Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Smarandache number

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. Tone 07:16, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Smarandache number[edit]

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I can't find any indication that this meets WP:GNG. The main places I can find reference to "Smarandache number" are: Mathworld, which tends not to be very reliable in terms of naming things; writings by Smarandache himself, which certainly shouldn't be taken into consideration here; and writings by his disciples, which also shouldn't. There's no indication that there's been any interest in these numbers in the broader mathematical community. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:13, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 22:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can I ask how one recognises "writings by his disciples" and why they shouldn't be counted for WP:N? Are publications in the journal Smarandache Notions from his disciples? How about this? SpinningSpark 07:46, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. It's worth pointing out that several sources are using "Smarandache number" to mean Kempner function, also known as "Smarandache function" which is an entirely different thing (eg [1]). It's also worth noting that Smarandache–Wellin number is a related concept, so a merged page might be possible. SpinningSpark 07:46, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The OEIS page gives results from quite a few mathematicians. Many of them are published in the field (so meeting WP:SPS). Checking out just the first few names, Paolo P. Lava and Reinhard Zumkeller are published. Clifford Pickover is also there. Looking more and more like a keep to me. SpinningSpark 08:40, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Please make sure the names you are viewing are of real people. There has been a lot of speculation over the years over whether the people working on "Smarandache mathematics" exist separately from Smarandache himself. There are no entries for Lava in MathSciNet. (Pickover is real, of course, and Zumkeller appears to be as well, although very sparsely published.) —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep just as Smarandache–Wellin number, what is the difference? And even Mathworld has its page [2] --- Xayahrainie43 (talk) 13:47, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- 1, 11, 2234 ...
Delete per nom. Smarandache is a notorious self-promoter, aggressively naming pre-existing concepts after himself. One needs to be extremely cautious regarding sourcing anything relating to him, as David Eppstein mentions. See also this discussion. --JBL (talk) 14:33, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Seems unlikely that any of the papers (or even web pages) about this subject (possibly other than MathWorld) are by real people. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively, redirect to Champernowne word and protect to force the double-redirect to remain. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:54, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the above. I can't find enough reliable sources referring to these numbers as "Smarandache numbers" to warrant attaching that name (indeed, the concept is so simple it barely requires one). The only reference provided at the OEIS page is Guy's Unsolved Problems in Number Theory, which says, "Charles Nicol and John Selfridge ask if the sequence of concatenations of the natural numbers in base 10 [...] contains infinitely many primes. Robert Baille has found that there are no such primes out to $n=1000$ ." He doesn't even talk about the sequence long enough to bother naming it. The other links at the OEIS page are to Smarandache fans, viXra, a website by Pickover (which uses a different name), a math forum thread (which uses only the OEIS number), a slide deck from Sloane (ditto), and MathWorld (which is not particularly reliable for names). Let's put this bit of Smarandachian self-promotion to bed. XOR'easter (talk) 19:41, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The possibility of self-promotion is convincing. Seems we would need unimpeachable sources before this could stay. SpinningSpark 20:23, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Spinningspark and JBL. Self-promotional crap. To be clear, he's self-promoting in the real world, not on Wikipedia; but his self-promotion has not reached notability in any way for this topic. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:52, 9 October 2018 (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.