Talk:diagram

Deletion debate

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diagram

Rfd-redundant "(mathematics) A graphic representation of an algebraic or geometric relationship" redundant to previous "A plan, drawing, sketch or outline to show how something works, or show the relationships between the parts of a whole".​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Delete per nom. DCDuring TALK 11:36, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Delete per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes - this sense should be deleted. BedfordLibrary 15:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

deleted -- Prince Kassad 22:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2020

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

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diagram

Sense 2: A graph or chart.

Graphs and charts are not diagrams. Rather than repeat everything here, please see the discussion here:

• Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/09/Category:Diagrams by subject

And see the template we agreed to for use on diagram categories on the Commons:

• Commons:Template:Diagrams

"All diagram categories should contain diagrams as defined and illustrated in the Wikidata box at Category:Diagrams: "plan, drawing, sketch or outline to show how something works or the relationships between the parts of a whole". Tables, graphs, and maps are not diagrams. They should be moved to subcategories of Category:Information graphics such as Maps, Charts, Statistics, etc.."

There are links to the categories within that quote in the template. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:50, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Someone just added the first quotations for that sense. See diff. But I don't think they apply. Simple data graphs and simple data charts are definitely not diagrams. And these quotes discuss images that are much more complex:

1. • 2010, Susan Schneider, Science Fiction and Philosophy:

     This particular diagram represents a dinosaur in the distant past and a person who is born in AD 2000. These objects stretch out horizontally in the graph because they last over time in reality, and time is the horizontal axis on the graph

   • 2017, Sherman Wilcox, Ten Lectures on Cognitive Linguistics and the Unification of Spoken and Signed Languages, page 177:

     We can then chart them over time and it results in that kind of a diagram.

The 2017 quote is completely vague. I have no idea what the image looks like.

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

You are attempting to bring usage into conformity with some idealized sharp distinction of types of visual representations. Ordinary language rarely honors such idealized distinctions. Wiktionary is not a vehicle for reforming language; it is a vehicle for describing language usage. It is true that most dictionaries of statistical terms do not contain an entry for the word diagram. But they do contain entries for specific kinds of diagrams, such as box and whiskers plot, aka box-and-whiskers diagram, aka box and-whiskers-graph, aka box-and-whiskers plot, and scatter plot/diagram/graph.

Several of the citations in the entry refer to diagrams representing variable over time. That is the kind of visual representation that is often called a graph. Chart is itself a highly ambiguous term, which includes tables. I am fairly sure that diagram is not used to refer to tabular presentation of data.

Trying to corral ordinary usage of terms is a hopeless task. Perhaps there are realms that use words in a narrower way that better conforms to you wishes. One approach that you might take would be to examine how various statistical dictionaries define terms and add definitions labeled "(in statistics)" or similarly for other realms of discourse. DCDuring (talk) 15:55, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

It is not Wiktionary's duty to accept the mistakes of others in usage of terms. People will make many mistakes in usage of various terms.

Once a table or graph goes beyond just plotted lines of graphs and table borders, and starts to include illustrations to "show how something works, or show the relationships between the parts of a whole", then there is justification to call it a diagram.

But then this sense (graph or chart) becomes redundant to the main definition: "A plan, drawing, sketch or outline to show how something works, or show the relationships between the parts of a whole".

Just like the RFD on Talk:diagram concluded that this was redundant to the main definition: "(mathematics) A graphic representation of an algebraic or geometric relationship"

--Timeshifter (talk) 17:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Who died and left you language czar? Where do you get off calling any common usage a mistake? In any event, Wiktionary describes usage; it does not prescribe usage. This is what all modern dictionaries do. DCDuring (talk) 20:52, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps the previous language czar did not die but retired, sick of those nauseous people who insist it is fine to use nauseous in the sense of nauseated.  --Lambiam 22:01, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I am often saddened and sometimes angered by the erosion of distinctions, but I don't fight them in Wiktionary because I have taken to heart to lexicographic ideal or ideology of descriptivism. DCDuring (talk) 21:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The question is not what the “true” or “correct” meaning of a term is, but what people mean who actually use the term. The terms flow diagram and flow chart certainly overlap, as do scatter diagram and scatter graph. IMO, sense 2 is a subsense of sense 1; its definition is formulated less felicitously due to the polysemy of the terms graph and chart combined with the absence of any indication that this concerns a graphical representation, but both the mathematical senses 1 and 2 and the (quite distinct) mathematical sense 3 of “graph”, used as a graphical representation, are subsumed by the concept of “diagram”. For an example, see this Buneman graph. What I miss in the definition of sense 1 is that the plan, drawing, sketch or outline is a non-naturalistic, highly schematic or symbolic visual representation.  --Lambiam 22:25, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

The collocation schematic diagram occurs fairly often. Is it a pleonasm or are there non-schematic diagrams? DCDuring (talk) 21:44, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I have to say that the 2010 RfD seems completely erroneous to me. “A graphic representation of an algebraic or geometric relationship” is not a “plan, drawing, sketch or outline to show how something works, or show the relationships between the parts of a whole”... a diagram demonstrating the Pythagorean Theorem does not show anything “working”, nor does it show any relationships between a part and a whole.

It's fine for Wikidata to have a specialized definition but the 1897 OED gives

Diagram [...] that which is marked out by lines, a geometrical figure, written list, register, the gamut or scale in music [...]

1. Geom. A figure composed of lines, serving to illustrate a definition or statement, or to aid in the proof of a proposition. [...]

2. An illustrative figure which, without representing the exact appearance of an object, gives an outline or general scheme of it, so as to exhibit the shape and relations of its various parts.

   Hence applied to such different designs as a map of the heavens, a delineation of a crystal, a representation of microscopic forms, etc. Floral diagram (Bot.): a linear drawing showing the position and number of the parts of a flower as seen on a transverse section. [...]

3. A set of lines, marks, or tracings which represent symbolically the course or results of any action or process, or the variations which characterize it; e. g. the intensity of action or quality, the rise and fall of temperature or pressure, of the death-rate, rate of emigration, rate of exchange, the derivation and mutual relation of languages, etc. b. A delineation used to symbolize related abstract propositions or mental processes.

   Often with defining word prefixed, as indicator-diagram (in the steam-engine), acceleration-, force-, velocity-diagram. [...]

4. After Greek usage: A list, register, or enumeration ; a detailed inscription ; also, 'the title of a booke' (Cockeram 1623). [...]

5. Mus. A musical scale, a gamut.

So I hate to prescribe anyone's prescription, but “Simple data graphs and simple data charts are definitely not diagrams” appears to be a completely untrue statement to me (and does not match my U.S. American usage experience).

--Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 23:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

• No one objects to the addition of specialized definitions to any entry in Wiktionary, provided only that they are actually distinct from other senses, that they are attestable, and that they are not NISoP. I would be surprised if Commons did not require specialized definitions to support well-defined categorization, but those definitions are not likely to have a great deal of effect on world English usage. DCDuring (talk) 21:57, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Comment. I don't see basic statistical tables and graphs being called "diagrams" in this WIkipedia article: w:Mathematical diagram. So maybe the Wiktionary definition of diagram can point that out. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• So what? Statistical dictionaries don't define diagrams etc. to include such things either, but at least they are a reliable source. But the essential point is that we follow actual usage even minority usage without suppressing the facts or enforcing extra-linguistic norms. DCDuring (talk) 03:17, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  • So just to be clear, Timeshifter, at this point your proposal is that Wiktionary should contradict the OED, which explicitly gave a sense, as already quoted above, “A set of lines, marks, or tracings which represent symbolically the course or results of any action or process, or the variations which characterize it; e. g. the intensity of action or quality, the rise and fall of temperature or pressure, of the death-rate, rate of emigration, rate of exchange [...]”? --Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 14:48, 3 December 2020‎

(unindent). We should not be using 1897 OED definitions of diagram. See: w:dictionary. In that Wikipedia article the major dictionaries with long histories are described and named. The modern versions of those dictionaries do not describe basic statistical tables and graphs as diagrams.

Find more recent major dictionary definitions with this Google search:

• https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+diagram

Those major dictionary definitions of diagram:

Oxford dictionary:

• https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/diagram

Collins dictionary:

• https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/diagram

Merriam-Webster dictionary:

• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diagram

Cambridge dictionary:

• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/diagram

On the Collins page farther down it has the traditional definition of diagram. From Collins English dictionary. For British English.

And on the other 3 dictionary pages for diagram, the traditional definition of diagram is used. The latest Webster's definition is using the traditional definition of diagram.

After seeing w:Mathematical diagram I see that certain specialized charts and graphs sometimes use the word diagram along with other words like plot.

But for basic statistical graphs and tables very few people call them diagrams. Why would they when there is a perfectly adequate word like graph or table? These are the vast majority of graphs and tables on the Commons.

So I will be clarifying the Commons template to indicate that difference. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:18, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

You know “lexico.com” is not the modern version of the OED, right? That would be https://www.oed.com/, which you'll notice asks for a username and password. Non-public-domain versions of the OED are a paid service, which isn't even included in the Wikipedia Library for research, despite the fact that we have access to a whole mess of Oxford Press titles.

Do you have any rationale why we supposedly would not want to refer to the 1897 OED... beyond, uh, a link to the Wikipedia entry “dictionary”? The current OED definitely still includes barely-intelligible examples of usage from, like, the 14th century, (in fact, I notice that the tagline on the web site is “Discover the story of English: More than 600,000 words, over a thousand years”, so earlier than that) so I'd be quite surprised if your claim that it no longer contains the above senses is correct. Linking to less-complete free online dictionaries is not a very good argument for English Wiktionary's English entries to be lower-quality or less complete. --Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 08:05, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

• If you look at e.g. [1], they use "diagram" freely to refer to graphs, and I can't say that I would really notice this as an error or as anything unusual. I'm not sure, though, that "charts and graphs" needs to be split out and made an individual deal of. I think there is essentially only one sense here, which is (most broadly) "something that explains or gives information pictorially" (not suggesting this as a complete finished definition), and could include graphs as well as others that do not necessarily "show how something works" or "show the relationships between the parts of a whole". Mihia (talk) 03:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 22:01, 17 December 2020 (UTC)