Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Newberger's summation formula


 * 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.  Sandstein  16:41, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Newberger&

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Article is unreferenced for over two years, fails the verifiability policy. Stifle (talk) 08:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. I suspect that references could be found for this.  But the article as it stands now lacks context and contains no showing of importance, and as such is entirely unintelligible to non-mathematicians. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:06, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. This may be better known as Newberger's sum rule, see google books here or scholar here. I lack the mathematical know-how to understand these possible references though. ascidian  | talk-to-me  15:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Ideally I would have suggested to merge it with something, but since the article deriving the relation has only been cited 13 about 17 times since 1982 it doesn't seem to warrant throwing a relationship which is apparently used very rarely in with something important (e.g. Bessel function) just as a token gesture. I added references so WP:V is OK, and as Ascidian pointed out it would seem a name change is in order. And maybe someone can figure out why it's used in plasma applications so to expand the article. THEN WHO WAS PHONE? (talk) 17:25, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Agree with THEN WHO PHONE? that the article is verified. The question is whether the formula is relevant enough. Perhaps the original author of this article can give some explanation of the relevance to physics etc? Ulner (talk) 11:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment One of the sources found by Ascidian points out that the summation rule is a weak generalization of a rule (itself a small tweak on a result well known in Bessel equations), found by I. Lerche some years before; For Lerche's rule, take γ = 1. They therefore propose calling it the "Lerche–Newberger sum rule." (Newberger rediscovered it independently.) But this may belong in Wiktionary rather than here. Newberger didn't read Lerche; and they're in the same field; it's only so called in plasma physics because nobody else has read either of them.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Upon consideration: Transwiki to Wiktionary. It's verifiable, and a useful definition, but no more, and it never will be. Smerdis' argument is notability and it has not been addressed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I've added references to several more papers by groups other than Newberger which explicitly argue about whether this is a new formula or whether Lerche (one of the people arguing) should get the credit for publishing a special case of the formula earlier, in 1966. The new sources also make clear the application of the formula to plasma physics. The “response to comment on...” paper writes: What is now called “Newberger ’s sum rule” by the plasma physics community... implying to me not just that this formula is notable but that so is (a version of) the name under which our article is titled. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:23, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep since the only rationale advanced for deletion has been addressed. -- Dominus (talk) 18:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per Dominus. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2008 (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.