Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mathematical Alphanumeric Usages

Mathematical Alphanumeric Usages

Mathematical Alphanumeric Usages (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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List with the various letters, their unicode and what is claimed to be "Main mathematical usage". No encyclopedic relevance, the claims on the usage are highly dubious WP:OR. One can find a usage for every alphanumeric, but that does not make the entries here encyclopedic, useful or unique. As one example, every capital letter can be a matrix, every lower case letter a vector or a variable. While many subfields have preferential use of some letters, a page like this which claims to be general is higjly inappropriate. This page fails WP:WHATWIKIPEDIAISNOT at many levels. Page was PROD'd, which page creator removed without explanation, so now AfD. Ldm1954 (talk) 11:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the AfD sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics. Ldm1954 (talk) 11:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
• Delete, absolutely inappropriate attempt to over-define what letters are used for. What on earth can we say about "x", the archetypal unknown quantity in algebra, but in so doing is no different to a to w, and y and z? There are obviously mathematical usages of things like bold, italic, blackboard bold, greek etc. letters to indicate different entities, and it would be very helpful to have a table of these, but it needn't be a row for every alphanumeric character. Incidentally, why would we want both this article and the equally pointless Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols? Elemimele (talk) 11:56, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  CJKPro2026 had added this table to Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, which I just reverted (with apologies to @Drmccreedy for perhaps reverting his revert of something else in the process). Ldm1954 (talk) 12:10, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

• Comment The page creator originally added this table to Blackboard bold, the addition being reverted by Jacobolus. There are already various templates, e.g. {{Mathematical symbols notation language}}, this list is not a useful addition.Ldm1954 (talk) 11:58, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
• Delete. Completely pointless. In my field (biochemistry) we tend to use specific letters fairly consistently, but when I've had to consult professional mathematicians I've found that they use whatever letters they feel like, without regard to what other people may prefer. Athel cb (talk) 12:41, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
• Delete: I don't see how this is or could possibly be made to be encyclopedic. The particular font used for letters is generally speaking a stylistic choice, not one of any "hardcoded" meaning. ~ oklopfer (💬) 14:05, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
• Delete Very odd page. It lists a bunch of symbols and, for some of them, provides some text including that symbol which reads like a quotation but is not attributed. It claims these are the "main mathematics usage" of the symbols. This seems to be a failed attempt to do something that Wikipedia is not supposed to be doing anyway. You can't tell what the "main" use of a symbol is from a single example. Wikipedia is not the place to do a synthesis of sources and deduce the "main" use of a mathematical notation. A list of common mathematical symbols and their typical meanings would be a dictionary of mathematical symbols, and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. This feels like something a student or a hobbyist would do before they've read enough math books to become comfortable with notations varying all over the place. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:42, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  To illustrate the problem, the first line in the table is for the bold letter 𝐀. It says the "Main mathematics usage is", quote, "For real matrices, the conjugate transpose is just the transpose, ${\displaystyle \mathbf {A} ^{\mathrm {H} }=\mathbf {A} ^{\operatorname {T} }}$." What is this supposed to mean? Is the main meaning of 𝐀 a matrix? A real matrix? In practice, when somebody uses 𝐀 to stand for a matrix, it could be an arbitrary matrix, or they might have picked the letter 𝐀 to indicate that the matrix is self-adjoint (in which case they might use 𝐌 for an arbitrary matrix). And 𝐀 doesn't always stand for a matrix. It could be a vector potential, for example. The next line says that the main usage of 𝐁 is to stand for "an n × p matrix". But 𝐁 is often a magnetic field. The letters 𝐀 and 𝐁 could also be two arbitrary vectors in an explanation of vector algebra, and so on. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Delete Mathematical Alphanumeric Usages. I would like to request the deletion of this "Mathematical Alphanumeric Usages" page. I mistakenly misunderstood the mathematical notation and usage when I initially created/edited it. I have now realized that mathematical symbols and letters often have multiple meanings and combinations depending on the context, rather than a single, unique definition. Given this misunderstanding, the page is no longer accurate or necessary. Thank you for your understanding, and I apologize for any confusion caused. CJKPro2026 (talk) 23:12, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarification here. I hope your evident curiosity about mathematics leads you to further study that you find enjoyable. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:27, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Delete This is a nightmare to look at and requires WP:TNT but I don't even think it is notable to even attempt to bring it back in some viable way. Gjb0zWxOb (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. This is so trippy. Bearian (talk) 00:41, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.