Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)
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This page is a notability criteria guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
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These guidelines on the notability of numbers address notability of individual numbers, kinds of numbers and lists of numbers.
In the case of mathematical classifications of numbers, the relevant criteria is whether professional mathematicians study the classification and whether amateur mathematicians are interested by it. Therefore, if the following questions
- Have professional mathematicians published papers on this topic?
- Is the sequence listed in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences? (In the case of sequences of rational numbers, does the OEIS have the sequences of numerators and denominators of the relevant fractions?)
- Do MathWorld and PlanetMath have articles on this topic?
all get affirmative answers, then the kind or group of numbers might be notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article.
So, to give a few examples: highly composite numbers are notable enough to get their own article since they were studied by Paul Erdős, to name just one professional mathematician; pandigital numbers are of great interest to thousands of math aficionados; numbers n such that f(n') is prime, where f is some obscure and complicated function no one has ever heard of before, are probably not notable.
Before creating a list of a certain kind or group of numbers, one must be able to demonstrate that such a list provides value not possible from a category. For example, a list of Eisenstein integers could display them in a two-dimensional graph.
However, the creation of categories must not be taken lightly: one must be able to demonstrate that the category would be populated by a significant amount of articles on notable topics.
For more in-depth and carefully considered evaluations of these issues, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers and Wikipedia:Evaluating how interesting an integer's mathematical property is.
It is true that deleted articles continue to occupy memory; this is why they can be undeleted. On the other hand, the deletion of articles means they will not be accumulating new edits; and discouraging the creation of unnecessary numerical articles will still slow the growth of storage space devoted to numbers.
[edit] Rationale
While Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, it is also true that Wikipedia does not have infinite server storage space. Therefore:
- Wikipedia does not have articles for all integers. Whilst a verifiable and neutral point of view article can be written for a (countable) infinite amount of numbers, most of such articles are deemed unacceptable for Wikipedia. Individual numbers have to be culturally significant, or be within certain ranges, to demonstrate that people would actually look them up and therefore warrant articles. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers#How_Far_To_Go.3F for the notability and inclusion criteria for individual integers.
- Wikipedia does not have list articles for lists of numbers that are not narrowly construed enough to be useful, or that are set complements. The lists in both List of prime numbers and List of numbers are both narrowly construed, contrary to their titles not listing all numbers and all prime numbers, and should be used as guidelines.
- Precedents:
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of numbers that are not primes — There is a continuum of non-prime real numbers between 0 and 1. In writing such a Wikipedia article, one would run out of not-paper even before reaching 1.
- Precedents:
- Wikipedia does not have redirects for all approximations to the decimal expansions of transcendental numbers such as pi and e. Although exceptions are made for common confusions, some Wikipedia editors will not yield beyond three significant figures.
[edit] Related issues
- Years. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and doesn't require an article about any future year with speculation as to what may or may not occur in that year.
- Chemical compounds, such as 1,2,3-trichloropropane, are created by a predictable system, which allows for an infinite number of variations. These are not by definition encyclopedic, unless they have some sort of unusual chemical, economic or industrial significance.
- Elements that have yet to be discovered, such as binilnilium, that are named using a similar regular system. See above.
[edit] See also
Some precedents:
