Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fundamental theorem of cyclic groups


 * 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. Consensus is to keep in some form. Discussion on whether or not to merge can continue on the article's talk page. Michig (talk) 17:59, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Fundamental theorem of cyclic groups

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Non-notable. This is a standard homework problem; no need to have a Wikipedia article for such. Taku (talk) 14:52, 23 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge to cyclic group: This is a property of cyclic groups, not a topic that is notable in its own right. -- BenTels (talk) 15:00, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep I have added a citation to an independent, reliable source. Per the fundamental theorem of notability, the topic is therefore notable. Q.E.D.  Warden (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't see how there can be any reasonable doubt that the topic is notable: there are a ton of textbooks containing this theorem.  And "this is a standard homework problem" is not a reason for deletion. Jowa fan (talk) 05:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. I added two more textbooks that cover this (they don't call it "the fundamental theorem" but we already have one source for the name, and anyway notability is about content not naming). To me the nominator's argument that this is a standard exercise (as it is in some other texts that I found) only strengthens the case for its notability. I'm not convinced that the lengthy and unsourced "proof" sections in the current version of the article are helpful, and two of them seem to be assuming without justification that the group is finite, but they can be cleaned up. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:32, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge to cyclic group (and trim ....) Jakob.scholbach (talk) 07:04, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and then merge. For merging, the detailed proofs should be removed or reduced to their main ideas. D.Lazard (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * keep, don't merge -- this is a perfectly good free-standing article on a decidedly notable theorem. I agree with David Eppstein that trimming and cleaning the proofs somewhat would probably be an improvement. JBL (talk) 12:21, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep, and merge -- I have never heard of it referred to as a fundamental theorem, and it doesn't really seem deep enough to deserve the modifier. The page seems to have developed into a list of proofs, which is not a good thing. I think the other information is good could be crafted into an excellent addition of a more appropriate article. Rschwieb (talk) 13:05, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge into cyclic group. Keep if it has non-trivial uses (E.g. isn't part of the proof of Zolotarev's lemma this fact?) - Virginia-American (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete unless evidence can be provided that this is a standard name for the result. The result can certainly be mentioned somewhere; that's not a problem.  The problem is that we don't want to endorse a name for the result that someone just made up one day (and therefore we don't want to leave a redirect).  Whatever content you might want to merge somewhere (I can't imagine it's much), please just re-write it rather than merging, so that no redirect is required. --Trovatore (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The name comes from Gallian's textbook, the first reference in our article. The text was originally published in 1986 and is now in its 8th edition, so it appears to be widely used. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Meh. I don't know if every characterization theorem for some class of groups needs a separate article. Yes, you can show that it passes GNG by citing some pages in almost any book on groups. But is it that notable in the real-world sense of the word that it needs a separate article? Does it have some history worth mentioning and so forth that would make it unwieldy in the main article? Compare with, say, the PCP Characterization Theorem aka PCP theorem. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:46, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Schaum's Outline of Combinatorics calls it (the) "Characterization Theorem for Cyclic Groups". Tijfo098 (talk) 09:50, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. An important result in basic group theory, well-sourced. -- 202.124.74.77 (talk) 10:17, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Cyclic group. While this is clearly a name for the theorem, there seems no reason to believe that it is the name.  There is essentially only one book in Google Books using this name (the alternative name "Characterization Theorem for Cyclic Groups" mentioned above scores two) and 12 hits for the phrase on Google Scholar.    Compare with 37,700 hits on Google Books for "Fundamental theorem of algebra".  Deltahedron (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There are 399 articles that begin with "Fundamental theorem of" I don't have an opinion on this, since I went to a horrible public school in a poor area that couldn't afford to hire teachers so just had people hired off the street that didn't teach us anything.  Thus I don't know what any of this stuff is.  Is it common though that Wikipedia articles have a side article for the theorems?   D r e a m Focus  17:46, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, if the theorem is the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources. Deltahedron (talk) 18:03, 29 September 2012 (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.