Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragan Marušič

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was KEEP. -Splash 06:09, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dragan Marusic

non-notable biography CH (talk) 18:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• lukewarm keep; the citation in Cameron's review suggests that Marusic is an accomplished research mathematician whose work is recognized as useful by an international authority, which I guess convinces me that M "plays in the major leagues". Although I have to say that there must be dozens more who fit that bill, just in this one field. We need to always ensure that category pages never list more than perhaps a few dozen articles. If we had hundreds of pages on algebraic graph theorists alone, we'd have to have an even deep categorization tree, but I hate to think of getting any more specialized than the topic "algebraic graph theory" already is. Math is complicated enough without letting foolish prattle about "precedents" from the sports pages, for gosh sakes, mess up the experience of math students who could otherwise benefit from this encyclolpedia. The problem is that the more we try to include, the longer it will take for Wikipedia to achieve a more balanced coverage, which is absolutely neccessary for Wikipedia to be a really useful and reliable resource for anyone who needs to find information about some mathematical topic. I mean, c'mon, we need to employ some intelligence here. Clearly standards appropriate for sports fans can be inappropriate and even disastrous in more intellectually challenging pursuits. Math is not really very comparable to sports, and helping people find and absorb information about mathematical subjects calls for very different organizational principles than writing the sports pages.

For the benefit of latecomers: yes, I started this VfD, and yes, I did change my vote (see discussion below). Originally I wrote: Delete or else expand the biography to explain or at least describe a notable theorem or whatever. In lieu of that, Marusic has no preprints listed on the arXiv and I've certainly never seen any papers by him, hence my nomination. More discussion on the article's talk page. And I am sorry that I didn't follow this VfD process quite right on my first attempt.---CH (talk) 18:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC).

Looks like this article will survive, but it should be rewritten by someone who actually knows M's work, or at least knows algebraic graph theory. I don't really want to take the time myself, but it seems that while I doubt there can be very many Slovenian mathematicians in the world, some of them happen to be Wikipedians (and might even have written or contributed to this article), so I urge them to dig up some papers by M, bone up, and add to the article an explanation of the substance of at least one clearly interesting and important result of Marusic.

Again, my bottom line is that I think that every mathematical biography should include a description of at least one clearly notable mathematical achievement of the subject. Let's drop the silly sports analogy at this point because it is clearly not serving our purposes here. We want Wikipedia to be a valuable encyclopedia for a wide audience. Those who come here searching for sports statistics may well have a legitimate need for articles on every major league baseball player from the beginning of time. That all inclusive umbrella might be appropriate in the sports pages, but it is not appropriate in the math pages, whose readers consist of students who need to get good information quickly about a subject which is inherently difficult, confusing, and daunting to newbies. We can't drive them away by allowing unlimited cruft in the math pages. Rather, we must above all guide them to good information which is genuinely useful to them. Among many other things, this means good categorization, which in turn means: no cruft. Cruft must be strongly discouraged in the math pages.---CH (talk) 21:56, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, verifiable. JYolkowski // talk 01:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Not notable. Someone's going to have to give a better reason than "he's a professor". --Chan-Ho 18:41, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. After all the discussion, it seems this individual is particularly influencial in Slovenian mathematics, not necessarily for the depth of his mathematical contributions but his contributions to creating a mathematical infrastructure. His bio should be edited to reflect this. --Chan-Ho 23:12, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: I can't judge the importance of his mathematical contributions except to comment that he has one publication (with collaborators which include Malnic) in Combinatorica which is probably the most prestigious combinatorics journal. Also, he has the gray graph result (also with Malnic) which Tomo has linked below. I only noted these facts after Tomo's contribution to this discussion. Regardless, since I'm already of mind to "keep", this doesn't change anything for me, but it may for others. --Chan-Ho 03:33, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. The article claims he was awarded the Zois Prize, and according to the article on the prize, it is "the premier science prize in Slovenia". Unless either of these claims is wrong, I'd say he is notable enough. Tupsharru 20:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I have a comment for Tupsharru: I have never heard of the Zois prize, which may or may not be a bad sign, but my point is that when a biography of mathematician M which appears in Wikipedia, and describes no non-mathematical notability to M (as in the case of the Unabomber), this article should explain a significant mathematical accomplishment of the subject. If the author can't do that, he should be able to cite a web page for the Y Prize or whatever which gives the formal Prize Y citation for M. If he can't do that, I feel the article should be deleted as non-notable. Er, hope it's OK for me to interject a comment like this. I cast my vote earlier, see above.---CH (talk) 21:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

It may be the premier science prize in Slovenia. The question is if that makes it notable. Has anyone outside of Slovenia ever heard of it? A Google search indicates to me that the answer is no. I expect that any reasonably accomplished individual from a country like Slovenia would have such a prize. Should we, in effect, lower the standard for these individuals? I'm honestly asking this. --Chan-Ho 00:15, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Abstain for now, but the citation is at http://www.mszs.si/slo/ministrstvo/nagrade/zois/2002.asp (I think), though I admit that I'd never heard of the Zois prize before. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Wow, Jitse, I hereby award you the first Biographical Barnstar for Brain-numbingly Obscure Web Research :-/ Congragulations!

So can someone, maybe Tomo, please translate this citation? Maybe it will convince me to change my own vote, eh? Like I said, if I'm wrong about any of these three being non-notable, please edit the article to explain or at least describe some truly notable accomplishment! ---CH (talk) 02:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Quick translation:

prof. dr. Dragan Marusic - Zois prize for scientific achievements at the field of graphy theory and algebra.

Dragan Marusic, professor at the pedagogical faculity at the University of Ljubljana, is one of the leading slovenian mathematicians, and is also known around the world. His main area of scientific work is algebraic graph theory, where he explores the symmetries of graphs and the workings of finite groups on combinatorical objects. He is the founder of algebraic graph theory and the theory of permutation groups in Slovenia, where he has taught a group of co-workers which is now well known around the world.

The main scientific opus lies with the research into half-transitive graphs and their classification. The sequence of his work on this area reached its apex in the accurate description of transitive permutation groups with their mirrored orbits of length two. This enables the description of orbital graphs of length four and the complete characterisation of the stabilising crossings. This deep and important result got a wide response in the world. Professor Marusic also achieved important results in other areas such as Hamilton paths and cycles in Cayley graphs, and in the research of half-symmetric graphs. He has published his results in 52 original scientific papers in international journals, from this there were 32 articles in the last seven years. His work is often cited by other authors, and he has presented his work at various international mathematical conferences and foreign universities.

prof. Marusic is one of the most visible researchers in the field of finite groups on graphs. His research work is characterised by deepness and a well of ideas, and the findings of totally new methods at solving problems. His results on half-transitive graphs have opened new ways of development on that area. Much of his work presents a lasting contribution to the knowledge of mankind.

(I apologise for any errors or possible mistranslations of mathematical terms (I'm going to FMF this fall). Based on this I'd say keep, but I will not vote.) 193.77.153.149 16:39, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks much, 193.77.153.149, whoever you are. This is very helpful, and gives us a much better idea of what this Zois award is all about. The sentence He is the founder of algebraic graph theory and the theory of permutation groups in Slovenia, where he has taught a group of co-workers which is now well known around the world clearly means the Marusic has founded the Slovenian school of algebraic graph theory, meaning that before he came along, this wasn't being taught at the graduate level and research in this subject was not done in Slovenia. I'll take the Zois award committee's word for this, since this claim certainly seems plausible.

From the time I spend trying to promulgate the Joy of Math here and elsewhere, it should be obvious that I take my hat off to anyone who is a successful and accomplished educator, and I acknowledge that far fewer can teach at the graduate level than at the undergraduate level, because to supervise doctoral students of your own you must have enough ideas for yourself as well as for your students. Founding a school of subject X in your native country is a significant accomplishment of which anyone should be proud. However, with all due respect, hundreds of professors could credibly teach graduate students the basics of algebraic graph theory, and there must be dozens of mathematicians who could supervise doctoral students in this field, so I am not sure that (in the baseball analogy), we are really out of the minor leagues yet.

Well-written award citations usually state the most important reason for the award first, and I take this to mean that the Zois award was given to M primarily in recognition of his service to the developoment of mathematical research in Slovenia. At this point, I observe that since this came up, I noticed that the List of Slovenian mathematicians apparently first arose in the Slovenian language Wikipedia, and then someone, mabye 93.77.153.149, translated this list into English and put it here. Now cross-fertilization between the various Wikipedias is obviously a good thing, but I also think that some sensitivity is appropriate to whether a translation of everything which is appropriate/timely/important for the Slovenian language Wikipedia is important for the English language Wikipedia. Going the other way, guessing that say Cricket is not a popular sport in say Finland, translating pages on cricket from the English language encylcopedia into Finnish is probably a waste of time; anyone who can translate English to Finnish should be translating the math content articles :-/ And going the other way, translating any good articles on indubitably interesting Finnish mathematicians (I can think of a few) into English.

32 papers in 5 years could be very impressive output, or not, since it is an apolitical fact that the quality of journals varies very considerably even in English, and it is true that the highest quality work does tend to appear in the major journals in the major mathematical languages (English, French, German, and a few others; the roster is generally agreed upon, although it has changed over time, as you would expect is probably becoming less eurocentric, and I stress that I am not denying that important papers have appeared in more obscure languages like Ukrainian, and that I am not denying the possibility that important papers are appearing right now in some of the many languages which very few "Western" mathematicians read). My point is that it is not clear from this figure along that everyone would agree that M is a truly major player in the international mathematics scene. Again, I am now convinced is a major player in Slovenian mathematics, but I don't think that alone would make him a notable person in the English speaking world.

I happen to have read some of the literature about Hamilton paths and cycles in Cayley graphs a few years back, so I know that Peter J. Cameron is a leading authority on permutation groups in the international mathematics scene who has written a recent survey paper which I happen to have right... (mumble, mumble). Ah-haaaa!!! Here we go, Cameron does cite Marusic's paper on vertix symmetric digraphs, and one other. Ok, 2 out out of 104 papers. OK, at least some of M's papers are internationally known and recognized as significant. What we need now is a recent survey of algebraic graph theory... Hmm... I am not finding one on the arXiv, although we all know that some extremely valuable papers are never listed there, including the one by Cameron I just used. The books I mentioned are too old to take account of any recent work by Marusic.

OK, bottom line; the article should have been written by someone who actually knew enough about M's work to describe his work, and anyone who knows that much would probably know the literature sufficiently well to be able to judge its importance. At this point, I am convinced that Marusic is an active research who has done some good work, so he must be a competent mathematician and a dedicated teacher. I guess I could change my own vote to an abstention or even a weak keep, if that is allowed.---CH (talk) 20:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. If the information on the Zois prize is correct, he appears to pass the "average professor" test. -- DS1953 22:52, August 22, 2005 (UTC)**
  • Comment: with all due respect, the "average professor" is NOT notable. Recent professorcruft is starting to annoy me. With that said, yes, I'd like to see this expanded and more detailed, but weak keep for now. JDoorjam 23:38, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
    • WP:PROF say "If the individual is more well known and more published than an average college professor, they can and should be included." For my own voting, I assume that college professors fall into a type of bell curve and that the "average" includes the middle part of the bell. You can't really put a percentage on it, but as I apply the test, it would not be limited to the top 2 or 3% of professors nor would it sweep in 49%, but rather somewhere in the middle. I think any professor in any country that receives national recognition, like the Zois prize (whatever that may be) must certainly stand out from the "average professor". Finally, though this is an English language encyclopedia, we need to be careful not to concentrate our coverage in favor of English-speaking areas. -- DS1953 14:40, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

I notice that you avoid my question above: if an individual is above average for a Slovenian professor, but is well below average (or at best average) internationally, are we supposed to lower the bar for this individual to be in Wikipedia? --Chan-Ho 16:34, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see your question above. My personal answer would be that I would not knowingly lower the bar to admit a professor whose qualifications are sub par simply because the poor quality of academics in his country makes him notable among his own peers. Obviously all of this is very subjective, however. The fact that a professor from a small country may not have as many English language papers published, or even present as many papers in total, as a comparable level professor at a publish-or-perish American university does not necessarily mean than his contributions are less notable. For my vote, receiving a national prize will generally tip the scales in favor of keeping the individual in a vfd vote. -- DS1953 17:12, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Why do you assume that average Slovenian professor is automatically "well below" his counterparts from other countries, Chan-Ho? -- Naive cynic 19:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, stop, let's not go there, because nobody is implying that Slovenians are less capable than other folk. Lots of academics get some kind of award at some point during their careers, so just getting an award by itself doesn't mean much. I think Chan-Ho is just saying that this particular award might refer to a limited pool. I.e. if there are only 100 Slovenian mathematicians, and if (as I guess) this award only goes to Slovenian nationals, then by itself, the fact that M has recieved it might not imply that he's very notable compared to an international award for which the pool would be the tens of thousands of active research mathematicians around the world. See what I mean?

The useful evidence is not the prize citation, but the keywords which led me to look at a review paper by a mathematician who's work I know and admire (and who I know is an internationally known authority), Peter J. Cameron, where I found that PJC does indeed cite the work of Marusic. The award itself probably doesn't mean much at the international level; the citation in Cameron's revivew is much more impressive. What the heck, I'll change my vote to a weak keep.

• Keep. The Zois award page at the site of the Slovenian Ministry of Science and Education calls him "one of the greatest researchers in the world in the field of actions of the finite groups on graphs", and says that "results of his research on the semi-transitive graphs opened new possibilities of development in this field" (or something like that, I don't know Slovenian). -- Naive cynic 13:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Notable enough for me. Paul August ☎ 22:45, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep professor's who win national level awards. Klonimus 03:55, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. His result with Malnic was a featured headline news in Math World. He is also on

the editorial board of Discrete Mathematics. Tomo 02:58, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Tomo, by now we've spilled a lot of virtual ink, but this VfD would never have been initiated in the first place if the editors of this article had described this result and why it is important! Think about the users browing Category:Algebraic graph theory. They are likely to be math students, and unlikely to be Slovenian or to know personally the subject. So, they are unlikely to find mundane details (where he attended Gymnasium, some decoration which is very unlikely to mean anything to a non-Slovenian user) at all interesting. So grab their attention by describing an intriguing result! So please edit the article to explain this result and its importance in algebraic graph theory. TIA---CH (talk) 11:31, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.