Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Smarandache-Wellin number

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 NO CONSENSUS TO DELETE. Herostratus 06:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Smarandache-Wellin number

Smarandache-Wellin number (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

Non-notable and mathematically trivial concept. All sources are links to sites such as PlanetMath, MathWorld, etc, with similar depth of content to the article itself; Smarandache's own work on the subject is self-published and no papers referring to this concept can be found on MathSciNet or Google Scholar. —David Eppstein 20:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nomination.--CSTAR 22:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Mentioned in multiple secondary sources (MathWorld, PlanetMath, OEIS etc.). Lack of references in academic papers/journals is not sufficient grounds for deletion if other secondary sources exist. Neither is mathematical triviality - mathematically trivial concepts may still be encyclopaedic e.g. casting out nines. Gandalf61 09:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: The problem with that is that those sources (OEIS in particular) aren't discriminating. It'd be like claiming someone was notable based on being in three different phone books. Any academic topic that is anything like notable will have a dozen articles in journals--they've a very low standard for entry, really. It's true that lack of journal articles doesn't automatically disqualify something--but it's a good indicator that the thing isn't notable, in the absence of news stories or books on the subject. --Sopoforic 14:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• Bot this is probably not a high-importance academic topic - this belongs rather to the "recreational mathematics", if I understand it right.--Ioannes Pragensis 15:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - not a groundbreaking theory, but still sourced and may be interesting to some people.--Ioannes Pragensis 12:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge to Copeland–Erdős constant. OEIS accepts almost everything with little or no editing, but not MathWorld and Prime Pages. There is also a reference (I haven't checked it) to a book by Carl Pomerance. Enough references to deserve mention for a math topic but doesn't need its own article. PrimeHunter 15:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

  There is one reference in the Crandall–Pomerance book, in a long list of "research problems", on pages 75–82. Problem 1.86 is: "Study the Smarandache–Wellin numbers, being ...".  --Lambiam^Talk 19:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

  Comment. Although the OEIS does accept a lot these days, notice that the sequence of Smarandache-Wellin numbers has a relatively low A-number, and that the entry has five paper references, five Web links, and Mathematica and PARI programs.

  Comment. It does not have "five paper references". It has three. One additional item is the Pomerance item mentioned above; another is Smarandache's own collected works;. Of the three other references, two are to the "Smarandache Notions Journal", which is published by Smarandache. The last is from Abstracts of the American Mathematical society, which means that the paper was not published, but that the author wished to announce his result. Such abstracts are brief summaries of paper content; some, but not all of the papers were presented at AMS annual or sectional meetings. -- Dominus 20:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

  Comment. Of the five web links, two are to Wolfram Mathworld and three are to Smarandache's web site, including one link to his own collected works and one to the on-line version of the "Smarandache Notions Journal" I mentioned above. -- Dominus 20:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

  Comment. What if Smarandache is a Ramanujan who hasn't found his Hardy? And do we also have a low opinion of Kaprekar, who concerned himself mostly with base-specific concepts? Anton Mravcek 23:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

  Comment:And, incidentally, having the programs means nothing except that someone bothered to write up the code for the series; I've submitted code for several sequences myself. --Sopoforic 01:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, per what Gandalf61 and Ioannes Pragensis have said. PrimeFan 20:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. As per nomination. -- Dominus 21:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It's true that not everything that ends up in the OEIS might be encyclopaedic (although I can't say with certainy either way), but I think that these definitely are. They're mentioned in a mathematical textbook, they're listed at Weisstein's site (Mathworld), and they're discussed on other websites; of course they're not as important a concept as, say, Hilbert spaces, but the claim that the concept is "non-notable and mathematically trivial" is simply and obviously wrong. Furthermore, I think we'd do well to keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia: we can afford to have entries even on relatively obscure topics, so long as they're important in *some* way, and these certainly are. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 13:06, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain why you think that these are important? What about the subject makes it notable? Because despite the length of your comment, all I can tell from it about your opinion of the specific page under AfD is that you disagree with the nomination. —David Eppstein 17:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. The deletion nominator, David Eppstein, has done excellent work on improving the articles on Sylvester's sequence and related topics. If I ever had to vote on something knowing only his position, I would vote the same as him. Anton Mravcek 23:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. If this was a paper encyclopedia of general knowledge, I'd have to vote delete. But if this was a paper encyclopedia of mathematics, I'd have to vote keep. As it happens, there is a paper encyclopedia of mathematics that has an entry on Smarandache-Wellin numbers, the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics, the paper forerunner to Mathworld. My opinion is that if it is good enough for a paper encyclopedia of mathematics, it is good enough for Wikipedia. Anton Mravcek 23:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. The author of that encyclopedia, Eric W. Weisstein, has personally searched large primes among these numbers. [1][2] (This adds to notability in my opinion) PrimeHunter 00:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment. I have a copy of that paper encyclopedia, and it doesn't actually have a separate entry for Smarandache-Wellin number. The concept, however, with a reference to the OEIS listing, is mentioned at the entries on Consecutive Number Sequence, Copeland-Erdos Constant and Smarandache Sequences. CompositeFan 20:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. The concept of the article is hardly useful or interesting, and we know well who it is named after, but as far as Wikipedia notability standards go, I would think the article is notable enough. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Question. Who's Wellin?--CSTAR 14:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

  Paul R. Wellin at Wolfram Research.[3]  --Lambiam^Talk 20:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

  I was assuming Paul Wellin too, because of the Weisstein connection, but I couldn't find a source that confirmed this. Gandalf61 09:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep sorry I've been away, but in my absence, otehrs have done for this article what I wanted to do when I first learned of this deltion debate. Numerao 22:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science). –trialsanderrors 02:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

  Why is it a test case for Wikipedia:Notability (science) when Wikipedia:Notability (numbers) is surely a more relevant guideline for this AfD ? (answered at trialsanderrors talk page) Gandalf61 11:54, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep On its own it seemed at first a trivial concept, but the notion of S-W numbers that are themselves prime is intruiging and there are some interesting refs which I'll add if they aren't there already NBeale 17:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Per nomination --Drieux 03:18, 21 January 2007 (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.