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Comment by Almondsetat | Hacker News Reader

I have found the Wikipedia entry to be much clearer and interestig than this article

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_derivative

Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_derivative

Yeh the link is good, and I think the article is good too, discussing some limitations / gotchas / cons. Gives me the impression maybe a more useful definition could be crafted, but also that this D function could be unexplored and yield some cool stuff :) haha!

The article also contradicts Wikipedia, e.g., the article claims that Barbeau introduced the derivative in 1961, but Wikipedia gives several references to Shelly's definition of the derivative in 1911. You'd expect an emeritus professor to have enough time on their hands to check their sources...

They likely weren't emeritus in 1961.

The article is 2014, when Lipton was 64. So maybe emeritus, maybe not.

I'm talking about the author of the article, Lipton. Not Barbeau who is the subject of the article itself, not its author.

One of the nice things about Wikipedia is that you can use it as a time machine, instead of just blindly throwing about accusations.

If you look at the first page in 2014, the time of the article, you'll find this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arithmetic_deriva...

> E. J. Barbeau was most likely the first person to formalize this definition.

This suggests to me that Shelly's earlier definition in 1911 was not generally known. Indeed, Wikipedia has been a significant driver in rescuing earlier results in mathematics from obscurity.

But you can't cite what you don't know. So I wouldn't expect an emeritus professor, or anyone, to have either a time machine or a crystal ball.

Look, I'm a professor of mathematics at a research university. If I decided to use Wikipedia as my sole source for deciding who to credit for what, my papers would get rejected when they inevitably become wrong. "it wasn't on Wikipedia" is hardly an excuse when it comes to ethics. What is known by the average Wikipedia editor is not what is known by experts in the field.

Would you have found out about those earlier sources without Wikipedia? I think it really depends on how obscure they actually were. I’d take the fact that neither Wikipedia nor this article knew about these earlier sources in 2014 as evidence that they were pretty obscure.

You don't need to reply twice to make your point.

> Would you have found out about those earlier sources without Wikipedia?

I'm not an expert in this domain. The author is.

“Ethics” for what is almost certainly an honest mistake with a reasonable diligence of research? Accusing someone of ethics violations should require more research than you’ve done!

That should mean you know better than to accuse one of your colleagues of ethics violations on the basis of a cursory perusal of Wikipedia.

Would you do something like that using your real name?

In an informal conversation, the equivalent of a forum like HN but with my real name? Sure, I would have no problem saying out loud and unanonymously

> "it wasn't on Wikipedia" is hardly an excuse when it comes to ethics

which is what I actually wrote, in a post where I'm not even talking about the particular situation. I expressed dismay about a failure to properly attribute ideas, and then I explained that I don't care about what was written in 2014 on Wikipedia, experts should know better anyway. If you've decided to read an accusation in what I wrote, that is absolutely on you. The most negative thing I wrote about the author was:

> You'd expect an emeritus professor to have enough time on their hands to check their sources...

And, again, I would have absolutely no problem saying that in public with my real name. I've said much "worse".

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