Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Accounting method


 * 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 keep. There is no consensus to delete the article, and cogent arguments have been presented for keeping it. However, it has been noted that it is very much in need of clean-up, and also that there is probably a necessity for a change of title. All those things being equal, I feel it is unnecessary to keep this open any longer as their has been no further discussion for five days and the thing had been open eleven before that. What remains are content and style issues, and those, of course, are for the talk page and / or WP:RM. (non-admin closure)  >SerialNumber  54129 ...speculates 17:51, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Accounting method

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

How is it different than Potential method except that the other article is more formal (“payment” = change of potential)? Cormen et al. states the difference as “associating the potential with the data structure as a whole rather than with specific objects within the data structure”, yet what is being done in, for example, the proof for splay trees is representing the whole structure’s potential as sum of potentials for individual objects! Thus, i consider these both as names for the same proof method. ï¿½ (talk) 14:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. L3X1  (distænt write)  15:15, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep. The textbooks treat this as a different and important method. We should follow them. As for "how is it different": the potential method always has the same potential value when the data structure is in the same state. For the accounting method, the amount saved may vary depending on the history of how you reached that state, as long as it is enough to cover the cost of each operation. This could plausibly be a speedy keep, as the nomination statement amounts to original research and an admission that the textbooks indeed state that they are different. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:42, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 19:01, 19 December 2017 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Selective Merge to Amortized analysis. Wikipedia is not a textbook; and apart from the definition there's almost no content that is encyclopedic in nature. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 04:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTTEXTBOOK has some value (in discouraging long worked examples and a too-discursive writing style, for instance), but its most frequent use appears to be as an excuse to keep out subjects of any technical depth from Wikipedia, leaving it to be the encyclopedia of celebrities, soccer players, and pokemons. This opinion appears to be a case in point. Google books finds many hits for this topic ; the fact that many of them are textbooks should be an argument for its notability, not against. If material is standardly covered in textbooks, we should cover it here as well, merely with a different focus. Which is all to say that I think NOTTEXTBOOK should only ever be used as a style guide, not as a notability criterion. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:29, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Sufficiently different from the things to which it is most closely related to stand alone as an article. Could perhaps be renamed to "Accounting method (computer science)". XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:38, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree that the title is misleading and could use disambiguation. Accounting methods redirects to basis of accounting, which I think is a better choice of primary topic for this title. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ! dave  20:45, 26 December 2017 (UTC)


 * 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.