Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Graphical methods of finding polynomial roots

Visual Detection of Imaginary Roots in a Parabola

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Unsourced original research. Contested prod. A previous version of the article contained the sentence "Plotting the imaginary roots using empty circle in the Cartesian coordinate system is something new I am proposing" so was obviously OR. This sentence has been removed by subsequent edits, but contents of article have not been substantially changed and no sources have been provided to demonstrate it is not OR. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep We have active discussions on the article's talk page by interested editors. The nomination seems to be forum shopping and/or forcing the issue in a disruptive way. There is no need for a 7-day deadline and so, per WP:BEFORE, ordinary methods of editing should be tried first. Note that I have provided multiple good sources which touch on this matter. The nominator disputes them but so it goes ... Colonel Warden (talk) 12:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Escalating to AfD when a prod tag is removed (and removed by you, let us note) is standard practice so I invite you to withdraw your unfounded accusations of forum shopping and disruption. I still see no sources that describe this specific method of visually finding complex roots of a quadratic equation. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is hardly OR. LOL! Mathematicians have known about exactly this aspect of analytic geometry for quite a while now. To say that they haven't would mean the author of this article deserves a Fields medal (assuming they are under 40 years of age, of course, which he/she probably is). --Firefly322 (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment WP:NOR: "To demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented". I see no such sources.Gandalf61 (talk) 13:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Loads of potential sources (1) The American mathematical monthly, (2) ON-Math Spring 2003 | Volume 1, Number 3 "Connecting Complex Roots to a Parabola's Graph", (3) "Roots of Quadratic Equations from Parabola graph". Since this is a mere cursory look, hardly involving the digging that an expert could perform, the potential sources and possibility of article expansion here seem quite vast. An argument that there is a lack of sources doesn't hold up, falls foul of WP:BEFORE. --Firefly322 (talk) 21:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment In fact WP:BEFORE reads "When nominating an article for deletion due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources aren't likely to exist." I see ZERO effort on the part of the nominator to have been made. --Firefly322 (talk) 21:46, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete because it is original research that doesn't cite any reliable sources. It seems like good material, but that isn't a sufficient excuse for having the article. Independent reliable sources would need to be found. Recommend the material is userfied until then. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's trivial to find maths articles which have no sources - see Disjoint union for example. It is clearly not our policy to delete them as a matter of course. See our actual policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:05, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Yeah, WP:OTHERSTUFF. Let's stick to the point. You (or any other editor) can preserve this article very simply - you just have to "cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented". I still see no such sources. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OTHERSTUFF is a good argument when the precedents are valid - please read it. Your appeal to it is therefore a WP:VAGUEWAVE. As for sources, I've already made a good start and this fork in the discussion isn't helping as we are now diverted by tiresome AFD rhetoric rather than getting at the facts of the matter. Do you actually dispute the correctness of this mathematical method? I just took another quick look and soon found this paper which seems to apply the same idea to quintics. The topic is clearly not original and our task seems how best to present it rather than punishing a naive editor for his impudence contrary to WP:BITE. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The method is correct, but that is irrelevant. Unless it has been described in a reliable source it does not belong in Wikipedia - our benchmark is verifiability, not truth. A paper on finding real roots of quintics is not related to an article on finding complex roots of quadratics. I still see no sources. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- pablo_hablo. 15:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete WP:OR due to lack of WP:RS, which also means it fails notability requirements. Open to userfication per above. Verbal chat 16:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Again if this is OR, then its original editor deserves a Fields medal. If one doesn't believe this editor deserves a Fields medal, then one must logically conclude that this OR-argument is false. --Firefly322 (talk) 21:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FireFly, please stick to wikipedia reasons. Provie RS or stop going on about the Fields medal. If someone has won such an award for this, then provide the RS. I realise you've had problems understanding our guidelines in the past, but you've been here long enough now to know that these sorts of arguments aren't valid. Verbal chat 21:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, it's a "how to". Abductive (reasoning) 16:40, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There are seven points in WP:NOTHOWTO none of which mention mathematics articles. This is a specious argument that also falls foul of WP:BITE. Just as the argument labeling it WP:OR does. --Firefly322 (talk) 21:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See point 4 and 6, for starters. The reference to "bite" is unsupportable. Verbal chat 21:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Point 4 clearly wasn't written with math articles in mind. Using it here seriously distorts any semblance of right or wrong on wikipedia. Nearly all mathematics articles seem to violate point 4. But clearly math articles are wanted. As for point 6, how in the world does that apply? I don't see any relevance to this AFD debate. And WP:BITE does indeed apply. --Firefly322 (talk) 03:20, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Unsourced how-to. I don't see how the topic could be made into something suitable for Wikipedia. --Ronz (talk) 22:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom, Scjessey, and Verbal. Ozob (talk) 23:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment When there are those here who claim to have Ph.D.'s in Math, but their comments don't really hold up to such a claim, using them to bolster arguments via per is naive at best. See Essjay controversy. --Firefly322 (talk) 03:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

keep The basis of this nomination seems dubious at best. previous version of the article contained the sentence.... What a previous version of the article contained seems to be completely irrelevant. In fact I went and looked at the list of arguments not to use in a deletion discussion and was wondering if maybe I could find something along those lines already listed. I didn't find it, but maybe we should consider adding it. Finding the roots of a parabola is certainly a notable topic. I can pull books off my shelf that discuss the topic. The method is certainly verifiable, in the discussion on the discussion page, I pointed to at least one discussion of imaginary intersections, in Hamilton's Elements of Quaternions article 214, with the only problem being that this particular article discusses the imaginary intersections of lines and circles. A little digging would probably turn up parabolas as well, but if not found in that particular text, it seems pretty obvious that this topic has been discussed some place before.TeamQuaternion (talk) 05:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of argument LOL, lets say that the current method being presented is original, and has never been proposed before. That is not really relevant, because if there exists any notable published graphical method for finding imaginary roots of a parabola then the article could be fixed by substituting that method, for the current method. Suppose that Gandalf61 could prove not only that this method is original, which I doubt, but also that no method of graphically finding the imaginary roots a parabola has ever been found up until the present article under discussion. If this were the case he could certainly find reliable sources stating this to be the case. If he wants to claim that this is indeed the case, I challenge him to find documentation for this remarkable fact. Yet that would still not be grounds for deleting the article as its contents should then read that there is no known graphical method for finding the roots of a parabola, citing the sources that Gandalf61 has provided. Of course if this were the case, this wonderful new method will soon be published in reliable sources, and we can then once again include it as well.TeamQuaternion (talk) 05:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]