate" may be notable for another reason. A few years ago, an idiot named Rob Bryanton created a series of youtube videos, blog posts, and books called "imagining the tenth dimension" where he, in his words, "developed a creative way to use a variation of what's known as the 'point-line-plane postulate' to visualise ten dimensions," apparently referring to the ten dimensions of some versions of string theory. His works, in fact, have nothing to do with string theory. They combine true but trivial mathematical facts with incoherent stoner bullshit, and are of no scientific, philosophical, or educational value whatsoever, but they were and still are very popular. Cocaineninja (talk) 13:57, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Sources

The point-line-plane postulate as stated in this article appears on page 417 of the 2010 text "Geometry from Euclid to Knots" by Saul Stahl. It's also referred to in "Standards-based School Mathematics Curricula", a 2003 text by Senk & Thompson, as well as in the 1992 "Geometry" by Arthur Coxford. Zebe (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

That is more like it. If full references for these can be placed in the article, I'll remove the notability tag. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 17:38, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

No true content change, just tidying. LeProf

Intent/meaning of the "Uses" section was assumed to allow its editing from note-like to encyclopedic text. Otherwise, there were no substantive changes, just tidying: multiple sections were converted to bullets in one section, citations were removed as a separate section and placed as normal citations, and a couple typos were corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.179.92.36 (talk) 16:47, 14 December 2013 (UTC)