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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 merge to Rational trigonometry. This article would be deleted on its own, but with the current inclusion of Rational trigonometry the only sensible argument is to merge the subtopic into the topic. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 19:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply

Spread polynomials

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This article was deleted by PROD, but almost immediately after that was protested by an IP (see the talk page). So I'm sending it here as a procedural action, below is the quoted rationale for the PROD.

The 7th deletion criterion: "Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed" has been satisfied, since there are only two citations for the article, both rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject. (Norman Wildberger)

The reason that sources not involving Norman Wildberger cannot be found, is because there are no other sources, since the topic is not notable enough. It fails Wikipedia's test for notability, and hence satisfies deletion criterion 8.

Other issues about the outright lack of sources for some parts of the article have been raised. See the talk page for overwhelming support for deleting the article.

To be honest, I found the whole episode a little weird, with an article that'd been around for several years quickly set upon by several authors advocating deletion. Exposure to a good number of disinterested eyes seems called for. Wily D 11:27, 26 November 2013 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 00:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep. Searching finds a large number of book and journal sources (go on, try it, click on the "books" and "scholar" links above. Spread polynomials have applications in several areas of mathematics, well beyond Wildberger's original motivation for introducing them. There has been a clear failure of WP:BEFORE here, and the nominator deserves a second WP:TROUT. In addition, the article talk page has no support for deleting the article. -- 101.119.26.132 ( talk) 06:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)— 101.119.26.132 ( talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. reply
    • The talk page from before the article was deleted had 6 people calling for deletion, and no one disagreeing. I'm not sure if you know but this article was deleted, but now undeleted due to the new debate. SohCahToaBruz ( talk) 14:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC) reply
    • Let us be specific here of this large number of book and journal sources. I could find the following through Google scholar:
      • doi: 10.1016/j.spl.2011.06.019 mentions the definition of spread polynomials once but does not use them.
      • doi: 10.1145/1390768.1390806 mentions spread polynomials in a table. It is not clear to me whether they use it in the same meaning as Wildberger.
      • Articles (co)authored by Wildberger: doi: 10.1007/s10711-012-9746-9, doi: 10.1007/s10711-007-9187-z, arXiv: 0911.1025, arXiv: 0806.2495, arXiv: math/0612499 (may contain duplicates).
      • Conference talk by Wildberger.
      • Goh, S. "Chebyshev polynomials and spread polynomials." PhD diss., Honours Thesis, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW, 2005. In my opinion likely to be a student of Wildberger.
      • Articles using "spread polynomial" in a different context, as fas as I can see: doi: 10.1016/S0196-8858(02)00504-3 (on an algorithm of Zeilberger to compute hypergeometric sums), arXiv: 1211.2430 (which refers to the previous article), doi: 10.1109/ISCAS.2003.1204944 (on spread of eigenvalues in symmetric matrices); Ehrenpreis, Leon. "Some nonlinear aspects of the Radon transform." In Tomography, Impedance Imaging, and Integral Geometry: 1993 AMS-SIAM Summer Seminar in Applied Mathematics on Tomography, Impedance Imaging, and Integral Geometry, June 7-18, 1993, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, vol. 30, p. 69. AMS Bookstore, 1994.
By my counting, that is one or two independent sources through Google scholar, neither of which are substantial. I think we need more. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 11:21, 27 November 2013 (UTC) reply
I'm no sure about that analysis. Wildberger's definition is certainly used in Tamás F. Móri, "Deviation of discrete distributions—positive and negative results," Statistics & Probability Letters, Volume 79, Issue 8, 15 April 2009, Pages 1089–1096; and in Kenneth S. Berenhaut et al., "Deviations of discrete distributions and a question of Móri," Statistics & Probability Letters, Volume 81, Issue 12, December 2011, Pages 1940–1944; among others. -- 101.119.27.93 ( talk) 19:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC) reply


  • Strong delete. Definitely not notable enough for an article, even its parent article, Rational Trig isn't notable enough for Wikipedia. 220.237.238.134 ( talk) 15:50, 30 November 2013 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Delete. Two sources for the entire article, both including Wildberger. As been noted above, most of the scholar articles found about "spread polynomials" aren't actually referring to what is mentioned in the article.The article was originally deleted through non-controversial deletion where anyone could remove the tag over the course of the week. No one did, which might give another clue to the lack of notability of the article. SohCahToaBruz ( talk) 14:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. The links to "books" and "scholar" above did a lot to convince me that this isn't notable. For example, 6 of the top 10 book hits in the books link are automated scraper publications that "steal" information from wikipedia to sell. In the scholar link, there are a mere 22 hits, many of which are Wildberger publications, publications also coming from UNSW, and others which may not even be talking about this article's topic. In my opinion, anyone appealing to these two links as support is desperately gambling that it will fool unobservant and gullible readers. Almost nothing there stands up to simple scrutiny. I could change my mind if better references appear. Can we please have a list of the strongest non-Wildberger citations? Non-UNSW and non-PhD dissertation citations would be appreciated. Rschwieb ( talk) 18:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • I am not sure what you have against University of New South Wales, ranked 52nd in the world. I agree that this page should be merged to rational trigonometry, but I am not sure why UNSW sources should be disqualified. If mathematician A working at a respectable university has a colleague B who happens to work at the same university, why should citations by B of A carry less weight than citations by C of A where C works at a different university? Tkuvho ( talk) 18:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • I guess I have to spell out exactly what I mean to dispel these exaggerations. I have nothing "against UNSW." I did not say they were disqualified in any way. The practical implication is that authors there there are more likely to be personally affiliated with Wildberger, and that is not strong support. Such citations should carry less weight because they may stand to profit from its visibility. Convincing support should come from outside his stomping grounds. By all means mention publishers there, but please as a matter of honesty indicate they are UNSW affiliated.
  • Each comment I've made has been to encourage strong evidence for the article's survival. Rather than only offer weak citations and rail at me for pointing out they're weak, please just offer stronger citations. I'm still willing to change my vote if they exist. Rschwieb ( talk) 00:12, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • I am not in favor of retaining this as a separate page, so I think we are in agreement on "spread polynomials". As far as your position that UNSW citations are "weak", I think we will have to agree to disagree. Tkuvho ( talk) 09:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • Delete as non-notable. The best independent sources found here are doi: 10.1016/j.spl.2008.12.015 (the article by Mori, which does not cite a publication by Wildberger but should) and doi: 10.1016/j.spl.2011.06.019 (the article by Berenhaut et al. which cites Mori). They both mention the definition but in my opinion do not use the polynomials. I could live with the spread polynomials being mentioned in rational trigonometry if that article is not deleted. I think they should not be mentioned in Chebyshev polynomials because that would give the definition undue weight. -- Jitse Niesen ( talk) 23:13, 2 December 2013 (UTC) reply
  • Merge this to rational trigonometry, where it should live or die depending on the result of that AfD, per David Eppstein. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 15:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply
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.
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