66 questions linked to/from List of Generalizations of Common Questions
228 views

### When are questions the same?

This is a rather philosophical question, but reflects the fact that essentially the same question can be asked at different levels of mathematical sophistication and with differing motivation. Here ...
637 views

### Should full solutions be given (indiscriminately of the question being homework or not)?

Meta seems to bee filled with questions on this particular subject, and I have seen eloquent and convincing arguments from both sides, but the thing that leaves me ambivalent towards leaving full ...
1k views

### Do we need a FAQ question for "Guess what I am thinking" type of questions?

This question here: Interview riddle seems to have gotten a lot of views (perhaps by someone posting to reddit or something), with a lot of me too answers, leading to a protection. Such questions have ...
2k views

### There are only 40 calculus problems

There is a saying in mathematics that there are really only 40 calculus problems, and all the other problems are just permutations of these using different numbers or stories attached to them. This is ...
236 views

### Orphan answer (worth saving?) to deleted question

A few minutes ago I started answering one of those "how does this sequence continue" question to which the standard answer is, essentially, "any way you like". The question was deleted while I was ...
780 views

### Can we make IEEE 754 off topic?

For those who may be unfamiliar with IEEE 754, it is the standard that the vast majority of computers use to store floating-point numbers. There are about 100 questions on this site about converting ...
732 views

### How do you search for duplicates?

Sometimes I am really surprised how fast are the duplicates of new question found, given that we have vast amount of questions here. I hope posting this question here can be useful and can lead to ...
1k views

### Would "organizer posts" be useful/welcome here?

I believe that question/answer of this form: Q: Is there an online repository of basic identities/results about topic X? A: Many of such identities can be found with the proofs at math.SE, I'll give ...
519 views

### Stock answer for questions relating to formal proof

Lately there has been a slew of questions (see below) which basically say "how do I construct a formal proof of proposition X?" where $X$ is usually a tautology from propositional logic. These ...
828 views

### The birthday tag

Recently the birthday tag has emerged and it quickly has around 100 questions tagged (mainly by one user I suppose). This is indeed not the first time we have this tag. The last time it was deleted ...
502 views

### What do we do with so many similar combinatorics questions?

I don't know if this is a problem, I just wanted to listen to more points of view, we seem to get a lot of combinatorics problems that are really similar, problems like this one Seat 5 men and 4 women ...
722 views

### What to do about "What is 48/2(9+3)?"-type questions?

Recently there have been a rash of questions of the form "What is 48/2(9+3)?", the most recent of which being here (and other examples are linked to in mixedmath's answer). I think most of us can ...
511 views

### Does our site need a blog like a few sites on the network have?

Does our site need a blog like a few sites on our network have? To me this question is a compact version of the following sub-questions: What do we use the blog for, if we had one? TeX. SX has a ...
132 views

I've created this post with the same purpose as the List of comment templates post, although I imagine it'll be far less useful. There are a few questions on the Unanswered Questions Queue only ...
97 views

### Should we have quick links? If yes, then how?

These are very useful. Can we have quick links of them while answering or on sidebar of questions under some link?: Catalog of limits, a, MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference, List of comment ...
386 views

### Is it OK to post a question you already know the answer with the only purpose to answer it by yourself?

Today someone has posted a question, and after less than 30 minutes he also posted an answer to his own question. I've flagged the mods and they declined my flag. If I remember well, in the past, ...
179 views

### Some idea for math.se to propel some discussion.

I am only a beginner in math.se, (and to math as well in some technical ways, not in terms of enthusiasm though) in my view i feel that math.se has a very good amount of wealth of knowledge in math ...
31k views

### How to ask a homework question

How to ask a homework question Can I ask a homework question here? How do I ask a homework question on this website? What information should I include in a question about homework? Why don't you ...
2k views

### Number-guessing, sum of all natural numbers and hot trend questions

I really think that "popular" questions are treated with inappropriate hostility here. Do I think that "What is the rule for constructing the sequence $3,4,6,10$?" is a mathematically interesting ...
1k views

### Why do high rep, long time users answer duplicate or too similar questions on book recommendations?

Way too many duplicates to Selecting the Real Analysis Textbooks, Recommend a statistics fundamentals book, What is the best book to learn probability?! I feel that too many book recommendations ...
643 views

### Allow question to be closed for low effort

I do like helping people out on exercises but I see way too many questions with little to no effort in trying to solve. I think these people are just asking to get their assignments done. I don't ...
377 views

### Request: an easy way to access the posts on meta that explain policies or serve as tutorials or lists.

Today when I was going through the questions on our main site, I saw a question that showed absolutely no effort. But the op left a sentence "don't know where to start". Then I remembered I've seen ...
464 views

### How to search math terms/notations accurately and efficiently? Could some experienced users summarize some tips here?

How to search math terms/notations accurately and efficiently? Could some experienced users summarize some tips here? I believe such tips will be helpful for inexperienced users looking for hints or ...
480 views

### How aggressively should we tag a question as duplicate?

Some questions seem standard and very likely to have already been asked. For example, a question on Prove Binet's Formula would almost certainly have been asked, even without referring to the links by ...
420 views

### Sylow theorem meta question

This is in relation to http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1868/list-of-generalizations-of-common-questions : I noticed that there have been quite a few questions (recently and otherwise) ...
468 views

### Do some calculus theorems deserve to have their own tag?

The question is basically in the title: Should we have tags for some individual theorems from calculus? (Or perhaps groups of theorems?) If so, which ones deserve their own tag? It is not ...
405 views

Sometimes when I see a question out of a textbook or competitive exam, I want to post a generalization of the specs of the question. I think my situation is (probably?) similar to this. Should I post ...
262 views

### Canonical "-1 = 1" answer?

There are quite a few questions which involves "showing" $1=2$ or $0 = 1$ or $-1 = 1$ via incorrect algebraic manipulations of $i = \sqrt{-1}$. Does anyone know if there is a "canonical" question/...
130 views

### Please comment on this possible answer for abstract duplicate of "integration by partial fractions"

I've expanded an old answer to include a general discussion of how to solve integrals by partial fractions. Before I add it to the list of abstract duplicates, I'd appreciate corrections and ...
133 views

### How to deal with "how I compute this density?" questions

This is not about solving homework questions per-se. Several questions of the type "How do I solve for this probability density" can be solved by the Jacobian method (change of variables) but most ...
115 views

### Find question about integration of rational functions.

Is there a question in MSE with an answer containing the whole integration process for rational functions (on the reals)? Questions on the topic appear frequently. Every time I try to find a link to ...
206 views

### Recurring homework themes vs. specific problem

I know that if someone asks What are all roots of $x^4+7x^2+12$ then it is advisable to not directly answer the question if they have included the homework tag. ...
108 views

### I want to make an article which I can reference to. [duplicate]

We are having a lot of questions on combinatorics which can be considered as a case of arranging balls in boxes. That would make a total of $6$ different cases and I would like to make an article to ...
72 views

### Is it possible to make a reference request within MSE questions/answers?

I've seen questions such as: What are the best real analysis books that take a standard approach to some of the basic theorems. Is it ok to make a reference-request question asking about the best ...
418 views

### Generalization case vs Particular case

Could the - generalization of a problem - post be a good enough reason in order to vote for closing a question? I agree that in some cases is proving to be useful and the effort is significantly ...
1k views

### A list of questions on Boyd & Vandenberghe

Work in progress. To be updated whenever the opportunity arises. I take the liberty of compiling a list of questions on Math SE pertaining to theorems, lemmas, examples and exercises from Boyd & ...
528 views

### Encouraging duplicate hunters

There are more and more duplicates on this site, but sometimes it is time consuming to find an earlier source. Now, there is a variety of moderation badges for editing, voting, reviewing, raising ...
372 views

### questions asked over 100 times

I just saw another question with the limit of $(1 + 1/n)^n.$ A few months ago, somebody asked some other multiple repeat question, I wrote to check any of the last 137 times it had been asked. he ...
464 views

### How to quickly find duplicate questions which are not exact duplicates.

Some moderators are able to find duplicate posts which are not exact duplicates. That is to say even in the case where the question is posed completely differently but the solution uses similar ...
365 views

I am aware of the questions List of Generalizations of Common Questions and Coping with abstract duplicate questions, but I would like to make a suggestion. On Computer Science meta, there is a ...
338 views

### Questions that show no effort to find existing similar questions a.k.a. abstract duplicates

EDIT: After amWhy brought the term "abstract duplicates" to my attention in the comments below, I thought some tidying-up was in order. The original body of the question is mostly intact below; I have ...
348 views

### Reference Textbooks at one place

Can anybody recommend me a topology textbook? Introductory book on Topology Best book for topology? Choosing a text for a First Course in Topology All these are multiple ...
231 views

### Database of abstract duplicates displayed when asking question/clicking on tag

The following question came up today: Prove $5a^2 ≠ 3b^2$ for all non-zero rational numbers $a$ and $b$ This is surely an abstract duplicate if not an actual duplicate. Yet as I intended to indicate ...
232 views

### Editing the list of abstract duplicates

I'd like to add some content to the meta post List of Generalizations of Common Questions. The entry will be under Probability and is going to be titled something ...
206 views

### Canonical duplicate for periodic sequence formula questions?

This question was on the hot network questions today: Function which creates the sequence 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, ... While it certainly has some pedantic value, it's not very interesting mathematically ...
82 views

### Abstract duplicates vs. canonical question

What is the difference between the concept of canonical question (as used across the whole SE network, see e.g. 1 2 3) and this abstract duplicate thing that you have at math.se? Are they just the ...
133 views

### Graphing Software - a faq?

I noticed another in the line of graphing-software questions. This means we now have Draw customized (calculus) graphs like these?, What is a good graphing software?, Software for plotting a graph, A ...
50 views

### Can we include lists of common questions in the Helpful links tab when asking a question?

I think various lists of common questions such as this and this should be added in the Helpful links tab as this may help lessen duplicate questions. Also, it will help expand the scope of questions ...