Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lin Chen (2nd nomination)


 * 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   merge to Chen model. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 22:15, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Lin Chen
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it doesn't satisfy any of the items in WP:PROF. There seems to be a person with the same name here, although the CV doesn't line up with the info in the article. I found the paper mentioned in the article on SSRN. CronopioFlotante (talk) 20:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete- Just because one is educated at Harvard does not make them notable.keystoneridin! (talk) 21:07, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Lin Chen is not just another Harvard graduate; He is a noted economist. Prof. Chen is the author of “Chen model” and the Chen model has been covered in many textbooks of finance (to verify this, check out books listed in the reference. In addition, some statements in the article, such as, “Lin chen is listed along with Robert Merton .... as a leading scholar “and “Chen model is found to perform ‘the best’” are all verifiable statements of the facts. These accomplishments are for sure to guarantee the notability. ‘Lin Chen’ is a common Chinese name and shared by many Chinese people, but for scholars in finance there is no mistake about who this “Lin Chen” is. For those who have just read the article and got somehow confused or puzzled, please listen to my advices: 1) If you are not an expert in the field and you don’t care, skip it and leave it alone. 2) If you do care, following the links and references within the article to do further research. All the references are relevant.   Please be reminded that this article has been around for 2 and half years and has been read, commented, edited by approximate 500X12X2.5 people/times from all around the world.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankert (talk • contribs) 10:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 *  Comment  : Certainly it would be easier if there were some links that could establish a presumption of notability- links to author's bio at his institution, google scholar links, etc. It is time consuming to keep typing words into google when at least you could get some idea what the reliable "promotional" material for the person is like. If you had a publication list from his institution, you could check the articles in various places for citations and commentary. There are too many chens to start with and even at harvard there could be a few to sort through. Some search or vanity page links would help us all. Personally, I'd be inclined to think that even if this is notable it is probably a "hoax" in terms of the utility of many econ models. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 22:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I wasn't able to find a webpage or academic CV for this person after extensive googling. This is the closest I got. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 07:32, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —David Eppstein (talk) 06:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Not a hoax At least not entirely. Found a book on Amazon. Seems a little pricey :) At this point I still see no evidence that WP:PROF is satisfied. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 08:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep
 * Bankert, could you please tell us where we can find a CV or at least what Lin Chen's publicactions in peer-reviewed (or otherwise) journals are? So far I have only found one monograph in book form (linked to above). --CronopioFlotante (talk) 10:39, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 *  Comment  : Even though wikipedia discourages posting links to promotional sites, we need to at least estabalish a presumption of notability. The fact that the article refs contain only one link makes it harder to check out. I have nothing against obscure entries that require dead-tree sources, but in this case it would seem easy to provide links to institutional or vanity pages that contain complete links and notability claims even if the wikipedia article does not yet contain them. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just looking at edit history, it seems to have been flagged as an advert and been larger at one point. Are there links to may make a claim to notability buried in there some way? Again, I think the easiest thing to do is put links to promotional, vanity, or search engines on talk page to save us all some time. I've had these deleted before and I guess wiki does not like them in articles and I know it can take forever to hunt down specific unrelated references to put a good article together. If you can't provide links to citations in article at least give us some general ones from which we can hunt. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

In 1996, Lin Chen’s 89-page paper was published and occupied a single issue in journal, “Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments”. This journal is not only a peer-reviewed journal but also ranked, together with JF, AER, Nature, Science, as a world-leading journal. To be sure, here is the link (Cranfield University: SOM Jornal Ranking, 2009). In 1990s, most authors of single-issue articles of this journal were leading scholars in finance, including Hans Stoll, R. Roll，R. Schwartz, M. Gruber，E. Elton etc. who were ex-president of the American Finance Association. It is a great honor for Lin Chen, a fresh PhD then, to have his lengthy article published in this journal. (By the way can you find a decent place to publish your entire PhD dissertation? ) And his paper turned to be a seminal work: within several years, many financial institutions use his model and textbooks cover his model. What else can you expect of an academic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankert (talk • contribs) 15:22, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments:Have you read the discussion page of the article? Some comments written two years ago still provide good answers to your questions.

Comment. This is the bibliography of Lin Chen I've been able to dig up so far. Without an academic CV this is rather difficult. Based on the above evidence, I still don't think WP:PROF#1 is satisfied. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 17:25, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "Stochastic mean and stochastic volatility—a three-factor model of the term structure of interest", Financial Markets, Institutions, and Instruments, 1996, (64 Google Scholar cites)
 * "Interest rate dynamics, derivatives pricing, and risk management", Lecture notes in economics and mathematical systems, Springer 1996, (43 Google Scholar cites)
 * "A bond pricing formula under a non-trivial, three-factor model of interest rates", Economics Letters, Volume 51, Issue 1, April 1996, Pages 95-99, doi:10.1016/0165-1765(95)00743-1 (2 Google Scholar cites)
 * This last journal is peer-reviewed.
 * Merge to Chen model. His notability seems to be based entirely on this model, which bears his name, so I don't see the need for a separate article on the person, much in the spirit of WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E. I really don't think that programming something in Excel, the only other contribution given in his article, is notable in itself. The first para about Chen could be included as a brief section at the end of Chen model, the second para is about the model anyway so would be better placed there, the rest can probably be deleted. Qwfp (talk) 17:57, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to Chen model is a good idea. Delete if Chen model turns out not to be notable. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 21:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC) and CronopioFlotante (talk) 23:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Now you are questioning his notability. The notability issue was the main focus of the first discussion of deletion. The issue was resolved after an informative debate. I would suggest that we close the discussion and leave the arctile, ‘Lin chen’, alone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankert (talk • contribs) 01:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Leave it Alone The reasons you nominated ‘Lin Chen’ for deletion were that you could not find his CV and publications, and you confused him with someone by the same name. Now you have resolved most of the issues yourself by digging out on his CV and publications. So should your issues be considered resolved? I bet if you found these evidences first you would not have nominated the article for deletion. Am I right?
 * No. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 08:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was questioning his notability all along. I don't have any personal reason to wish for the deletion of this article. I am just applying the criteria in official Wikipedia policies for notability as explained in WP:N and WP:PROF. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 08:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you fully understand the meaning of the following sentence in the article? “ In an authoritative review of modern finance (Continuous-Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment, Lin Chen is listed along with Robert C. Merton, Oldrich Vasicek, John C. Cox, Stephen A. Ross, Darrell Duffie, John Hull, Robert A. Jarrow, and Emanuel Derman as a leading scholar in term-structure modeling. “ Do you know that term structure modeling is the Nobel Prize-level work? Do you know that most names in this sentence have been for years front - runners for Nobel Prize in economic science mainly because of their work in term structure modeling, let alone there is one who has already won the prize? Do you know each of names in this sentence has separate entries in Wikipedia for their name and their model? Why do you want to merge the both for Lin Chen?


 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankert (talk • contribs) 16:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The only reference to L Chen in the text of that paper] is in the following sentence: "Several papers, including Chen and Scott (1992), Longstaff and Schwartz (1992), Fong and Vasicek (1992), Hull and White (1994), and Chen (1996), etc., have proposed multifactor models of term structure." Chen (1996) is Lin Chen's monograph Interest rate dynamics, derivatives pricing, and risk management. Chen and Scott (1992) is a different Chen (R. Chen). The Chen (1996) model is also referenced in Table II, "Multifactor Models", along with 7 other models. Tables III to VI list other families of models. Qwfp (talk) 16:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That’s correct. Can you recognize that most names mentioned in these parts of the article are big names in finance? They are all leading scholars, making a contribution to the fundamental of modern finance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bankert (talk • contribs) 17:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think that showing up in the same sentence establishes notability, especially in this case, in which Longstaff and Schwartz (1992) and Hull and White (1994) with 592 and 1002 Google Scholar citations respectively (versus 64 for Chin, 1996) seem to be in a different league. Respectfully, CronopioFlotante (talk) 21:27, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * keep I find it hard to believe that a professor who invented a notable economic theory isn't notable, although do to his extremely common name finding sources to prove that fact is difficult. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:43, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It hasn't been established that he invented a notable economic theory. The only thing we know is that he wrote a monograph which is cited 64 times according to Google Scholar. In fact I am starting to believe that the "Chen model" is actually nothing more than "the model in Chen (1996)". --CronopioFlotante (talk) 22:49, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Q Let me see if I understand this, there is debate about the significance of being mentioned in the same sentence as "big names?" I had in the past argued strongly for the possible notability associated with passing mention- in the case of attornies, notability coming from coverages of their cases where the case was the focus but "The Case" was defined by the attorney argugments so notability would diffuse from case to attorney. Similarly, I had argued for notability of hypothetical software that may get one-line mentions in many scientific papers for enabling a certain analysis but otherwise have little indpendent coverage. In the present case, you are not arguing about specific notability of topic and indeed the only thing the wikipeida article could say based on this is quite simply, "Chen is mentioned in same sentence as famous people." In the other cases I use for example, you could reasonably attribute much more to the subject for inclusion into article. Of the 64 refs, presumably all in-the-field, do any of them single out the model of Chen or just mention "many have modelled stuff[foo,bar,chen,doe,rae,me]"? What attributes have been unique or most discussed? What predictions or fortunes did it make possible ? etc Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 01:24, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Chen model was only mentioned twice in that review article because it is a review of finance. Also many great work are only briefly mentioned.

Yes, Chen model was singled out in many books and papers. A few examples: James and Webber devote a section to discuss Chen model in their book; Gibson et al devote a section to cover Chen model in their review article. Lund et al devote a paper to study and extend Chen model. Tauchen devote a paper to test Chen model and other models; Cai (in the article ‘Lin Chen’ there is a link to this paper) devote the whole paper to test Chen model and other competing models of interest rates.

Actually, Chen model generalizes all equilibrium term structure models before him just like Einstein theory generalizes class mechanics. That is why the term strucyure modeling ended in 1996, when Chen published his model. Bankert (talk) 02:29, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

* : If you can provide links I guess that would establish the notability of the model. At issue I guess is the notability of the author, which appears to rest on being named in same sentence as people already thought notable. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On the "same sentence" issue. It is Chen (1996) that is cited, not the person "Lin Chen", Further, I don't think that being mentioned in the same sentence in an academic article carries any value for notability purposes (in the spirit of WP:Notability_(people)). In fact, journal articles often have literature review sections in which citations are bundled together. The article in question is a review article and can be considered equivalent to a very long annotated literature review. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 13:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So what basis is there for making the author of the model notable? Sharing a last name with someone mentioned in a list of famous people and working in the same field? This really is a different Chen? What had been noted about his life beyond the model and what would you put in an article about him that isn't in an article on the model? I guess if he had several contributions or got into a particularly personal debate over a professional topic, or dated Jennifer Anniston, then ok but it seems as per other comments that the model is a better wikipedia topic. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 14:00, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't mean to say that Lin Chen is not the author of Chen (1996), just that what is being cited in the review article is the model in Chen (1996), not the person, therefore showing up in the same sentence doesn't make the person notable. I agree that the model is probably a better Wikipedia topic. --CronopioFlotante (talk) 19:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The old versions of the article have some interesting accounts of his life beyond the model. I have restored an older version. I am very proud of my former mentor.Bankert (talk)
 * CronopioFlotante,I think you have gone too far. Your comments on this page are damaging someone reputation. As an editor you should not make groundless accusations (although you have crossed some), and you should not make speculative comments.Bankert (talk) 16:31, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bankert, your accusation is probably grounded on the misunderstanding I had with Nerdseeksblonde above. I hope that my response to him appeases you and that we can continue the discussion in the civil manner we had so far. Respectfully, CronopioFlotante (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So, I guess no one disputes that his model was notable, the question then becomes related to his life. What exactly about his life was covered anywhere beyond his model and isolated refs to his other work? While dating a celeb doesn't let one catch notability, you may be able to find enough secondary sources covering such things to make his life notable. So, if you ignore the wikipedia guidelines on bio for people of his type just for argument, what exactly has been written about his life even if not in articles specifically about him? What could you say except mention his model and "some misc other works" ? Would this be enough for you to go to biased or primary sources and then provide a complete chronology of his life and have it be other than trivia or personal details? Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 22:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep academics are notable because of the influence of their academic work, just as athletes are notable for their athletic accomplishments. That extensive secondary material be separately available on their life details is asking the unreasonable--this would restrict Wikipedia to covering only the famous, and WWP:N is much broader than that in all fields of activity.   It's a criterion that might apply for people whose work is highlighted in the mass media--but hardly elsewhere. If anything, the present article has a good deal too much miscellaneous material &  way of personal detail and needs to be cut drastically.   I'm not sure if two articles are necessary, but if not, this is the one where it should be kept--the theory is her accomplishment and belongs here. It's like the debate between an article on an author and one on his book--he may well write more books & if the first one is notable, almost always does.    DGG ( talk ) 21:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You'd expect that if a career or series of isolated contributions was notable, not just a single result, there would be secondary sources that describe that. Or, you could at least infer that from the citations to the one model. I guess you might be able to make some kind of case if he devoted his whole life to something about the model but still you can't make stuff up or do OR. Unless you can reasonably infer something about his life from the coverage of the model, I don't see how you make a case here. Right now, you really just have some citations and his name mentioned in the same sentence as "giants." Your article about him would basically then be a bunch of personal detail- hobbies, place of birth, relationship with mother, etc- that are supposed to be encyclopedic due to one model. Maybe if there were published anecdotes about how he discovered the model that may reflect personality quirks/eccentricities there may be something to go on but so far the case seem quite weak. I guess this is not much different from the earlier argument about notability of lawyers in a notable case. For example, I argued that even if coverage was only confined to cases, the lawyers are often implicitly responsible for much of the action and with a few cases would themselves be notable even without specific coverage about them if enough details about them came out while covering the cases. In this case, you seem to have a 1-hit-wonder and presumably citations are mostly things like the "Chen model implies" etc probably not even " and then Chen in the usual Chen fashion argued with another Chen-ism etc etc" as you may get from coverage on a series of legal cases.  Certainly the more extreme would be " larry[], moe[], curly[], and chen[] all handled various slip and fall cases." I haven't looked closely enoug at this specific set of citations but as presented here I'd be leaning toward merge with model. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 22:56, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * actually, a secondary source such as you want almost never happens for scientists of other academics until they die or retire. Even people so distinguished as to get into the Royal Society, don't have their bios published by the society until after their decease. This is exactly why we have WP:PROF. tyo deal with this  objection.  i point out that similar things occur in other fields also-Olympic athletes before recent years typically don't have much information about their persona life either, but we do not need it, for their recorded accomplishments are notable. Before we had WP:PROF established well enough, the argument went the the sum of all of the secondary citations made up the necessary 3rd party references, because academics do not get cited widely unless they're worth citing. But there has never been a rule that we need a specific bio about the personal life of anyone whatsoever. Nor could there be, unless we were to have a very abbreviated encyclopedia. Whatever Wikipedia is, an abridged encyclopedia is what it certainly isn't    DGG ( talk ) 05:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The review article is a review of finance for the last 50 years. It is only one of its kinds. CXXXFXXX  is right that it is a literature survey but it only reviews / surveys important works in the discipline of finance for its entire history. How important? Give you an idea: many chair professors of finance have no paper got mentioned in that review article.

To be sure, the following is the list of chair professors of finance at Yale University. You could check to see that only three out of nine were mentioned in the article. Even Robert. Shiller, a big name in finance, was only mentioned once or twice.

You get the point? Literally, everyone who was mentioned in this review article is a notable scholar in finance, because it is harder to get mentioned than to be a chair professor which, by Wikipedia criteria, is automatically notable. But Lin Chen’s work is especially notable because his work is highlighted in the review article, shown in a TABLE along with other great work. Why the article makes a table for term structure models, because, as I said before, term structure modeling is Nobel-level work. There are about 400 people worldwide who have been working in this area (me included) but only about a dozen become prominent.

Chair professors of finance at Yale

Nicholas C. Barberis, Stephen & Camille Schramm Professor of Finance, PhD Harvard University

Judith A. Chevalier, William S. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Economics, PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jeffrey E. Garten, Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business, PhD Johns Hopkins University

William N. Goetzmann, Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies & Director of the International Center for Finance, PhD Yale University

Gary B. Gorton, Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Management and Finance, PhD University of Rochester

Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr., Adrian C. Israel Professor of International Trade and Finance, PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jonathan R. Macey, Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law, PhD Stockholm School of Economics

Andrew Metrick, Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Corporate Governance; Professor of Finance; Faculty Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance, PhD Harvard University

Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bankert (talk) 08:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That helps if you are trying to decide who to invite to a name-dropping party. At best it is probably some type of OR of little relevance for deciding if he is notable and you could even make a case for bad use of post hoc statistics (" what are the odds Mr. Chen would be mentioned here if he is not notable given that none of these notable people were included?" ) . You still need something from the sources that taken together gives you something worth saying ( encyclopedic and documented). Now, your article would be something like " Chen invented the Chen model and was cited in a review article where people even more great were snubbed." Ignoring the OR component, there is probably a bit of mind reading now as you are attributing certain intents and attitudes towards one author without much to go on- if he omitted coverage of people he "should have" covered maybe he is just covering fringe authors, who knows.


 * Sources? Maybe we should just make a list of sources and argue specifics about what is in them relevant to Chen's notability and look at WP:PROF as right now arguing generalities doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I'll admit some bias against economics in general but I did want to keep a real estate firm that apparently just just speedied LOL. When I first got to wiki, I never expected to be arguing against inclusion of anything but there have been many articles that don't really seem to fit in or act as an obvious service to any reader. Personally I'd still be inclined to keep anything but you end up having to ask things like, " if I found this from google is it likely to help or waste my time?" Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:04, 22 August 2009 (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.