Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Beginning Mathematics

Beginning Mathematics
This is not an elementary arithmetic book; the suggestion to move to Foundations of Mathematics is correct. However, this book is too broad in scope for the topics it wishes to cover and is not very complete to boot. Two chapters on set theory and number theory are already covered by Set Theory and Number Theory. Two other chapters listed on geometry and algebra are covered by Geometry and Algebra. The remaining chapters have barely any content worth mentioning. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Symbol comment vote.svg Comment The first few pages (Beginning Mathematics/What is Mathematics?, Beginning Mathematics/Where To Start? With Nothing!, etc.) suggest that once upon a time there were really beautiful plans for this book, namely, an introduction to mathematical logic and abstraction for the layman/non-mathematician. Unfortunately, it never really blossomed - not only due to lack of development but also because it kind of loses the plot by the time it starts overlapping with Set Theory and the other books Adrignola mentioned. I also agree on the inadequacy of the book title. Nevertheless, I can see a point in this book, and in fact I wish I had deeper knowledge of Formal Mathematics in order to contribute to such a project. I lean very strongly towards a keep - but seeing that we have a mathematician on board it will be useful to have his opinion on the viability of the book to balance my "emotional" comment. --Duplode (talk) 00:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Duplode here. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Forgive the slow reply, but since my professional opinion was being asked, I wanted to consider things carefully. I am not in expert in mathematical logic nor mathematical philosophy, which are really what the first few pages are about.  That being said, I have never encountered the type of definitions being given here.  Googling around fails to turn up anywhere else that defines object or variable in this way.  In serious mathematics books it is not unheard of to set out your own definitions, so maybe this isn't really an issue.  Unfortunately it means that it would be very difficult for anyone other then the original author to continue from where the book has currently left off without major work.
 * There are also a few odd choices the author makes that are a bit unusual for this type of book. For example, the section on Number theory... what is written so far attempts to define what the whole numbers are, but somehow it is a rather vauge and "hand wavy"., and based on a very antiquated system of defining the numbers.  One usually expects to see something like the set-theortic definition used by ZFC, or Peano's Axioms.  But this seems to go further back to Frege and Russel.  But it is done without care, so instead of defining the numbers to be sets, (or equivalence classes of sets), they are defined to be the number of elements in a set, which is hopelessly circular.  But as is pointed out above, by the time any actual mathematics is reached, the book has lost its way.
 * Overall, the executive summary of my opinion is this: A book developing mathematic logic, philosophy, and content side by side is a nice idea. But because of the unorthodox point of view about on these subjects, I am not sure anyone else could continue this book.  Trying to move the book to a more orthodox point of view would require rewriting everything more or less from scratch. Thenub314 (talk) 09:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * After a bit of thought I think this should be deleted, based on my comments above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by thenub314 (discuss • contribs)


 * Symbol keep vote.svg Keep There seems not to be any special characteristic of this book that makes the content discardable. Even agreeing with some of the remarks above, I don't feel that the "quality" analysis in this case makes the content deletable. For instance one of the many book ideas that have crossed my mind is a book in the lines of the BBC documentary "The Story of Maths", having this type of material around is useful, even if by itself it will never get completed as a book it is a valid resource and has been the result of well intentioned contributions, this is why we preserve stubs, all works here are mutable. If the reasons presented above had been about duplication of content then I would support the deletion... --Panic (talk) 10:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * My analysis above was not so much about quality. The point was about perspective, I will try to make clear how.  If your writing a book in which your developing mathematics from its foundations the definitions shape the rest of the book.  Since everything basically comes back to definitions in the study of the foundations of mathematics. In the case of this book, the definitions are unique.  This of course runs into OR concerns, but putting those aside for a moment, no one other then the original author will be able to develop this book further with those definitions.  Changing the definitions amounts to rewriting the book, since its whole point is to start with nothing and describe how everything is built up.


 * Let me take the example of a variable, whose definition is give to be "a Symbol which represents a property of some object." This is contrary to the usual interpretation that a variable represents an object.  So if I said "Find all numbers x so that x + 2 = 5", I am in a tricky position.  Here the symbol x is not a variable, it is a letter that represents an object, not a property of an object. So when someone later came and added a section on algebra, they didn't (perhaps coundn't) write the section in a way that fit in with this books point of view about logic and mathematics.  The book, to quote Duplode,  "kind of loses the plot", but it is not at all clear where the book was going because of its very unorthodox and unique point of view.  Which is why I feel that overall it is not at all plausible to believe someone could develop this book further without rewriting it entirely.  Nothing is gained by keeping these pages here. A book along the lines of The Story of Maths would be wonderful, but there is nothing in this book that would be helpful in such an endeavor.  (It contains no correct historical account of the development of mathematics, not does it develop it's mathematics in any historically order.)  Thenub314 (talk) 11:40, 3 June 2010 (UTC)