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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 delete. Vanamonde (Talk) 06:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Harlan J. Brothers

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Harlan J. Brothers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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WP:AUTO and fails WP:ACADEMIC notability tests --LStravaganz (talk) 03:27, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete: Note this has been previously discussed for deletion, but that was 15 years ago and notability criteria have progressed significantly since then. Reasons for nominating for deletion:
    • Clearly an WP:AUTO because its main contributor is User:Hjb, very likely the subject himself given the initials. There is a second contributor who makes frequent edits (User:GiantSteps), whom I suspect knows HJB personally. Both means that there is a serious WP:CONFLICT.
    • HJB fails the WP:ACADEMIC notability tests:
      • His mathematical contributions, while impressive-sounding to the layperson, are relatively small-scale within the discipline itself.
        • His main contribution is discovering a slightly-faster converging sequence for the Euler constant e. Firstly, this result has only been cited 34 times since its publication in 1998, which is a tiny number and suggests it is not exactly a breakthrough in maths. Secondly, incremental improvements in algorithms are published all the time; there is nothing really that special about HJB's work beyond the pop-science "wow" factor of the Euler's constant.
        • There is a blatant embellishment where the article claims "these methods subsequently found their way into the standard college calculus curriculum by way of two popular textbooks on the subject." This implies HJB's results have become standard teaching in university mathematics. However, if one actually looks in the cited R.Larson textbooks, HJB's series expansion for e isn't listed anywhere. Instead, on pg. 638 of the 2014 edition, where the Maclaurian polynomial for ex is introduced, there is a footnote encouraging students to see "how to use series to obtain other approximatins for e", with a reference to HJB's 1998 paper. This reference is probably more because the paper contains a lot of known series in its background sections; Larson at no point actually refers to HJB's original research.
        • One does not become notable by collaborating with famous mathematicians (one of whom isn't even named, instead referred to only as "a well-known mathematician at Scientific American"). Should we write Wiki biographies for every undergraduate who does summer vacation research with famous mathematicians?
        • Nor is being an amateur mathematician with no formal training noteworthy, especially when the corpus of one's work is small, only totalling 113 non-patent citations in 23 years. Regular academics publish multiple papers annually, each with tens/hundreds of citations. Countless people publish outside their fields all the time; for example, medical doctors frequently publish in bioinformatics. I also don't know why going back to uni to study (presumably undergraduate) calculus is a particularly impressive feat.
      • There is almost zero secondary-source coverage for "Harlan J. Brothers" or "Harlan Brothers" on a Google/Google Books search. There is a very small nod to HJB here, but it is buried among others about amateur mathematiciains in general and does not actually discuss the impact of his work. To meet the notability tests, there needs to be a lot more secondary and independent commentary, especially important for an autobiography.
    • When this article was first nominated for deletion in 2006, the editors suggested that a lot more work be done to improve the language and turn it away from being a vanity article. However, the text in today's article is largely unchanged from a 2005 version. Moreover, previous recent edits (such as this one) contained blatantly self-promoting sections, possibly indicating the authors' intentions of using this BLP as a vanity piece.
    • TL;DR His amateur status is admittedly interesting, and so is his work on the music+maths intersection, but the corpus of his work needs to be far greater and way more independently-commented upon to deserve notability. No amount of article cleanup or rewriting can change the underlying reason that HJB simply isn't notable enough at this stage to deserve a biography here (let alone an autobiography) -- LStravaganz (talk) 03:42, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It needs some cleanup due the reasons given above, but I think it should be kept as interesting. --Bduke (talk) 03:54, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 08:12, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 08:12, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Connecticut-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 08:12, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Hello. I’d like to echo Bduke and offer a different perspective from the Editor (LStravaganz) regarding deletion. I believe it would help matters to clarify and correct the claims of the Editor before the community weighs in.
    • First, the Editor is correct that that article is autobiographical. I switched my username to GiantSteps about 8 years ago - it seemed at the time like most users do not use their actual names. As a jazz musician, the name sounded more fun than “hjb.” I’d be happy to delete “hjb” (which I never use anymore) if that is the appropriate thing to do. Also, it appears that while autobiographical work is strongly discouraged, it is not in and of itself automatically disqualifying (though the rationale for this guideline is certainly sound).
    • After reading the WP:ACADEMIC criteria, it *might* be true that “HJB fails the WP:ACADEMIC notability tests by miles,” but my achievements are in fact more far ranging and significant than what is presented by the Editor. One question is, “Why is WP:ACADEMIC the appropriate metric?” Perhaps there is something here I don’t understand about the classification system, but might this work?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians. The description seems perfect: “This is a list of amateur mathematicians—people whose primary vocation did not involve mathematics (or any similar discipline) yet made notable, and sometimes important, contributions to the field of mathematics.”
    • The fact that an untrained mathematician, through his love of math, came to work with Benoit Mandelbrot would appear to be noteworthy by itself. My research regarding fractal structure in music was started at the request of Benoit. The importance of my work in the field is significant enough to have warranted an invitation to author a definitive chapter on the subject for the World Scientific memorial volume “Benoit Mandelbrot - A Life in Many Dimensions.”
    • As for the impact of my work, for my paper “Structural Scaling in Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, according to Altmetric: “Altmetric has tracked 18,950,555 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 84th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.” Altmetric also shows that the paper is #5 of 122 outputs from the journal Fractals: https://www.altmetric.com/details/1509464#score
    • It seems the Editor missed the point here: “One does not become notable by collaborating with famous mathematicians (one of whom isn't even named, instead referred to only as "a well-known mathematician at Scientific American").“ I definitely did not collaborate with the mathematician in question - he ignored my communication! This the story of an unknown amateur attempting to reach out to the mathematical community. As in publishing, the same work can be dismissed by one referee and praised by the next. The important message here is to simply keep trying.
    • Of course, the well known mathematician I *did* collaborate with was Benoit Mandelbrot - at his request. There is abundant evidence of the closeness of our relationship, including the fact that I was invited to contribute to the Notices of the AMS for a memorial article about Benoit. See https://www.ams.org/notices/201208/rtx120801056p.pdf. Reliable secondary sources can confirm that relationship was hardly what the Editor uncharitably likened to “every undergraduate who does summer vacation research with famous mathematicians.”
    • The Editor is mistaken about this: “His main contribution is discovering a slightly-faster converging sequence for the Euler constant e. Firstly, this result has only been cited 34 times since its publication in 1998, which is a tiny number and suggests it is not exactly a breakthrough in maths. Secondly, incremental improvements in algorithms are published all the time; there is nothing really that special about HJB's work beyond the pop-science "wow" factor of the Euler's constant.” To be clear, this is not my “main” contribution - it was simply a early contribution. Also, the characterization of the family of series as a "slightly-faster converging sequence" is just plain wrong. Last, given that not all fields are of the same magnitude, the absolute number of citations is not necessarily the important metric. What is more relevant here is that it appears that virtually *every* paper on the subject of approximating e now references my work.
    • It is not clear why and on what basis (e.g., number-theoretic, computational, educational) the Editor appears to minimize the significance of my work on e. For reference here is a substantially different take from the well-respected and accomplished computer scientist Damian Conway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Conway) from October 2019:
    • Hi Harlan, Thanks so much for taking the time to read my article, and even more so for reaching out to offer the correction (which I deeply appreciate and have now applied).

Your actual paper on the new series was a joy to read, and gave me that rare but exquisite moment of "D'oh! Of course!", at the point where you explained that the improved formulations derived from the simple process of combining adjacent terms from Newton's original. I feel that it is the mark of true genius that this idea is so patently obvious...but only after you had pointed it out. :-) As a computer scientist, rather than a mathematician, I was perhaps more interested in the computational efficiency of the new approaches, but that will certainly not stop me from stealing this lovely "shoulders of giants" example and turning it into an exercise for my CS students (now with correct references and attribution). So thank-you for that opportunity as well.

    • Finally, it’s not clear why the Editor makes the claim that there is  “almost zero secondary-source coverage” and others appear to echo that concern. To start, there are seven older examples in the “Further Reading” section. In addition to numerous and more recent independent web articles (in several languages), my work on fractals and music was written about by Stephen Ornes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (https://www.pnas.org/content/111/29/10393) and by Michael Frame and Amanda Urry in their book "Fractal Worlds: Grown, Built, and Imagined." My work is also referenced on the Yale Fractal Geometry website in the section on fractals and music. These are, by any measure, high-quality, reliable sources.

While page in question would clearly benefit from editing, the story of someone with no standard mathematics training who makes notable contributions in the fields of both number theory and fractal geometry is unusual and would therefore likely be of general interest. At minimum, it appears to meet the criteria to be listed under amateur mathematicians.GiantSteps (talk) 23:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)GiantSteps[reply]

  • Comment: Thank you GiantSteps (HJB) for your rebuttal. I understand that this page means a lot to HJB and I can't imagine it's easy to see a nomination for deletion after 17 years of work. I commend him for his civility and good faith when engaging with this discourse. However, for the benefit of other editors, I might make a few comments myself in support of the nomination. I believe there are four main issues in this topic, and the community should judge based on these questions.
    • Q1) Should we support an autobiography? While WP:AUTO is not an immediate criteria for deletion, Wikipedia strongly discourages autobiographies for obvious reasons, with those reasons being apparent in this article. There is only one main contributer, HJB himself, with virtually no independent commentary or editing for this page. Moreoever, I pointed out a blatant embellishment in the article regarding Larson's textbooks, which clearly only arose because there were no checks to stop HJB from making this embellishment, hence creating a conflict of interest. I note that HJB provided no defence for this. Even if Damian Conway does use his results in his computing class, it by no means has "found their way into the standard college calculus curriculum" as you claim. This article is a bad example for Wikipedia; allowing it to stand implies we tolerate unaccountability and vanity like this.
    • Q2) Does WP:ACADEMIC apply? I imagine there are two schools of thought here; the hardliners (with whom I agree) will stand by the letter of the policy, and say that everyone whose article is based around their academic career should follow this policy; otherwise, what is the point of having a policy? However, I acknowledge that the alternate thinking is to relax those criteria slightly to accommodate amateurs. The problem is, nothing he raised really strikes me as outstanding enough to pass even a lowered bar. There are tons and tons of people who publish and work and collaborate outside their fields. I know anecdotes are bad, but I personally know medical doctors who publish in biostatistics and bioinformatics. Using his language, they are "untrained biostatisticians, through their love of biostatistics, came to work with famous mathematicians like ...". Their papers are highly cited, more so than yours. The "undergraduate vacation student" might have been a tad uncharitable I concede, but the point still stands; we don't write biographies for postdocs even or outside collaborators, just because their "Mandelbrot number" happens to be 1. To qualify for notability as an amateur, one's work REALLY needs to be outstanding especially if one wishes to circumvent WP:ACADEMIC, which brings me to...
    • Q3) Is HJB's work notable or impactful?
      • HJB attempted to brush off my comment about his work on e as "not his main work", but half his claim to notability comes from this. The 1998 paper is only cited 34 times in 23 years, while the 2004 Newton's series paper is cited 7 times in 17 years.
      • He also claims that "virtually *every* paper on the subject of approximating e now references my work" and provides no evidence of this. The onus really is on the author to provide this evidence, not me to go search for it; poor referencing like this is, in itself, criteria for deletion. Thus, either it is untrue that HJB's work is authoritative, or it is authoritative but in a miniscule field, as suggested by the incredibly low number of citations. Both scenarios fail notability. I want to note that there are millions of sub-sub-sub-disciplines where someone is authoritative; that is literally how academia works. Every researcher is, by definition, the "best" in their sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-field. Field size absolutely does matter for notability!!
      • The other half of HJB's work is on fractal geometry. The Altmetric stats on the Bach Cello Suite paper really aren't flattering; 5th out of 112 suggests a tiny discipline, while being in the 84th percentile overall means there are 3 million more impactful papers, yet we don't have 3 million Wikipedia biographies!! It also has only 21 citations on Google Scholar and 6 on Mendeley since 2007.
      • "It is not clear why and on what basis the Editor appears to minimize the significance of my work on e". On three bases:
        • 1) Citations. As much as you claim "the absolute number of citations is not necessarily the important metric", it is unfortunately the *only* metric most of us have to work with to judge the contribution. The field size absolutely does matter too, as I have commented on already.
        • 2) Once again, as I wrote in my original post, the discovery of a faster algorithm happens all the time in science. I've seen an undergraduate student in my lab write a faster algorithm to analyse RNA sequences, which was subsequently published. Why is e that much more important? The only answer I can think of is the pop-science "wow" factor.
        • 3) Lack of secondary sourcing and independent commentary, which leads nicely on to:
    • Q4) Has there been adequate secondary coverage? The answer, at least in its current state, is no, because in the article there is a clear lack of independent sourcing. However, ignoring that, HJB still lacks independent coverage in general.
      • He points to [this], which contains a paragraph he wrote about himself.
      • He points to Damian Conway's email, which clearly can't be independent as it's personal correspondence (just because Conway called you a "genius" in an email does not make you one!).
      • No. 1 and 5 in Further Reading are broken links
      • No. 2 in Further Reading is by someone who address HJB as a "colleague"
      • No. 3, 4 and 6 have no links and cannot be verified, although only one-page citations probably means not much is discussed there. All are by the same author (Pickover), suggesting they probably all contain the same content.
      • No. 7 is by John Knox, his collaborator
      • This does seem to be independent coverage I agree. However, you need *a lot* more coverage to qualify as Wikipedia notable (so, even fixing some of those links will not be enough). HJB has not addressed all the previous editors, who have found very little on a cursory search of Google, clearly not a good sign. Even *if* there is a hidden trove of secondary sourcing, it really really *really* isn't my job to scour the internet for it; it is HJB's responsibility to provide as many of these as he thinks would qualify for notability!
    • To summarise this comment, I think that judging on the four questions I posed, HJB has not yet passed the bar. HJB seems to have drastically underestimated the stringent standards required from a biography, let alone a single-contributer autobiography. While it is true that he has made original contributions to mathematics, which is certainly an achievement, the key point is that this is *not enough* to qualify for a Wiki biography, especially given the context of how academia works, which is why we have WP:ACADEMIC in the first place. As I and all the other editors have mentioned, there needs to be a lot more to show for it in the way of accepted metrics and commentary; we are currently unconvinced that there even is anything really more to be shown, however.
I once again thank HJB for his civility, and I hope I have been able to reciprocate.
LStravaganz (talk) 01:38, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. While an amateur mathematician can certainly pass WP:NPROF (which explicitly does not require a professor job title), this would require more evidence of impact (in the form of citations etc) than is presently in the article, even in a lower citation field like Mathematics. No signs of meeting other notability criteria. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:48, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I will respond in detail to the comment of the Editor (LStravaganz) in response to my rebuttal. The comment contains demonstrable errors which I will document. In the meantime, I will begin to edit the article to address the concerns expressed above, including the apparent question of impact. Given Wikipedia's fundamental focus on neutrality, I hope I will be given a reasonable chance to meet the stated concerns. GiantSteps (talk) 13:00, 2 October 2021 (UTC)GiantSteps[reply]
  • Comment autobiographical articles are always high-risk, but in this case the author does seem to have made an honest attempt at removing self-advertisement and adopting a neutral position. The article in its current, cleaned-up state is not all that bad. I'm sort of wavering; I don't think the subject meets PROF, but the question is whether, and how far we reduce the bar of PROF to take into consideration amateur status? Elemimele (talk) 13:55, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If ACADEMIC is not the standard (and I have no idea why it shouldn't be), then we should fall back to WP:GNG: Does significant, reliable, independent coverage exist? I am grateful to LStravaganz's in-depth analysis of this question, and agree with their conclusion that it does not. I would also suggest that the blatant WP:COI editing of this page makes it a very misleading source of information about the notability of the subject. (I'm not denying an honest attempt has been made; the point is writing neutrally about oneself is nearly impossible.) To be specific, the page currently states that "he went on to pubish the fastest known formulas for approximating e." This claim needs a recent, independent, secondary source to persist in an NPOV version of this article, but the only source is Brothers's original article from 2004, which, aside from being an old primary source, a) doesn't even make that claim, and b) is published in The_College_Mathematics_Journal, which (according to that wiki page) is "an expository magazine aimed at teachers of college mathematics, particular those teaching the first two years". My "delete" is unwavering. Danstronger (talk) 15:51, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Danstronger’s point is a good one re: language. I thank him. I have edited the description so that it describes an incontrovertible fact that will remain true for all of eternity, regardless of the age of publication. Perhaps Danstronger will agree that the referees used by the Mathematical Association of America are likely qualified as anonymous independent parties to pass judgement on the content of the primary source cited. And yes, writing objectively about oneself is difficult which is why constructive criticism is helpful. Please note that time is the limiting factor in my ability to respond - addressing this issue was certainly not on my calendar, though I am trying to make it a priority. I will continue to make a good faith effort to edit the page so as to meet community standards and, in the process, hopefully provide interesting content for Wikipedia's readership. GiantSteps (talk) 17:04, 2 October 2021 (UTC)GiantSteps[reply]
The claim in the article has now been weakened to the point where it is, in my opinion, clearly not notable. The MAA accepting the paper into this magazine does not tell us anything about its notability. In this case, it especially doesn't because the purpose of the the magazine is expository. That's exactly why wikipedia policy requires secondary sources to establish notability. See the policy at WP:PRIMARY. Let me also echo that wikipedia policy (see WP:AUTO and WP:COI) strongly discourages you from editing the page about yourself. I believe that your continuing to do so can only hurt your argument here. If you have additional significant, independent, secondary sources that support the existence of the page according to WP:GNG or WP:ACADEMIC, please feel free to add them to this discussion, but the page itself should only be edited by editors without a conflict of interest. Danstronger (talk) 18:00, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
1) I disagree that mathematical results derived by an amateur who improves on and is recognized for work that’s been known and examined by professionals for 350 years are not in some way notable. 2) My apologies for continuing to edit - I thought I was helping the process by directly addressing the concerns stated here. I shall refrain as you suggest. 3) I indeed have identified additional significant, independent, secondary sources. Perhaps I can find a sympathetic editor who can edit and add relevant information without any conflict of interest. GiantSteps (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2021 (UTC)GiantSteps[reply]
Thank you to GiantSteps, Danstronger and Elemimele for the vibrant discussion. I think it's important to distinguish Wikipedia notability from general notability. The reason WP:ACADEMIC and WP:GNG exist is because not everyone who does something cool, or interesting, or has newspaper articles written about them is automatically eligible for a Wiki biography. No one is doubting that HJB's work is original, interesting and deserves commendation; however, we must not lose track of the broader view that academia is, by definition, full of interesting discoveries that are subsequently reviewed, yet. Amateur status by itself honestly doesn't increase notability, as I have pointed out time and time again using examples of undergraduates and cross-disciplinary scientists. So, while HJB is rightfully proud of his achievements, he must understand that it does not automatically catapault him into Wiki notability. We cannot accept any argument made about HJB's notability in the absence of the broader context of academia.
It is good to hear that HJB has found more secondary sourcing, and I urge him to post them here to contribute to the discussion. However, I must advise that the sources must not only be significant in quantity, but also quality, which the community will judge. I also stress that the existence of mere academic review papers, or papers that cite HJB's work, is not enough to establish notability even though they are 'secondary sources', as this happens in academia all the time to every single researcher. There must be substantial analysis in provided secondary sourcing about the actual impact that one's work has made to one's field; for instance, has it radically altered a discipline? As I've mentioned again and again, a faster algorithm is not notable unless it has really really affected the way we think about the discipline; this is what we need secondary sources to confirm for us.
I also want to again point out that the issue of the Larson textbook embellishment has yet to be addressed, either in the article itself or in this discussion. In my mind, this severely undermines HJB's claim to be writing about himself in good faith, and is exactly the reason why WP:COI is a massive consideration in this discussion here. I hope his anticipated response will address this issue satisfactorily. LStravaganz (talk) 04:06, 3 October 2021 (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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