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Shapley–Folkman lemma

Hello Kiefer. Congrats on this article, which seems very well done! I gather it has been nominated for GA, a process I know little about. If I'm allowed to give an unstructured comment, I'd say that it's very good right up to the point where it's trying to explain the economic significance of the result. Maybe a further sentence or two would supply the final motivation. (It points over to General equilibrium theory as the main article, but that article doesn't provide much illumination). "The derivation of these results in general form has been one of the major achievements of postwar economic theory". Hmm.. It suggests that the theorem is a success because it has been able to get into textbooks. Except for that minor disappointment, I am happy to see this work, which is well-motivated. The name of the article is not easy to type because it contains a funny dash. Perhaps a redirect could be created using a normal hyphen. EdJohnston (talk) 02:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Dear Ed,

Thanks for your encouraging words. In fact, I nominated the article for good article (GA) status, to get some comments on how to improve it (following helpful feedback from the peer-review process): I hope that it was okay for me to nominate the article for GA status. (I know that I cannot review it for GA status.)

Your specific comments are also useful. I shall try to provide some more context. The quote from Guesnerie is there because it provides an overall evaluation, and because Guesnerie has been one of the world's leading mathematical economists (e.g. a President of the Econometric Society).

I don't like Wikipedia's policy of preferring large dashes (which don't appear on my keyboard) over small dashes. (Before, on Windows IE, I couldn't see the difference when I was editing.) There is a redirect, Shapley-Folkman lemma, as you suggested.

Thanks again for your great suggestions.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 09:03, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Following your suggestions, I wrote this more friendly version. Thanks again. (I'm sorry for forgetting to credit you in the comments.) Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:47, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Mathematical economics

Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow encouraged Ross M. Starr to study the approximate convexity of Minkowski averages. Starr was enrolled in Arrow's graduate course in advanced mathematical economics at Stanford University while he was still an undergraduate.

Main article: General equilibrium theory

See also: Economic equilibrium, Mathematical economics, and Kakutani fixed point theorem

The non-convexity of the Minkowski sum of possibly non-convex sets is important in the microeconomics of consumption and production. Non-convex sets are widely associated with market failures. Indeed, in the era before Starr's paper, non–convex sets seemed to stump economists from proving that that, with several consumers and several goods, supply and demand could be "balanced" — in economic terms, so that a market equilibrium exists. The study of economic equilibria of complicated markets occurs as the "theory of general equilibrium", perhaps the most mathematically advanced branch of mathematical economics.

Before Starr's paper, Arrow and Gérard Debreu proved the existence of general equilibria by invoking Kakutani's theorem on the fixed points of a continuous function from a compact, convex set into itself. In the Arrow-Debreu approach, convexity is essential, because such fixed–point theorems are inapplicable to non–convex sets: The rotation of the unit circle by 90 degrees lacks fixed points, although this rotation is a continuous transformation of a compact set into itself; although compact, the unit circle is non–convex.

In his paper, Starr studied the general equilibria of the artificial economy in which non–convex preferences were replaced by their convex hulls. Starr was investigating the existence of economic equilibria when some consumer preferences need not be convex. Applying the Shapley–Folkman lemma, Starr (1969) proved that the "convexified" economy has general equilibria that are closely approximated by some "quasi–equilbrium" of the original economy. Using his corollary, Starr derived a bound on the distance from a "quasi–equilbrium" to an equilibrium of a "convexified" economy, when the number of agents exceeds the dimension of the goods. With his 1969 paper, Starr extended the scope of general equilibrium theory beyond convex sets:

Thus, in the aggregate, the discrepancy between an allocation in the fictitious economy generated by [taking the convex hulls of all of the consumption and production sets] and some allocation in the real economy is bounded in a way that is independent of the number of economic agents. Therefore, the average agent experiences a deviation from intended actions that vanishes in significance as the number of agents goes to infinity.

Starr began his research while he was an undergraduate at Stanford University, where he had enrolled in the (graduate) advanced mathematical economics course of Kenneth J. Arrow, who provided him with an extensive and annotated reading list. The Shapley–Folkman results are named after Lloyd Shapley and Jon Folkman, who proved both the Shapley–Folkman lemma and a weaker version of the Shapley–Folkman–Starr theorem in an unpublished report, "Starr's problem" (1966), which was cited by Ross M. Starr (1969).. Before Starr's work, the approximate convexity of sums of non–convex sets had been discussed in the Journal of Political Economy from 1959 to 1961 by F. M. Bator, M. J. Farrell, T. C. Koopmans, and T. J. Rothenberg; these earlier economics papers lacked the mathematical propositions and proofs of Starr's paper.

Textbooks

Please see the article talk page for more. Following EdJohnston's mention of textbooks, I noted five graduate books that could be removed, without reducing the content of the article. (I listed them to encourage readers to use the library.) Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 21:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Shapley–Folkman lemma nomination

Hi, I started a thorough review of your nomination. I think I will do the rest of the article on Tuesday. If you want you can already work on the points I mentioned or wait til I'm done. Best, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 10:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Jakob! What a great (and early) Yuletide/New Year's present! I have responded to a few of your great comments on the page. I really am glad that you volunteered to provide a GA-audit of the article. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 12:24, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I caught a cold, so will review the rest of the article early next week, I hope. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for your efforts. I shall be unable to resume editing for the next two weeks, though, so don't worry about any delay. Get well soon! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 12:20, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Graciela Chichilnisky

Hello! Your submission of Graciela Chichilnisky at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! PM800 (talk) 22:25, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I tried to fix up the suggestion. I think David has some good ideas, which are being discussed there. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Graciela Chichilnisky and DYK decadence

[1] - I don't feel comfortable making the decision myself since I commented on the article so someone uninvolved should do it, but hopefully the comment will make it go through. General recommendation when nominating econ or math related articles though - it's always nice to have a graph illustrating the basic concept. It's not always obvious what that should be and mathematical graphs are not always "sexy" enough compared to images that can be included for other kinds of articles, but it can only help. Volunteer Marek  01:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

And I very much agree with this [2] but that important issue should be brought up here [3]. Volunteer Marek  01:28, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, for your support, and careful correction of the "censorship" red herring.

I would not want DYK to feature a tragedy about an african-american rapper who gets killed while trying to play the part of some racist fantasy about african sexuality and criminality, particularly when that racist fantasy is being sold by white-owned corporations to meet the demand of middle class young punks, e.g. in Sweden, where you can hear rap songs with "n*gger" at McDonalds.

A woman being hospitalized for trying to set a record of sexual acts on camera is just as revolting; we don't have to promote such self-destructive and gruesome tragedies sold to men wanting to trigger the metabolic pathways of our ancestors, who were but weasels f*cking in a hole. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 02:18, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Dear Marek!

Please send the submission ahead. The deadline is coming, and you are not in any conflict of interest. Observers are supposed to polish the submissions, as you did very well! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 22:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Henry Mann

Hello! Your submission of Henry Mann at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! —David Eppstein (talk) 17:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Re:There Are More Things

I've fixed some of the stuff you pointed out — please see my comment on the nomination page. Regards, ♠TomasBat 02:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tomas! I liked the article, especially since I have been a Borges fan since 10th grade. :)

Many of my comments should have gone to the article talk page, but sloth has been one of my deadliest sins for a long time. I'm glad that you found some worth considering.

I'll look at the article.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 02:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Another economist

You might be interested in saving Roman Frydman from deletion by adding some sources and then unprodding. (It's clear just looking at citation counts that he should be kept, but that's not good enough to remove the prod — we need sources.) —David Eppstein (talk) 08:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, David. In this case, the article is just a sentence. NYU's social-science departments were the most improved in the USA (and maybe the world) in the last 20 years, and I suppose that any member of the Dept. of William Baumol and Andrew Schotter and (Jesse Benhabib?)/Michael Woodford (and whatever heroes are there now) must be very good indeed. Alas, I have even less time, and no knowledge of him, so I won't help here. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 11:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I think I found enough on my own to save the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Well done! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Graciela Chichilnisky

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:03, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Help

Can you see/comment on the disruptive user and his tag team User_talk:HJ_Mitchell#editor_issues(Lihaas (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2011 (UTC)).

Hi Lihaas,

I am sorry to read that you are being troubled by a disruptive editor (again).

However, I had trouble understanding what was going on at that link. I shall try to make sense of it again.

Please contact me whenever there is a problem: There are many good administrators associated with the mathematics and statistics projects and with other pages I've edited, to whom I may refer you.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I happened to see the RFA about you. Just take it easy. You are in the position of somebody adding incidents of Idaho potatoes, who is citing accounts that only mention "Idaho tubers". It may be that the page on Idaho potatoes has consensus that mention of tubers is insufficient, and that such an editor may be guilty of original research, perhaps even synthesis doing such additions. Dealing with urban/urbane ignoramuses who cannot recognize terrorism or potatoes would make such pages intolerable for me: Thus, I wouldn't be able to edit on such pages.

On the other hand, I imagine that the only way WP can function is by some consensus, e.g. that an outside source using the word "terrorism" is necessary --- this would avoid fights about inclusion, and let WP editing be productive.

I wrote an outside comment that the complaint should be revised to avoid attacking you as a general editor, because you have been productive and reasonable in my experience.

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 11:38, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

thanks.Lihaas (talk) 11:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)).

I reread my statement above too, and it could have been etter as well ;)(Lihaas (talk) 15:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)).

DYK nomination of Andreu Mas-Colell

Hello! Your submission of Andreu Mas-Colell at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Jappalang (talk) 01:37, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Jappalang. I revised the hook to meet your concerns. Thanks again. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 09:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Kiefer. The hook now seems clear, but there is no specific cite to the information that supports the hook; i.e. no cite at the end of "... from differential topology and differential geometry." Furthermore, the The Theory of general economic equilibrium and Foundations of the Theory of General Equilibrium are used as references without page numbers (although it seems obvious to me that the theme of the books support the information they are cited to). For the "differential topology and differential geometry" cites, can specific page numbers be supplied (from the Conclusion chapter or somewhere)? Jappalang (talk) 01:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I provided page references in the article, and then provided a synopsis with page references in the lead, to make life easier for you and DYK readers. My referencing has redundancies, but I don't have time to do a better job now, alas. Thanks. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 09:55, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Citations for List of Ukrainians

Thank you for volunteering the statistical data purported to support the claims made by other editors in List of Ukrainians.

Please provide the references to this data in the introductory section of this list, where the citations have been requested in January 2011. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.234.208.200 (talk) 10:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I asked you to stop making personal attacks, but you continue to accuse the editors of the list of bad-faith editing. I gave you the page number to a standard book, for one statement that the urban areas of Ukraine had mixed populations. You cannot find this book in Ukraine, or in articles on Ukrainian history? Fulfilling your request seems like a waste of my time, given your tendentious editing and edit warring.

All Ukrainians and Poles and Russian (known to me) regard the history of the the borders of Ukraine and Poland —and of Russia and Ukraine — and of Poland and Germany— and of Germany and the Czech Republic —with shudders of horror, at the behavior all the parties in the past. Just as Americans regard the border with Mexico with horror, and Canadians regard the Halifax ethnic-cleansing of the future Cajun French with horror. There is blood on every border of the world, and all civilized people respect that there is some ethnic, religious, and "national" (whatever that is) diversity in every country, particularly near the boarders with other countries.

(I'll mention that none of these 1945-1948 conflicts have had any history of war or terrorism, which makes them useful and obvious counterexamples to frequent (idiotic) claims about the "causes" of attacks on Israeli civilians. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC))

Ukraine has plenty to be proud of without denying the contributions of other groups to its history: Just think about what you have eaten in the last day, and tell me that you haven't benefited from the contributions of Poles and Jews and Germans and Russians (and Tatars ...) to Ukrainian history! Please take it easy, and stop the personal attacks.

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I did not see your personal attack "comisar-stein", which is grounds for your immediate blocking (ethnic, religious, unsubstantiated political): Today (14:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)), I am relieved that you have been blocked.

Never contact me again.

Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 12:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Colorful signature

Inspired by Volunteer Marek's signature, I created a blue-and-gold signature, honoring Sweden, Ukraine, the University of Michigan, and even Euclid High School.

Is my signature too big?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 

Should it be smaller?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 

I prefer smaller.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  23:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This one's good, though I think Sweden would probably be the other way around. Thanks! Volunteer Marek  00:23, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps my fondness for the University of Michigan is comparable to my fondness for Sweden? (I restored the Talk button, also, to help newbies find their way.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 00:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Search for painted turtle pictures

From TCO's talk page (copied, to help me remember.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  00:09, 1 February 2011 (UTC)):

Can you do a Google search in Swedish (or German if you are) and see if you find an image or even a specimen of a fossil of painted turle, Chrysemys picta? It's an American turtle. But it is very common and maybe trying a different language helps.TCO (talk) 20:03, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Image from Shapley–Folkman lemma

From all the articles I've worked on, my favorite image was made by David Eppstein, an awesome Wikipedian. Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 18:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The Shapley–Folkman lemma. Every point in the convex hull of the Minkowski sum of the four non-convex sets is covered by the sum of two original sets plus the convex hulls of two original sets.

Harold Hotelling: Good stuff, man!

Are you a fan of theoretical statistics and Hotelling and all that? TCO (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Professionally, I am a theoretical/mathematical statistician with interests in computational statistics and experimentation. In multivariate statistics, Hotelling developed Hotelling's T-statistic, a multivariate generalization of Student's t-statistic (of William Gossett), and canonical correlation analysis; his paper on weighing designs opened an area of combinatorial design theory, apparently.

US statisticians esteem Harold Hotelling for promoting ideas of Ronald A. Fisher and then Jerzy Neyman and Abraham Wald in statistical theory and for his leadership in the profession---notably by founding departments of statistics and by inspiring the founding of other departments with his essay on the role of a department of statistics.

Hotelling had an eye for talent and supported refugees like Henry Mann and Abraham Wald, and even helped Kenneth Arrow. In economics, Hotelling wrote pioneering essays in location theory and on non-convexity, including consumer theory and marginal cost pricing for production with increasing returns to scale.

Hotelling was member in good standing of the United Methodist Church and the Socialist Party (of Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington).

Yes, I am a fan of Hotelling's!

Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 07:06, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Four DYK items

DYK for Andreu Mas-Colell

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Henry Mann

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

World-system at T:TDYK

Still waiting for your response to my last comment there. Thank you, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:21, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies for the delay. As I commented at the article (revising it somewhat), and at the DYK page, the fact needs better documentation. I checked the citation not because I doubted your good faith but because Andre Gunder Frank is notorious for terrible social science (see comments in Cardoso's Dependency and Underdevelopment in Latin America, for example). I'm sorry that the author, Janet A-L., wasn't credited for the DYK fact. Again, I regret the delay, which is my responsibility. Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 20:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Replied there. Please check the DYK criteria, a lot of your critique (comments on the w-s theory, for example) are not relevant to the DYK process. I'd suggest you move them from the DYK discussion to the article's talk page, where they would provide valuable material to future improvement of the article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:56, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I wanted to explain why I bothered to check your source. When the source is not intellectually disgraceful, then I rarely would check the source, per "WP:AGF". I'll check your sourcing, now.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 01:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

If you are ok with the hook, can you add the appropriate check mark? Thanks. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

My pleasure!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 02:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Readers who wonder about the harshness of the stricken comments should remember the global body-count of the communist movements, which AGF and the Monthly Review faithfully championed. Cardoso's criticisms of AGF's "social science" merit consideration.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 13:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Non-convexity (economics)

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)