Talk:Toniann Pitassi

Notability?
There is no way of telling from the text of this article that its subject is notable. It is not enough to establish notability on talk pages - it should be established in the article. To get the discussion started, I will quote a comment by David Eppstein (talk) on a user talk page:


 * "She is this year chairing the top conference in theoretical computer science. She has seven papers with over 100 citations each in Google scholar, well over the level that academic deletion discussions typically judge to be a pass of WP:PROF (and providing some 700 reliable sources for her research contributions, well over the "multiple sources" required by GNG). And, although it is true that being an invited speaker at most conferences is not enough by itself for notability, ICM is special in this respect, to the point where the American Mathematical Society used it as one of the criteria for its inaugural set of fellows (for what this means see WP:PROF; Pitassi was not included, I assume because she is not an AMS member)."

Now, in the discussion of citation metrics for establishing notability, Google Scholar is not considered a reliable source of metrics. In particular, "GS includes sources that are not peer-reviewed, such as academic web sites and other self-published sources. Thus, the number of citations found there can sometimes be significantly more than the number of actual citations from truly reliable scholarly material." When I compare the Google Scholar figures with those in Web of Science (which is considered reliable), I do see considerable inflation. Instead of the top 7 citation counts ranging from 104 to 170, they range from 26 to 43. Now, this hardly counts as "several extremely highly cited scholarly publications". There are 17 publications with 10 or more citations - not really "a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates." As for chairing the conference, WP:PROF says that the subject ''is or has been" an elected fellow of an important society, not that they might have been under other circumstances.

In summary, not only does the article not establish notability, the notes in the margin don't either. RockMagnetist (talk) 07:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * What is a reliable source and what counts for notability in deletion discussions are two completely different things, and the factual material that goes into a Wikipedia article and the analysis of that that establishes notability are also two completely different things. As for Web of Science, your citing it here indicates to me that after all this discussion you still haven't read WP:PROF. See in particular the final bullet point, in which a major consortium of computer scientists calls out Web of Science as being unsuitable for evaluation of computer scientists due to its reliance on journals and computer scientists' reliance on conferences. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It's true I didn't read all the way to the bottom of the page. For your part, you don't seem to have read the top of it: "Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable." You'd need X-ray vision to see the notability from the contents of this article. All it mentions is that she is a professor, she was an invited speaker at a conference (why is that even worth mentioning?), and that she is the program chair for a conference. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not required that Wikipedia articles state "the subject meets the Wikipedia standards for notability because...". In fact, per WP:SELFREF, it is forbidden. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * PS I don't know where you got the idea that chairing a conference had any connection to criterion #C3 of WP:PROF. It's much closer in spirit to criterion #C8. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:58, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I got the idea from this quote: "And, although it is true that being an invited speaker at most conferences is not enough by itself for notability, ICM is special in this respect, to the point where the American Mathematical Society used it as one of the criteria for its inaugural set of fellows (for what this means see RockMagnetist (talk) 15:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well then you need to improve your reading comprehension. The conference she chaired is STOC. The conference she had an invited talk at was ICM. They are two different things. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:51, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

This repeated, rapid removal of a tag is something I have only previously seen when the editor had a conflict of interest. I am trying to give this article a chance, but next time I will just list it for deletion. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:30, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I find your lack of faith disturbing. I might have met the subject once, and we're in related but distinct research areas; that's the only connection. But go ahead, if you like being slapped by trout. Why you're focused on tagging and deleting articles about good academics when there are so many more about much less good academics is a mystery to me but whatever. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:56, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You're right, that was uncalled for. I was expressing my frustration that, by removing the tags so quickly, you seemed to be trying to suppress debate over notability. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:00, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I notice you didn't respond to any of my more substantive comments. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't see any new substantive comments. All I see is someone who has stubbornly convinced himself or herself that the subject is non-notable and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll state my case a different way. This article is really boring. Who cares that someone is a professor and chaired a conference? It would be much more interesting if it provided some clue as to what she did that is influential - and it would resolve the notability issue. Contrary to your impression, I spend more time saving articles than attacking them - but in this case I just don't have the expertise to do it. Also, when I do tag an article for notability, I normally go away and give the article creator plenty of time to address the issue. But you keep deleting the tag. Why not focus on improving the article instead of shooting the messenger? RockMagnetist (talk) 16:20, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article could use a selected publications section and some text about her research contributions. I doubt that would satisfy your craving for external markers of notability, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Take the optimistic view and add the material. I'm willing to wait. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Verifiability?
The article looks much better. I am no longer sure that evidence for high citation scores should be presented in an article, because there just doesn't seem to be a good way to do it. I hope a solution will be found in the discussion I started. In fact, I think that comments on high citations should be removed unless they can be substantiated by a publication.

I think the bigger problem with this article is verifiability. The article has no third-party sources on her work. I tried searching for them, but all the articles I checked have the usual throwaway citations without any real discussion. I can't find any assessment of the importance of her work. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:09, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree re presenting citation counts in an article, despite having added that myself, and would not object to the removal of the "well-cited" adjectives and the footnote supporting them. As for finding in-depth discussions of her work: unfortunately the MathSciNet reviews of her top papers (the MR links), when they are not just copies of the abstracts, are just factual statements of what's in the papers. This is typical for MathSciNet, but it at least allows some secondary-source verifiability of what the papers actually show. Lower down on numbers of citations, is brief but more opinionated. There's a longer review of one of her papers here that looks better (I haven't looked at it in detail yet), and some of the other MathSciNet reviews of her papers are also quite long (but still mostly factual). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:52, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * O.k., I removed the reference to citation counts. I'll be interested to see what you find in that review. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:03, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Exponential lower bounds and subexponential upper bounds for dense random 3-SAT
Maybe it can be rewritten as it reads like a contradiction. For 3-CNF, the subexponential upper bound is that DPLL with fixed variable order runs in time $$ 2^{O(n^2/m)} $$ with high probability, which is polynomial if $$ m \geq n^2 / \log n $$, and the exponential lower bound for resolution is if $$ m = n^{6/5-\epsilon} $$.
 * It doesn't read like a contradiction to me: it's supposed to say that one algorithm is slow and a different algorithm is fast. (That the bounds are for different parameter ranges is also relevant but not necessary to resolve the issue.) —David Eppstein (talk) 19:14, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. 92.32.200.144 (talk) 19:32, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Notability
I am clearly not the only one who questions her notability, since it has been brought up as a topic on talk before. You're not the dictator of the damn page, Eppstein. *Every* scientist makes contributions and solves unknown problems. There is nothing in her "Research" section that would suggest to an ordinary person that her contributions make her particularly notable. If this is the case, then ADD THE INFO. Until then, she has no major awards, and the notability tag should remain. Bueller 007 (talk) 19:20, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 * 15 of her publications have been cited over 100 times each, according to Google scholar. That's well over the bar for WP:PROF. There is nothing in that notability guideline about uneducated and uninformed people being able to recognize the notability of the contributions, and nothing in that specific criterion about awards being required. Basically, you are making shit up instead of following what our guidelines say. And you have still failed to tag the article with the correct notability guideline; if you're going to tag academics as being insufficiently notable, use not  . But first, read and understand the guideline and maybe try looking at the outcomes of a few hundred of the archived cases on WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators instead of your current tag-first understand-later-or-maybe-never approach. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:25, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "Understand-later-or-maybe-never approach"? Are you talking about yourself here, Davey?  Is this projection?  Sounds *exactly* like mass reverting edits without even looking at them.  Here's a tip, Davey.  In order to assert her notability on this talk page, you had to say "15 of her publications have been cited over 100 times each".  Wouldn't that be a fine thing to put in the article to show that she's notable?  Do you see how this works?  Do you understand evidence now? Bueller 007 (talk) 19:30, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I understand that you are uninterested in being civil. No, citation counts should not go in articles. They are very temporary and generally violate WP:ELNO #9. But notability is about the subject, not about the words of our article about the subject. Before tagging the article, you should have run that search yourself. Failure to do so demonstrates that you do not have enough understanding of our standards in this area to be editing in it. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:50, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Pitassi.jpg