Talk:Auxiliary fraction

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WikiProject Mathematics
Mathematics Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, which collaborates on articles related to mathematics.
Mathematics rating: Start Class Low Priority  Field: Basics (historical)

[edit] Request for expert attention

I listed this article for deletion (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Auxilliary Fractions) but consensus emerged that there is a potential article here, given expert attention.

My concerns are:

  • Zero context; it appears that this is an algorithm used in vedic mathematics, but there is nothing in the article to indicate this
  • As a result, the article is meaningless to a general audience
  • Needs categorisation
  • Insufficient indication as to what task the algorithm is intended to perform
  • No Wikipedia:Lead section; this would be an appropriate place to tackle the above
  • Over-reliance on worked examples; these should only ever be used in an illustrative manner
  • No proof that the algorithm works, or discussion of corner cases

Other concerns, taken from the AfD debate:

  • "...it does not help that the writing is so horrid"
  • "the presentation is horribly arcane... see if it can be translated into some variant of standard English"
  • "This may be a notable topic and even has featured article potential - but who can tell right now?"

Minor issues:

  • Capitalisation - Wikipedia articles use sentence case (this applies to the article name as well as section titles)
  • Plurals - presumably the article title should be in the singular?

I hope these issues can be resolved. –EdC 16:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I worked on the article for a couple hours today. I hope that the mathematicians can understand it now. It does need an expert to prove A.F. do work by prefixing the remainder to the Q-digit.

Although the Wikiproject's mathematics portal said someone would contribute, no one did. Yes, the article needed a lot of revision. I was surprised at the "interest" it generated. Larry R. Holmgren 20:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added a lead section and tried to do some copyedit on the rest - removed the unencyclopedic "we", shortened sub-heads, clarified some passages. But I don't think the cleanup job is complete, so I've left the tags in place. I think the method works - certainly the Type One and Type Two cases make sense - but like most so-called "vedic" mathematics, the method becomes increasingly baroque, and is of little practical use. I doubt that you will see much involvement from Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, as mental calculation methods are a niche interest. Actually I think this whole article is too close to a "how to" guide to belong comfortably in Wikipedia - if it was nominated on AfD again, I would support its deletion. Gandalf61 12:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)