Talk:17-animal inheritance puzzle/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 13:13, 28 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I'll have a go at this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:13, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Comments

 * Who is Naranan? Nascimento and Barco also need some sort of introduction, even if it's only their initials.
 * Mini blurbs for these three and Stockmeyer added. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * S. Naranan [30] states that a "legendary tale" about Birbal (1528–1586) has him telling the puzzle. I guess this vague attribution doesn't exactly contradict [9] but it seems relevant to the History section.
 * Ok, added. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The image is correctly licensed.


 * "Problems of achieving specified proportions using indivisible elements that cannot be divided exactly into those proportions also arise frequently in electoral systems based on proportional representation.[8]" --- this seems to be clearly true but not connected to the animal inheritance puzzle. I understand that in Mathematics, people take many concepts as "obvious" but all the same the link between the instance and the class feels very close to original research.
 * I was trying to steer clear of OR here, by writing a sentence that stated only clearly sourceable facts (that such problems arise in apportionment) with the only intended implication being that the specific problem studied in this article is an instance of a broader class of problems that have been studied more broadly. The connection is merely that the animal inheritance problem is I think is very obviously a "problem of achieving specified proportions using indivisible elements that cannot be divided exactly into those proportions". The point of mentioning this is that these fractional-rounding problems are not merely a curiosity rooted in archaic inheritance customs or strained metaphors: they are a kind of problem that comes up all the time in other contexts. Do you have a better suggestion for how to handle this? It is certainly possible both to find sources that directly connect the 17 camels (or horses, whatever) puzzle to "fair apportionment" and other sources that directly connect the applications of fair apportionment in inheritance of indivisible goods with the applications of fair apportionment in electoral systems  but I think trying to spell this out through such sources would belabor the point and stray farther towards original research. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I tried swapping out the mathematical sentence and source for a political science source (the one linked second above) and a sentence based more on what that new source says; let me know if you think this is an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, that feels better. Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:31, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The article is clear, well-written, and appropriately organized.


 * The text is fully cited.


 * All the spotchecks come up fine.

This is an entertaining and informative article with a solid mathematical basis and I expect to see it at GA very soon. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:51, 28 June 2023 (UTC)