Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prime numbers in nature

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 of the debate was merged; now redirected. Johnleemk | Talk 15:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prime numbers in nature

An AFD tag was added to this article, but the article was not listed here. I'm listing it now. --Ed (Edgar181) 10:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Merge. I think the section on prime numbers in evolution is worth merging into prime number. The rest seems to be nonsense and can be eliminated. --Ed (Edgar181) 10:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge per nom --TBC^{??? ??? ???} 11:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge evolution tidbit if citable; delete the rest as trivia. Bilateral symmetry? What does that have to do with the primeness of 2? --Mmx1 16:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. There is also a case to be made for Fibonacci numbers appearing in nature. There is a section in that article, Fibonacci numbers in nature. This article should be merged with prime numbers in a similar way. Slowmover 16:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge salvagable content into prime number, and redirect there. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 20:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

*Delete. The entire article is nonsense, even the part about the cicadas.--C S (Talk) 10:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• Merge either into prime number or cicada. The cicada theory is due to Mario Markus and seems a viable theory. The rest of the article is an exercise in numerology. Either redirect as suggested or delete this title. --C S (Talk) 11:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and Delete. Cicada stuff interesting, the rest ridiculous. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 13:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge cicada section into cicada and/or prime number; the rest is numerology, rather than mathematics or science, and has no part in Category:Science or Category:Mathematics. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I guess none of us had clicked on the external links. The introductory sentences were lifted straight out of the second link, as were most of the examples (including the absurd "number of ribs in mongoloid children" that I had removed earlier). Also note that the information merge should probably go to magicicada, not cicada, if it gets merged at all. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 19:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge evolution tidbit if citable; delete the rest as trivia. (
• Delete everything except that which is citable (maybe magicicada stuff) JianLi 23:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Merge the text on prime numbers as an evolutionary strategy with prime number. I agree that the rest is trivia, unless a probable link can be shown between the fact that these numbers occur in nature, and that it is a prime number. It was started as a stub, but was not developed further since. As it stands it probably is not viable article. Zingi 07:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per JianLi. --MaNeMeBasat 07:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. The bit about the magicicada is already in the Prime number article. Looking at the other examples, the only reason explaining why prime numbers in nature are relatively common (as indicated in the lead) seems to be because "prime numbers are relatively common among small integers"; nothing here suggests that primality is an important factor. Schutz 09:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirect. Seeing that the information about the magicicada in the Prime number was copied almost verbatim from this article, we should probably keep the history of the article around for authorship purposes (as suggested on Talk:Prime number). Schutz 09:18, 4 April 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.