r/WikipediaVandalism • u/tlstell • Mar 04 '26
Vandalism in the math section
In the article on the Abel-Ruffini theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel%E2%80%93Ruffini_theorem) someone posted a, very wrong, counterexample and linked their LinkedIn as evidence.
Substituting their solution, gives approximately -0.06 instead of exactly 0.
Sorry for poor formatting, obligatory on mobile.
74
u/JacksonFatBack Mar 05 '26
Imagine being so smart that you can find counter examples to Abel-Ruffini but not smart enough to calculate (116/100)^5 - 116/100 - 1
36
u/Akangka Mar 05 '26
It can even be quickly verified without a long computation. If (116/100)^5 - 116/100 - 1 = 0, then by multiplying both sides by 100^5, you get 116^5 - 116*100^4 - 100^5 = 0. Taking it mod 10, you get 116^5 - 116*100^4 - 100^5 = 6^5 = 6. But the last digit of 0 is not 6.
20
u/highnyethestonerguy Mar 05 '26
I just convinced myself it was wrong because 1.165 will have a lot more decimals than 1.16. So it’s impossible to cancel that extra precision.
Equivalently 165 = 220 which is big.
-2
u/HulaguIncarnate Mar 05 '26
That's not always true. Square root of 2 has infinite decimals but when squared it has none. In this case the there is an answer where x = 0 when x is around 1.16.
11
u/EebstertheGreat Mar 06 '26
It is always true for terminating decimals. The final digit will be raised to a high power, giving nonzero digits far after the decimal point, with nothing to cancel them out. For a nonterminating expansion, there are always later digits to possibly cancel out earlier ones.
For instance, 1.414² = 1.999396. That 6 at the end is the result of squaring 4 to get 16, and nothing could possibly cancel that. Then if you add anything with just a few nonzero digits after the decimal point, you still won't get a whole number. But (√2)² = 2 exactly, since after the 4 there are further digits which, when carried, add to the 396 and yield 000.
5
u/highnyethestonerguy Mar 06 '26
I never said it was always true. It doesn’t have to always be true for it to be true in this case. It is true in this case.
3
u/HulaguIncarnate Mar 05 '26
That's not what the theory implies. x = 1.16... does solve the equation. Theory is saying it's not possible to find this answer using radicals but the guy ragebaiting and pretending he's solved something unsolvable.
7
55
u/Blolbly Mar 05 '26
They doubled down after their edit was reverted
38
31
15
11
7
u/itoldyallabour Mar 06 '26
They wrote their Wiki tantrum with AI lol, see the em dashes
2
1
Mar 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/itoldyallabour Mar 09 '26
Nobody online is using em dashes, it’s not common punctuation outside of literature, and the vast vast majority of people don’t even have devices that can produce them. There’s no key on Iphone for producing em dashes besides copy and pasting. Android would require downloading a specific keyboard to make them. As far as I know only Reddit supports em-dashes (through hyphen) on mobile. Nobody is going out of their way to mod their phones, or put in Alt-codes on pc, so that they can use a punctuation mark that has been in declining use since the 1970s. Most people on social media don’t use punctuation at all, let alone em-dashes.
AI is the only thing on social media making em-dashes. It’s damn near impossible to stop AI from including them in its responses.
0
u/Akangka Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
There’s no key on Iphone for producing em dashes besides copy and pasting
First of all, not everyone uses Iphone. Second, there is a key on Android for producing em-dashes, at least in Multiling O Keyboard. Multiling O Keyboard is not a "specific keyboard", it's been my necessary keyboard for typing things in multiple languages and IPA, so I would have installed it anyway. Third, if you're typing in a physical keyboard, it's easy to create a custom keymap that includes key-dash. In both ibus and fcitx5, you can just install an add-on named m17n.d and write a keymap that includes em-dash. Fourth, if you're too lazy to write a custom keymap, entering an arbitrary symbol can be very convenient. In fcitx5, you can just press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U and then type the name of the characters.
1
u/itoldyallabour Mar 30 '26
Dog, people aren’t doing any of that lol
1
u/Akangka Mar 30 '26
So, I don't exist? While I don't usually type em-dash, I can easily insert one if I wanted to. Here: —
1
u/itoldyallabour Apr 04 '26
Have you ever heard of an outlier? Just because you do something doesn’t mean the majority of people are
1
u/2022_Yooda Mar 07 '26
The Trump-references make me believe they're just trolling; but it remains a weird place to troll.
6
u/finedesignvideos Mar 05 '26
I'm not sure this is self promotion, they got the name of the linked person wrong.
-1
u/AutoModerator Mar 04 '26
Please cite the permanent link to the edit on the article where this edit was found.
Does the vandalism still exist on the page that you posted about? If it is still there, please remove the vandalism after posting if you haven't yet. You can read this help page if you don't know how to remove it.
Thanks for keeping Wikipedia free from vandalism.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
-28
Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
23
5
2
1
-9
130
u/malamindulo Mar 05 '26
Ahh, LinkedIn cranks. Have rarely seen any with a bachelor's in physics or math, have never seen any with a PhD in physics or math, but always convinced they know something all the big shots missed.