Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indefinite logarithm

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. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:40, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indefinite logarithm

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Term introduced in 2005 arXiv paper as name for collection of all possible logarithms and not widely used elsewhere. Xnn (talk) 20:57, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. --Lambiam 23:18, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Certainly indefinite logarithms are often used in Big O notation. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- And it does appear, in the same general sense, in Hennyey 1962. So the article can be reliably sourced. (Of course the presence of sourcing, alone, does not guarantee inclusion.) CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:29, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully with an indefinite base that is definitely > 1. Would you consider O $(n 2)$ as using the indefinite quadratic function $λ c .λ n . cn 2$ ? --Lambiam
Delete. Neologism that has not got any traction; in other words, fails notability. --Lambiam 23:30, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This opinion does not take into account recent findings which are mentioned under #Linear electric circuits. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As the nominator says, the term was introduced in a self-published 2005 paper. This usage does not seem to appear elsewhere in the published literature. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- This opinion does not take into account recent findings which are mentioned under #Linear electric circuits. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ok, fair enough. I don't think mention in one book that is only available in three libraries in the world is exactly a slam dunk notability-wise though. So, I'll emend my deletion rationale to: Not notable. The only in-depth coverage appears to be a self-published source from 2005. Passing mention in a not well-known book does not confer much in the way of notability. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:44, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The place for discussing general properties of logarithms which are true for all bases, are implicit in big-O notation, etc, is in the article logarithm. I've never heard the term before, so I also doubt its notability.- Virginia-American (talk) 00:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This opinion does not take into account recent findings which are mentioned under #Linear electric circuits. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. For above reasons. Moreover the notion intends to formalize the notion of "logarithm up to a multiplicative constant" but fails to give a workable definition. Thus, this is not only WP:OR but also WP:FRINGE. D.Lazard (talk) 00:51, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
~~This opinion does not take into account recent findings which are mentioned under #Linear electric circuits. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)~~[reply]
The fact that one has found one book using "indefinite logarithm" does not make the notion notable nor show that is is not fringe theory. It does not even prove that the article is not WP:OR, as this book is not cited as a source (it is not rare that two people give independently two similar definitions).D.Lazard (talk) 17:36, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My comment is perfectly relevant. D.Lazard's claim on "WP:OR" does not appear to be compatible with existence of Zoltán Hennyey's book. But D.Lazard did not strike his "WP:OR". Instead, he stricken my comment. There is a guideline which discourages meddling in other user's comments. Does a policy exist which discourages making comments to D.Lazard's postings? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Not notable: I can't find any reliable sources for this (only the arXiv paper mentioned above). Jowa fan (talk) 01:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This opinion does not take into account recent findings which are mentioned under #Linear electric circuits. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The original author of the article is mpfrank. The author of the Arxiv preprint is Michael Frank. So there's clearly a conflict of interest, and it's original research. Ubermichael (talk) 17:53, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Good find. This seems a much better reason for deletion than the sourcing, which I think is a non-issue. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:12, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is an obvious ad hominem argument which might have relevance to WP:COI, but has nothing to do with notability. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Note the Logarithmic units is a section in Logarithmic scale article, which is not right. Such units as "bit" are indeed not perceived as steps on a logarithmic scale. Should "logarithmic units" be made a separate article, probably using parts of "Indefinite logarithm"? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:41, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The number of bits of information is indeed the logarithm of the number of equally probable messages from which one message was chosen. If you don't "perceive" a logarithm there, that doesn't mean no one else does. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:04, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, I know the formula for the entropy of a discrete uniform distribution ☺ I even once made image: Units of information.svg which some contentious people persistently throw away of units of information. Try to think better on what I said. If we "add" two signals, their powers in dBm would not add, so decibel is logarithmic. There is no operation on signals which add decibels. But amounts of information can be added (concatenation), multiplied to dimensionless coefficients (various encodings), as well as to dimensioned ones (bit/s and so). A large piece of information can be split to parts (with rather arbitrary ratio)… all this looks just like extensive quantities in physics and has no resemblance to decibels (although I know that in DSP 1 bit ≈ 6 dB). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google Books search gives an tantalising snippet of Linear electric circuits by Zoltán Hennyey, published 1962, p.321: "... i.e. the indefinite logarithm of a number is equal to the product of the definite logarithm of the number and the indefinite logarithm of the base. This latter may be regarded as the numerical value of the standard." Appears to be talking about the same idea, much earlier than the Archiv preprint. Looks like the full text would be hard to obtain, unfortunately. Qwfp (talk) 11:59, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I got the book from my library. Indeed, it does discuss the indefinite logarithm on pp. 320-321, a section defining notation for the rest of the book. (I can send you scans if you're interested, email me if so.) CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:29, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm impressed by your library: WorldCat finds holdings in only 3 libraries in the world. I'll pass on the scan as i'm not that interested in this, but thanks for the offer. Qwfp (talk) 16:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC) [reply]

It *is* a nice library (and just a 5-minute walk away!), though not any of the ones I see in the WorldCat results above. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fascinating article, but ahead of its time. Delete. Bearian (talk) 22:00, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Substantiation? A source from 20th century does exist. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2012 (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.