Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/12988816 (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 move to domino tiling and redirect to 10000000. John Reaves (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 12988816 (number)

12988816 (number) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

In general, we don't have articles on large numbers such as this. There is no canonical reason for choosing an 8x8 board - why not a 9x9 or 10x10 board? Content should be merged into more appropriate articles, as this is not the location for it. CMummert · talk 02:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Agree with nomination's reasoning. Merge as a paragraph into Pfaffian#Applications and then delete. —Resurgent insurgent 2007-04-17 03:17Z
• Delete and/or redirect: fails WP:NUMBER, point 3. MER-C 04:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment If I understand correctly, merge and delete isn't an option under the GFDL. That leaves us with the alternative of redirecting 12988816 (number) to Pfaffian, which seems a bit odd ... cab 05:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • We could move the page to somewhere like Talk:Pfaffian/12988816 (number) and make it a redirect to Pfaffian, then link to the redirect in the AfD talk page banner; this would delete the article and still retain its history somewhere. —Resurgent insurgent 2007-04-17 08:56Z
  • Yes, there is nothing in the GFDL that prevents deleting unnecessary redirects. The closing guide for admins explains the recommended practice, which the previous comment summarizes. I don't know where this urban legend began, but this is not the first time I have run into it. CMummert · talk 11:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I think numbers like these (with distinct properties) should be included in Wikipedia. This is because it is of some interest to mathematicians. Robinson weijman 10:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable in the field of combinatorics. The article is adequately referenced and not OR. -- Mikeblas 12:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • As someone else pointed out, this does not seem to meet the notability requirements of WP:NUMBER or the informal requirements of Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers. CMummert · talk 12:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep

I submit that this article is notable and should be included in Wikipedia for a number of reasons:

• • 1. There is no other article concerning the number 12988816 (known to me).
  • 2. This article is genuinely useful for reference purposes.

By this, I mean the article "12988816" to be used more as a reference from another Wikipedia article than simply as an article one might look up directly (as a search).

I would normally come to the conclusion that the number (and information concerning it) should simply be added as additional information to a more general article in (the article, in this case, is probably the article on the Pfaffian method).

However, I had occasion to actually look up "12988816" (in an attempt to find out more information on the number), so, it seemed reasonable to assume that if I searched for the number, then it would be very likely that there would be someone else who might do the same.

The number of edits of the article itself demonstrates that there is interest in this number. Note that the article has existed for a relatively short period of time and that it is in this short period of time that the relatively large number of edits took place.

• • 3. There are many articles similar to this one, which are also useful for reference.

For a typical example, the article for the number 495 may be viewed. My point here is not to say simply "there are other articles like this one", but to make the point that it is as useful for reference as some other articles.

• • 4. Professor Michael E. Fisher is an excellent, notable scientist and is a recipient of the Wolf Prize, the Boltzmann Medal and the Lars Onsager prize.

Some of this article concerns some of his work.

I reviewed the Wikipedia article on the notability of numbers. One quote from the article is the following:

"...highly composite numbers are notable enough to get their own article since they were studied by Paul Erdős"

It is understood from this statement that a number can be considered notable in Wikipedia by association with a notable person. While I don't really agree with this rationale, if I am to go by it, then an article for the number 12988816 is justified by the number's association with not one, but three notable people (one of which has a Wikipedia article etc).

• • 5. The Pfaffian calculation method mentioned in the article is a very useful one, applicable to a very wide range of subjects.

The article offers appropriate references to more comprehensive articles.

• • 6. The number 12988816 is the answer to a very common example problem designed for solution by the Pfaffian method.

With regards to the comment made above by CMummert "why not a 9x9 or 10x10 board?", an 8-by-8 board is of considerable notability as a Chessboard.

I honestly think that the addition of this article can only help make Wikipedia more useful and that the benefits of having the article outweigh the drawbacks. Further, the article itself could be used as the location to place more information on the number (existing information and information yet to be discovered).

ZICO 14:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Numbers with notable properties should be included in Wikipedia. I don't think anyone disagrees with this. I think the article should be kept because it is in relation to a commonly used mathematical method. The chessboard/domino question is often used to describe the pfaffian calculation method. The number itself is of interest to mathematicians. I searched for 12988816 after looking at the question, to see if it had any interesting properties. Containment 15:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC) — Containment (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Keep Mathematicians and physicists like Okounkov and Fisher find it interesting. I've added a few more categories to show how interesting it is. I've also created the following magic square (of composite numbers) that has digital root of 7 for both its magic constant and itself just to show how interesting this number really is:

Giftlite 15:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Rename to Domino tiling, delete the old name, and give it some real content. It's a sufficiently sourcable topic to be encyclopedic, but as it is now it fails WP:NUMBER. —David Eppstein 16:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Still rename, but make this title redirect to 10000000 per Septentrionalis —David Eppstein 17:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. That it superficially appears to be only about an unimportant problem about tiling a chessboard with dominoes may disguise the fact that it's notable because it illustrates the mathematical method, which could be applicable in scientific problems. Michael Hardy 16:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, the method is worth covering, but there is another article for the method. Pfaffian#Applications would be a more logical place for this example. WikiProject Numbers (before it was defunct) thought that a specific number needs about three independent notable properties before it merits an article. CMummert · talk 16:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Rename per David Eppstein, and reaim the redirect to 10000000, which should have a line on this number - and does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Generic number. Wikipedia has fallen pretty far if we keep an article that informs the reader "12988816 is the natural number following 12988815 and preceding 12988817." Lots of things similar to this could be said of any large number. Edison 19:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • With regards to the comment made by Edison above, I refer to the article on the number 9. It is a standard opening to a number's article to have something similar to the following: "9 (nine) is the natural number following 8 and preceding 10", thus, the article on 12988816 is completely in line with common Wikipedia practice in stating "12988816 is the natural number following 12988815 and preceding 12988817".
  • With regards to the comment made by CMummert above ("WikiProject Numbers....thought that a specific number needs about three independent notable properties before it merits an article"), it should be noted that the number 12988815 does have at least three independent notable properties, namely the following:

1. It is the number of possible ways of tiling a standard chessboard/checkerboard with 32 dominoes.

2. It is a square number.

3. It is an 8-digit number that has a sequence of three 8s embedded in it, a pattern similar to a repdigit.

In my opinion, point 3 might be stretching the idea a little, but it is a valid point.

ZICO 19:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

ZICO, someone just deleted "point 3", the repdigit property. I think this is similar to "tampering with evidence." :) Giftlite 22:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, it was a weak point anyway... ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep per above. Clearly there are some demonstrable items of interest to this number. It's not randomly plucked out of the ether, it's worthy of note. We have Avogadro's number and many other articles about things that are, to oversimplify for the sake of brevity, "just numbers." For all the reasons pointed out above, I have to believe that this article is genuinely worthy of inclusion. Lemonsawdust 21:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep — Sufficiently interesting and distinctive enough to have it's own page. — RJH (talk) 22:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comments.
  • So far, there's really only one distinguishing property: this is the number of tilings of an 8-by-8 board with dominos. If we were to relax standards and have articles on every perfect square and every number with a repeated digit, we would have a large number of articles indeed.

The comment "large number of articles" would be an understatement. The number's main known distinguishing property is, indeed, that it is the number of possible tilings of an 8-by-8 board with dominos. ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• • Several people have suggested that there are adequate references for the article (or that a number of authors have found this number interesting enough to study). But where are the references to articles or books about this number specifically? (And not indirectly through some other subject.) If we want an article about the sequence [1] of the number of domino tilings of 2n-by-2n squares, then we want an article about the sequence -- not a single entry in the sequence. Several users above have suggested exactly this.

There is a reference to an article in a book specifically about the number 12988816: The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, revised ed., 1997, ISBN 0-14-026149-4, David Wells, p.182. ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't call that an article. Most entries in that book are just a couple of lines. I don't have the book here so I can't check the 12988816 entry, and some entries are a bit longer, but I doubt it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• • That the Pfaffian method can be applied to compute this number -- or numbers in this sequence -- should be mentioned in the article about that method. If the article about 12988816 survives, then this tidbit should be moved there; if the article about 12988816 morphs into an article about the sequence, then it should simply be copied (and kept). Also, that the Pfaffian method is useful is a point in favor of keeping the Pfaffian article, not this one.
  • ZICO said, "However, I had occasion to actually look up "12988816"". What was the occasion? (Specific to 12988816?)

The occasion was when I came across the "domino tiling a chessboard" problem. I saw that the solution to the problem was the number 12988816. I looked up this number in order to see if there was further information on either it or the problem. I made the point earlier that if I looked up the number specifically, then it would be very likely that someone else would do the same. ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• • The comparison to the article on 495 isn't particularly apt. The guidelines say that articles must stand on their own; that there's another article like it isn't a reason to keep the article. (If someone can come up with a wikilink for this guideline, it'd be appreciated. I can't recall it off-hand.) The comparison to Avogadro's number isn't particularly great either; that number finds wide use in physics in chemistry. The number 12988816 doesn't.

My point was not that the article for the number 12988816 was similar to another article, but that it was as useful for reference as the other article (...when should someone specifically look up the number 495?). ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

With regards to Avogadro's number, it is simply a defined number. There is nothing particularly interesting about the number itself but it is, as you say, very useful in the Sciences. Avogadro's number would be different if we used a different system of natural units. My point here is that Avogadro's number warrants (and rightly so) an article not due specifically to anything interesting in the number. The number 12988816 has at least one interesting property in that it is square (the other repunit point is pretty superfluous). ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Lunch, the link is WP:WAX which expands to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#What about article x?. But I'd argue against using the mysterious abbreviation WAX. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• • If I had to vote, I'd lean towards creating an article on the sequence of which this number is a member (and redirecting this article there) or merging this article into one on tilings (domino tiling or polyomino tiling), on the Pfaffian method, or somewhere else appropriate. Lunch 23:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment A 9x9 board has of course no domino tilings. Jheald 00:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• The fact that an 8x8 board has 12988816 domino tilings seems to be notable enough to be mentioned in Wikipedia, but a whole article is too much. So I agree with David Eppstein and Septentrionalis: move the article to domino tiling and then redirect 12988816 (number) to 10000000. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with having the information surrounding the number 12988816 added to "Domino tiling", "Polymino tiling" or to "Pfaffian method", but I still think there should be an article devoted to the number 12988816 specifically. ZICO 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that there is not so much you can write about the number. "12988816 is the number of domino tilings of an 8x8 board" is pretty much everything. Okay, I'll be generous and say that we can add "it is also a square", but that doesn't make an article. The general formula for domino tilings on an n x n board does not belong in the article on 12988816. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Non-notable number. The sequence of numbers of domino tilings might be notable. However, there's no reason for an article with this name to exist. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete or redirect, but move content to domino tiling or something more suitable. -- Fropuff 01:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as non-notable number. There are infinity numbers, so notability has to be fairly extreme. Someguy1221 20:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Keep - Only because it has many properties that you would not find in many normal integers. Cool Blue^{Light my Fire!} 00:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What's a "normal" or "usual" integer? Perhaps you've never heard G. H. Hardy's story about 1729. What standard would you use for inclusion? Lunch 15:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I note that this almost the only number of this magnitude in the integer category. I am not qualified to judge whether it is notable, but it should either remain as a number article or be deleted entirely. redirecting to another article seems inappropriate. Peterkingiron 16:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Wikipedia not paper. Herostratus 17:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

So would you have tens of millions of stubby articles on all the integers of this magnitude? What of the guideline "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection"? Lunch 18:05, 22 April 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.