Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benford's law of controversy


 * 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   speedy redirect as required by GFDL after merge. Non-admin closure. --Dhartung | Talk 22:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Benford&

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Nonnotable; "law" seems to be at best occasionally true, and is unoriginal as well(see talk page). Even supporters of article have (understandably, given its unimportance) done little work to flesh out the article--we don't even know the chapter in Timescape where law stated,(if it ever was in the book at all). This article inflates the Wikipedia article count, and Encyclopedia Britannica could point to it when Wikipedians crow about our 2 million articles. Rich 02:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * whether it is true or original is not the point. the question is, have other people referred to it in RSs?DGG (talk) 03:08, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose deletion. The citations in the article itself are sufficient to establish notability under Wikipedia's standards, which are significantly more inclusive than Britannica's. I would remove the stub tag, because there isn't much more that should be said. A page reference in the novel can easily be found by someone who has the book (I don't).Finell (Talk) 04:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose deletion. This article is insufficient as it stands, of course, but it comes up often enough to require Wikipedia discussion, simply as a current cultural meme. Another, more rigorous "Benford's law"— more fully Benford's Law of Anomalous Numbers— concerning the First digit phenomenon in the field of statistics, is Frank Benford's, which he first expressed in "The law of anomalous numbers" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 78 551-72. I'm not competent to discuss that Benford' Law, but it appears often enough through JSTOR. Examples: Lawrence M. Leemis; Bruce W. Schmeiser; Diane L. Evans, "Survival Distributions Satisfying Benford's Law", The American Statistician 54.4 (November 2000:236-241); Pieter C. Allaart, "An Invariant-Sum Characterization of Benford's Law" Journal of Applied Probability 34.1 (March 1997:288-291), etc etc.. Can't begin to improve this article myself, I hasten to add. --Wetman 04:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge and redirect to Gregory Benford. This "law" has no independent, credible sources demonstrating that it has notability. We don't actually have to maintain a directory of every "law" someone thought up one day, even if they're famous. In those cases, it's easy; they have an article, so mention the "law" there. (I'm not fond of the scare quotes, btw, but I wonder if there's a word akin to protologism for these -- aphorism is close, but an imprecise match.) --Dhartung | Talk 13:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge done--victor falk 13:51, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per Wetman's answer to DGG'd question. Frivolous, but so is Murphy's Law, and being inaccurate does not prevent it from making a statement any more than being nonsensical prevents Zen koans from communicating ideas. --Kizor 14:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Gregory Benford. I can't see that there is enough independent information to fill a whole article. Most possible additions would probably be OR. - Che Nuevara 14:44, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Gregory Benford, with relevant information merged. Mandsford 16:12, 29 October 2007 (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.