Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sumac Sequence

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. - Mailer Diablo (talk) 12:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sumac Sequence[edit]

This name seems to have been made up for a 2004 Canadian mathematics competition, for the purpose of obscuring the fact that this is just the Fibonacci recurrence run backwards, and has no independent mathematical notability. My prod was removed without comment by an anonymous editor. David Eppstein (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I would agree with you. I can't find anything on it. If it was valid it would be detailed on wolfram.com scope_creep (talk) 21:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete based on lack of notability. It is kind of like a Fibonacci in reverse, although instead of starting with 1 and 1, you pick any two numbers. From what I understand, after you pick a first and second number, the third is the difference between 1st and 2nd; the 4th is the difference between 2nd and 3rd; and so on, until it counts down to zero. Along the way, you see the differences repeat, for reasons that should be obvious. So, if you start with 100 and 22, the third is 78 (100-22), then 56 (78-22). Then 12, 44, 32, 12 again, 20, 8, 12 again, 4, 8, 4, 4, 0, stop. I can't see what purpose it would serve. Mandsford (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you've miscalculated: the fourth term would be -56 (22 − 78), after which the sequence stops. Or in other words it's the same thing you would get by running the Fibonacci recurrence starting from the pair -56, 78 instead of the usual starting pair 1, 1. I should add that I think that reversing the Fibonacci sequence may well be a suitably encyclopedic topic; what I'm objecting to in this AfD is not that idea, but rather the "Sumac Sequence" name. I don't want to just redirect to Fibonacci because I think this name is insufficiently notable to warrant even a redirect. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's a matter of semantics. The "difference" between the two numbers could be -56 or +56, or it could just be 56. At some point, it works its way to zero. I agree with you, redirecting this to Fibonacci would be inappropriate. Mandsford (talk) 00:31, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. And creating a sequence which is just the Fibonacci sequence doubled would also not be notable. Though, we don't seem to have an article on Narayana's cows (t(i) = t(i-1) + t(i-3)) which is a notable sequence. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 00:49, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. :-) Stwalkerster talk 21:50, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete non-notable neologism. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2007 (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.