Template:Did you know nominations/Constructible number

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

DYK toolbox

Constructible number

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  • ... that a point in the plane has a straightedge and compass construction if and only if its coordinates have closed-form formulas using only arithmetic and square roots? Source: Martin, George E. (1998), Geometric Constructions, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, New York, doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0629-3, ISBN 0-387-98276-0, MR 1483895, Corollary 2.16, p. 41, footnote [1] of the nominated article. For an explanation of the "E" in Martin's statement of this corollary, see earlier pp. 36-37.

Improved to Good Article status by David Eppstein (talk). Self-nominated at 22:59, 8 November 2021 (UTC).


General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: —valereee (talk) 18:51, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

  • David Eppstein, hm on the hook interest. Is there anything else about this that might be more accessible to the average reader? Because I've got a master's in a statistical field and I don't even know what these words mean. —valereee (talk) 19:00, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
LOL yeah that's what I thought. :) Okay, I'll go ahead and approve it with a request to the promoter that if to them this seems like it's not 'of general interest' maybe we discuss further? I do understand that this is a topic for which it may be challenging to find a hook that's of general interest, and that DYK shouldn't avoid entire topics because of it. Approving both hook suggestions. —valereee (talk) 19:22, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! I would only add that, if math-aversion is so severe that it causes readers not to be able to understand popular literary tropes in the works of Aristophanes, Dante, Gilbert & Sullivan, O. Henry, and Thomas Mann, I can't help those readers by hiding all of the mathematics in a hook about a mathematics article — even if successful in getting those readers to click on the article, that would only cause those readers to have a bad experience once they clicked. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:09, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @Valereee and David Eppstein: This is super interesting to me, and I'm going to spend a bunch of time reading about this. I'm less sure about whether this'll be interesting to a broad audience. What I am sure of is that even if this hook were interesting, it wouldn't be hooky to a broad audience—this might make sense to half of its readers if they thought about it, but realistically, a large percentage of readers aren't going to get that far, especially next to all the uncomplicated hooks nearby. I like to pretend that instead of trying to lure in adults, we have the full, undivided attention of a group of worldly ten year olds—but not for very long. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 08:59, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Theleekycauldron, we do include hooks that are generally much more interesting to people who have specialized knowledge. Nearly all of our classical music hooks are probably only interesting to people interested in classical music, and we include one in most sets. If this is a hook that is exceptionally interesting to those who have specialized math knowledge, then I think that's an okay compromise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by valereee (talk • contribs)
  • For running so many of them, it's interesting that none of them made it to the october 2021 stats page, which roughly 29% of hooks cleared in October. We shouldn't be optimizing for view counts, obviously, but I digress. At least classical music hooks don't have a high barrier to entry, even if they aren't super broadly interesting. If we just want to cover the basics, I added an ALT2 above to appeal to the lowest common denominator (it's funny that the expression is lowest common denominator but the mathematical concept is greatest common denominator), and an ALT3 that kind of walks a middle ground. I'm going to say that ALTs 0 and 1 are too jargon-y to be sufficiently interesting to a broad audience, and if you don't like ALTs 2 or 3, we'll have to find something else. Or maybe I'm wrong. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 23:35, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Theleekycauldron if you are unfamiliar with the jargon please do not string together likely words in the hope that they might be meaningful. The result of doing so is worse than the correct use of technical terminology: it creates all of the appearance and impenetrability of actual jargon to the uninitiated, adds that "fingernails screeching on blackboard" sensation to those familiar with the terminology, and conveys none of the meaningfulness. Your hooks ALT2 and ALT3 are bad and should not be used. I don't know what you think you mean when you talk about a number being "graphed", or for that matter "created". "Simple functions" is too vague to be useful. And your hooks miss most of the point of the article, and despite doing that fail to be more interesting. As for ALT1: Maybe you missed my earlier comment about Dante, O. Henry, etc, and its link. These authors of what is now classical literature clearly expected that every literate person would understand that circle-squaring is an impossible task in geometry, even if they wouldn't understand exactly what it means. The hook points to why it is impossible. I think the audience of people who have been forced to study some geometry in school is much much broader than the audience of people who care about who conducted some early-20th-century opera performance. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Fair cop, I made a mistake with the phrasing. I wasn't familiar with circle-squaring expression beforehand, although it seems to be common. Maybe it gets rephrased/shortened to ALT1a: ... that an equivalence between algebraic and geometric definitions of constructible numbers helps prove the impossibility of squaring the circle and doubling the cube with a compass and straightedge?
In fact, doubling the cube doesn't have to be in the hook either. Squaring the circle is going to be the one most people are going to pick up on, and it should be rephrased so that what you're riffing on is easily recognizable. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 02:30, 19 November 2021 (UTC) this was my ten thousandth edit? really? not exactly a high note
also, I don't know what "" means, I'm not your reviewer, unless it just means "get off my back". theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 02:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to use it to complain about you or valereee at all, so if that's what you got from it, then I apologize for the confusion. I intended it to mean that this discussion appears to have superseded the previous "good to go" icon, and the bot or people who recognize which hooks are good to go and which need another round of review should be given a signal that this one still needs another round of review. If valereee is happy to do that, I'm happy too. As for whether the angle-trisector cranks are going to have hurt feelings by being snubbed in a tighter hook, I suppose it's not really a big problem. And if we're going for concision over precision, we can also drop the compass and straightedge part. So how about:
ALT5 ... that an equivalence between algebraic and geometric definitions of constructible numbers helps prove the impossibility of squaring the circle?
—David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
  • nice :) i'd sign off on it myself, but that tends to be a big delay for hooks because i'm handling promotions at the moment, and non-geographic hooks are in short supply as well—so i'll ping valereee back here to do the formal honours. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 10:44, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Good to go with ALT5. Oh, I like that one much better! That one feels much more inviting! —valereee (talk) 12:54, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Promoting ALT5 to Prep 6, and this one is interesting! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
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