Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pearson distribution

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was keep. – Rich Farmbrough 18:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pearson distribution

borderline nonsense (I think) delete unless shown to be notable and cleaned up--Doc Glasgow 09:30, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC) Article entirely changed since nomination (Perhaps an explanation since some feel this nomination was inappropriate. I may be thick in genuinely mistaking the article for possible nonsense. This in part reflects my total ignorance of the subject, but then an encyclopaedia article should at least make sense to a reasonably educated person - and as it stood this did not - now it (almost) does.) --Doc Glasgow 11:04, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could I ask that people doing cleanup--whose work I greatly appreciate--please avoid using the VfD process on subjects of which they do not know enough to evaluate an article? Perhaps in this case the appropriate things to do would be add "math-stub" so the Math people will find it during their normal cleanup rounds, and perhaps a message on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics asking someone knowledgeable to look at it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

*Delete -- unless someone can make some sense of it and expand the article into something useful. - Longhair | Talk 10:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Keep -- changed my vote based on the cleanup since my original vote. -- Longhair | Talk 04:25, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The Pearson distribution is something real and probably as notable as Gauss distribution or Poisson distribution. There are google hits a plenty on this distribution function. However the article has no real content and can be deleted as it stands now. If anyone wants to rewrite, I will reconsider. Sjakkalle 11:19, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

At present the article says nothing about what the Pearson distribution looks like, but it is better than the last version which was a substub stating little else than the fact that it was a distribution. Alright the rewrite is valid albeit a stub, so weak keep then, but this is in desperate need of expansion. Sjakkalle 06:27, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well the original was "The Personal Distribution is a Probability Distribution. It can be varied in many ways. There are a number of types." It's not much, but it's unquestionably a valid stub. This article should not have been nominated. It might have been better to pop a math-stub tag on it--and correct "Personal" to "Pearson", of course. VfD should never be used as a substitute for cleanup. Although it's very tempting because you get these dramatic death-bed cleanups, it's too risky a process and we've lost a lot of reasonable stubs because nobody on VfD that week happened to know the subject well enough to do cleanup or even assess the stub's value. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 08:01, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your comment delves into the controversial aspects of immediatism vs. eventualism. The question of whether substubs should be kept and expanded, or just deleted until someone cares to make an article with more content is open to debate. My view on it was that "it can be varied in many ways" and "there are many types" didn't really say much, and that the article in that form was not useful. All distribution functions I have seen can be varied in some way or another. The rewrite is a bit better (that's why I voted to keep it), although I still miss a formula defining it. Sjakkalle 08:10, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My comment delves into nothing else but Wikipedia policy. We do not delete reasonable stubs (and what we see in the history is a reasonable stub) on subjects with encyclopedic potential. A family of statistical distributions has de facto encyclopedic potential. This article should never have been listed. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I will say Keep without the "weak" now that we have a formula for one of them. Sjakkalle 06:41, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think this should be deleted - it is a realy thing of interest and has already been added to:martinpeter

Part of the ethos of Wikipedia is that many people can add to the definition. Great oaks from tiny acorns grow, according to my understanding of biology, therefore I beleive it would be a mistake to delete this entry so earlt in life.

• Delete. The last post misses the point - we don't put non-notable things on Wikipedia as a means to help them grow into notability. That has to be accomplished first. --131.94.17.126 14:46, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC) D'oh! Got signed out before I signed the post. It's me. -- 8^D ^gab 14:55, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)
• Redirect to Probability distribution —Teknic^{Talk / Mail} 23:02, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Strong keep. I just cannot fathom why anyone would list an article on this distribution for deletion. Utterly beyond belief. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:18, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, valid stub. - Mustafaa 00:28, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and Cleanup. Zzyzx11 | Talk 01:17, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup, failing that delete, but do not redirect (and thus discourage recreation). Kappa 01:25, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep notable statistical distrbution. Klonimus 02:40, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Paul August ☎ 01:59, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and expand - appears to be valid stub at the moment.Capitalistroadster 03:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, cleanup and expand. Megan1967 03:53, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Strong keep - valid stub on notable topic - see [1]. Gandalf61 08:31, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Well, I cleaned up the article a bit. [2]. Unfortunately, I am no math expert. So I am not sure if the article should include all of the types in the family of the Pearson Distributions [3] [4] [5]. But in any case, its better than it was before. Zzyzx11 | Talk 08:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • It probably should. Radiant_* 10:58, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC) (oh, and keep in case that wasn't obvious already)
• Keep. Charles Matthews 10:17, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. N-Man^talk 11:37, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I added the probability density function of the Pearson type III distribution to Pearson distribution, which can be found in Abramowitz and Stegun. The fact that it appears there is enough reason for me to keep the article, even though I am not a statistician and I do not recall coming across this distribution before. Jitse Niesen 12:10, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, I forgot about Abramowitz and Stegun. Anyway, I added the characteristic function, mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the type III distribution to the article. Now, it looks much better. Zzyzx11 | Talk 13:10, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. As Doc Glasgow has said, it has been entirely changed from the original. However, even as "borderline jibberish", does it merit a VfD, rather than a vote for a tidy up? That said, I see the VfD has made a significant difference to this article! --stochata 09:10, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Sympleko (Συμπλεκω) 17:16, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.