Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McNugget number (second nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge and redirect. --- Deville (Talk) 03:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McNugget number

Previous discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McNugget number

A neologism by MathWorld, which lists three references. Only two supports this usage: a newsgroup posting and a Mathematica-related book. The third, which is a Mathematica notebook by Stan Wagon, uses the more traditional "coin problem" setting for the mathematics. Anybody could make up countless pointless variations on this, and this variation of the time-honored postage stamp problem would appear one of them. Chan-Ho (Talk) 00:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• No reliable secondary sources = delete. Melchoir 01:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak keep/rename/whatever per Michael Kinyon's finding below. It would be nice to have a second source... Melchoir 03:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and Melchoir. Bigtop 01:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Rename to McNugget problem and revise. This is a well-known problem in recreational mathematics (try a Google search). For instance, it is used as an early motivating example in

Irving, Ronald S., Integers, polynomials, and rings. A course in algebra, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2004. ISBN 0-387-40397-3. Michael Kinyon 02:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not sure. Isn't Wolfram somewhat of a venerable source on mathematics? AdamBiswanger1_{R.I.P. Steve Irwin} 03:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • No, he makes stuff up all the time. It's surprisingly hard to AfD this stuff, though, because so many of us remember when his website appeared higher than ours in Google searches. He was quite useful once, but his successor has content policies and oversight. Melchoir 03:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep (regrettably) It is a fairly trivial example of the coin problem, and I would prefer to have it renamed, but there do appear to be quite a lot of places other than Mathworld where this probelm is discussed under the name 'McNugget numbers'. Madmath789 06:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete/Merge I would make this a redirect to the [Coin problem] page and add this small bit of trivia to that page. The information on here could be compressed to two sentences at most, perhaps added in a new section of "Coin Problem." (The Swami 07:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC))
• Weak delete. Although Irving above seems a WP:RS, do we really need to re-edit this article every time McDonalds changes their options? Perhaps, if the article is kept, we should refer only to the Orginal McNugget numbers and note that the numbers are subject to change at McDonalds' whim. Or perhaps we should merge to Coin problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. Actually, I am now inclined to merge into coin problem. I don't think Irving's really trying to present some "classical" McNugget problem, although he may have been inspired by, say, Usenet. If you look through the book (look inside the book on Amazon), he keeps modifying the problem, even getting a Happy Meal and McNugget problem in the process. There is even a section of the book called "Congruence classes and McNuggets". I think it's fair to say he sees it as a good illustration of the more general Frobenius coin problem, but I think he's doing it more to be cute rather than because it's some classical, wide-spread, common, etc. way to present the problem. So I would take his adoption of this form with a grain of salt. BTW, you can now get 10 piece McNuggets, and the 9 piece is no longer offered. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 08:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• I've changed my mind. Merge to Coin problem (and maybe merge postage stamp problem in there too) per recent comments above. And I wasn't trying to suggest that the inclusion of the example in Irving's book implies that the problem is classical, but it certainly is a well-known variant of this sort of thing. By the way, is this AfD discussion making anyone else hungry? Michael Kinyon 08:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I actually went out and bought some because of this. Now I'm not hungry. :-) --Chan-Ho (Talk) 09:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. It's just one particular application of a general problem. I'm not hungry, because I don't like chicken! JPD (talk) 09:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to coin problem per above. JIP | Talk 09:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to coin problem per above; and yes, this discussion is also making me hungry. --B.d.mills 10:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to coin problem is appropriate - the McNugget problem certainly exists, anyhow. WilyD 12:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge per above; Notable, but not enough can be said to give it it's own article. --ais523 13:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge I'll go with the consensus. --Salix alba (talk) 14:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge I like McNuggets and I like the fact that the coin problem can be rephrased in more interesting ways. (I also like consensus.) VectorPosse 16:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to coin problem. Michael 19:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge per above. We actually did this in my math class a few years ago :-) —Mets501 (talk) 19:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. Its entry in OEIS is more convincing to me than its MathWorld entry that it deserves some mention in WP: not so much that it exists at all in OEIS (so many things do) but that OEIS agrees to call this sequence by such a short name. On the other hand I agree with everyone else above that it is a simple instance of the Coin Problem more useful as an example than as something that can stand on its own. –David Eppstein 02:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge This is essentially a reformulation of the coin problem. Borisblue 04:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Would somebody please actually merge this time? Septentrionalis 18:06, 7 September 2006 (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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.