Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix

Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix
Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete.

This is a suspect page, not verified by independent sources on Google and reminiscent of hoax pages in the names (Bayleigh is probably just from Cayley ...). The topic is also obscure and minor at best. Charles Matthews 07:04, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep and Cleanup This is not a hoax. Cayley is actually a rather well known figure in mathematics, and this is one of his lesser contributions to the world of pure mathematics, but this article is poorly written. Then again, most math articles on Wikipedia need to be rewritten so that they can be understood by someone other than a math major. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 07:19, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Vote above retracted, Delete This is a hoax. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 13:31, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It is not disputed that Arthur Cayley is a major figure; James Newbirth is not someone I have been able to trace. This is a well-constructed hoax (I assume - would not otherwise have lasted here) written by someone mathematically informed and literate. Unless I am mistaken it skates on the limits of saying something, but is actually meaningless - so cleaning it up isn't really an option. Charles Matthews 07:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * If it is a hoax, it's at least 40 years old. It appears (albeit as the Cayley Operational Matrix, without Newbirth credited) via several mentions and footnotes in my 1964 edition of Handbook of Mathematical Functions from the U.S. National Bureau of Standards.  That alone leads me to think it isn't a hoax. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 07:56, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm grateful for the reference. If it does appear in Abramowitz and Stegun, a well-known text, perhaps someone can check what the content is. It is not indexed at .Charles Matthews
 * It's not in the subject index. Can you please provide a page number of one of these several mentions or footnotes?  It seems to be rather outside the typical subject matter of A&S.  -- Dominus 16:05, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there is some confusion between this "Cayley Operational Matrix" and the concept of a "Cayley Operator Table" (or just "Cayley Table"? That is a valid mathematical concept, and indeed the suspect page appears to be an extremely confused variant of a Cayley Table.  Terry 04:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Odd, doesn't appear to be a hoax though. Most of the math makes some sort of sense to me, but I don't quite understand how one can compose two binary operators unless they're using some non-standard definition of compose; probably my fault and not the article's though, though it could do with a lot of cleanup. No vote yet.  --fvw *  07:59, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)
 * Have to give this one a firm, solid and EXTREME keep, folks. &mdash;RaD Man (talk) 08:19, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * delete vanity/google test, possible hoax BACbKA 09:21, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Another "if I haven't heard of it, it can't be true", it would seem. Dan100 09:25, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * If it's a 40-year-old hoax that took in the National Bureau of Standards, that would be even more notable than if it is real. Either way, a clear Keep. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:42, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC) Delete. Apologies for presuming ExplorerCDT was telling the truth; I gather from the extensive comments below that he or she was not. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:36, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, notable. GRider\talk 20:26, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Is it the same as the "Caley Transform"? Is it possible Newbirth ought to be Von Neumann??   I found this quote "the Caley transform, which served to reduce the theory of unbounded symmetric operators(^*) to that of bounded isometric operators... ", which seems related.  Regardless, Keep, for reasons stated by Jmabel. --Key45 21:01, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The correct spelling is Cayley transform, on which we have an article: Cayley transform. I can see no connection. -- Jitse Niesen 23:48, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete if not verified. Mathworld has nothing about a "Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix" or "Cayley operation matrix", and hasn't heard of "Bayleigh" or "Newbirth". Math biographies at St Andrew's hasn't heard of "Bayleigh" or "Newbirth" either. "Cayley", "Bayleigh", "Newbirth", and "operation matrix" don't appear in the subject index of Abramowitz and Stegun. I'm willing to be convinced by citations, but at this point the article has no substantiation at all. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, please do a bit of research before tossing these off . Delete, my mistake, I fell for it, my apologies, especially for the remark. Wyss 22:02, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I did. Is there something you know -- such as a print citation -- that you're not telling us about? Wile E. Heresiarch 23:31, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I would be interested to hear about the research you did before tossing this off. Please enlighten us. --Dominus 23:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm pretty sure it is not Abramowitz and Stegun, regardless of what is said above (if it is in A&S though, I will of course vote keep). Neither Bayleigh nor Newbirth is listed in MathSciNet, a vast database of mathematics papers, and the three references to "operation matrix" in MathSciNet talk about clearly different things. I also looked into the Science Citation Index, to no avail (Bayleigh appears once as a misspelling of Rayleigh). At the very least it is not notable. However, as Fvw notes, binary operators cannot be composed, and the sentence "the result of composing addition with any other operator except addition is that of a multiplication operation" does not make sense, so I think it is a hoax. I do not know what more research one can do. -- Jitse Niesen 23:48, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) (via edit conflict)
 * Delete. I have examined Abramowitz and Stegun, and until and unless somone posts a page number, I won't believe it is in there. It's not a 40-year old hoax; it's an 8-month old hoax, one perpetrated with enough pseudo-mathematical nonsense to take in an uneducated or careless reviewer.  --Dominus 23:54, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete unless exact citation is given. Considering that the Abramowitz and Stegun Handbook of Mathematical Functions from the U.S. National Bureau of Standards is published in several places online, the fact that "Cayley Operational Matrix" gets zero hits seems to make some of the claims above suspect. Also, while my local public libraries' online DB has heard of Arthur Cayley, it has not heard of anybody Newbirth, nor Bayleigh, nor this matrix by any of the names suggested. The first two anons that added this article added too little else to make any judgements, but the IP that added it to the List of matrices has consistently been reverted as a vandal, for making edits, for example, changing the part of Internal combustion engine that said "depending" to "poopy ending". Niteowlneils 00:23, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete unless a citation is given. See below for my updated vote. --Carnildo 01:30, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. As someone with a Master's degree in mathematics, I can attest that this article is mathematical nonsense.  A group doesn't have multiple operations; something that has + and * is called a ring.  Furthermore, even in a ring, one never talks about "composition of operators".  Finally, I've never heard of Newbirth, Bayleigh, or the red-linked "operator equivalence symbol".  I specialized in geometric group theory; I would have heard of this topic if it wasn't a hoax.  Dbenbenn 03:40, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Ditto Dbenbenn, plus this doesn't even immediately seem like an extremely useful concept to develop anyway. Dysprosia 03:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Looks fishy for reasons stated above. FWIW, none of the electronic journals I can search bring up results for "Cayley-Newbirth", nor anything relevant for "Newbirth", either. Mindspillage 04:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete - asked an additional math nerd and they said it looked like nonsense too. -- Cyrius|&#9998;
 * Delete. This seems to be made-up nonsense. -- Schneelocke (cheeks clone)   05:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, though I'm still kind of curious how this came into existence. Seems an unlikely hoax, and it's too applied for a crank theory.  --fvw *  14:35, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * In my view, it's a cryptic clue (answer probably 'caesarian'). Anyway, there are things about it which are "no coincidence". Recent hoax edits have been posted to make a point about WP. Charles Matthews
 * I haven't yet seen any attacks on the factual integrity (god that sounds pompous, but you know what I mean) yet that are this subtle yet confine themselves to their own article which noone will stumble upon. There's obvious hoaxes and pranks, but the people trying to add subtle misinformation always do so to established articles people will actually come across. If this is a hoax, the only way people would find it is via random page or external links. And then there's also the fact that everyone who knows what a group is just scratches their head at this one, instead of putting a wrong year in their report or whatever else the consequence of a normal disinformation attack are.  --fvw *  15:06, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * Delete. Dbenben is correct; objects with two operations are rings.  A mathematically savvy writer wouldn't have made that mistake in a real article.  Also, someone needs to take a hard look at ExplorerCDT, as it would then seem that he/she has deliberately lied to us.  Isomorphic 22:54, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The article has been up for 8 months. You One can only leave so many clues. ;-) &mdash;ExplorerCDT 23:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Original intent. This line has gotten me a lot of undeserved grief. I  didn't even know Wikipedia existed when this hoax article was written. So stop fingering me.&mdash;ExplorerCDT 20:27, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, carefully investigate User:ExplorerCDT's other contributions for similar vandalism, and consider banning ExplorerCDT from editing. --Carnildo 01:02, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * There's an RfC on ExplorerCDT's behavior here at Requests for comment/ExplorerCDT 2 --Carnildo 03:16, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Delete. Clearly gibberish.  If it's a hoax, it's rather sinister. -- Walt Pohl 07:41, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Agreed, all worrying. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics for further discussion. Charles Matthews


 * Delete. My vote is probably redundant, but it is now abundantly clear that the page is a hoax or private joke and is certainly not serious mathematics.  Terry 00:05, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I think the editors who voted to keep should have a long think about their policy in voting. We have a go at deletionists who want articles gone without bothering to do any research; but wanting all articles kept without the same research is just as bad, if not worse because you are casting stones. Those who have called for ExplorerCDT's banning should probably remind themselves that this is the season of goodwill and the editor in question has probably been more silly than venal. Dr Zen 09:36, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. The article informs us that Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix outlines the effects of the composition of group operators on elements of a group.  (whatever "outline the effects of" may mean).  At the very least, it should specify how the entries of this matrix are determined. Some of the assertions are nonsense; for instance, those containing the expressions  + *  or + * . What does composition of + and * mean exactly?  This is a poorly constructed practical joke by someone vaguely familiar with mathematical terminology. Probably having a couple of books on basic algebra and a book on classical mechanics would be enough. The final sentence It is possible to express the Hamiltonian of a time-independent mechanical system in terms of Cayley- Newbirth operation matrices is a dead giveaway that this is complete nonsense. CSTAR 03:41, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Also a joke on Cayley-Hamilton (as in Cayley-Hamilton theorem). Charles Matthews


 * Delete as a hoax. no credible references supplied.  mathematical nonsense.  edited by several known anon ip's with history of vandalism.  Michael Ward 23:14, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.