Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Order of a polynomial


 * 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   delete and replace with a disambiguation page as Mark viking suggests. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Order of a polynomial

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The title is usurpatory, as it has several common meanings, none corresponding to the content of the article. This cannot be solved by moving the article, because of the multiple issues listed in the talk page: the concept is not well defined. The only possible definition that fits the examples is not a property of the polynomial, but of an auxiliary basis. The article refers to a unique source, which is a book about splines, a different subject. It seems that the article is a WP:OR tentative to generalize the well defined notion of "order of of a spline interpolation", which is based on a misunderstanding of this notion. In any case, the article content is either WP:OR or non-notable, and, thus, cannot be saved for making an encyclopedic article. D.Lazard (talk) 10:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment In spline theory, the order of a spline is a well-defined concept; it is the number of knots needed to define a spline. I think this was de Boor's use of the term. In the more general case of polynomials, order is sometimes used as a synonym for degree. There is also the multiplicative order of a polynomial. Given the different uses of the term, it may be better to turn this into a disambiguation page. --Mark viking (talk) 17:57, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:28, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. Incoherent, and apparently OR. There might be several notions of the "order of a polynomial", but they are not what is described in this article. --Sammy1339 (talk) 02:37, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. A disambiguation page for this title makes sense, but I do not know what to do with the contents of this page. A delete seems to be the cleanest way to make room for a proper page. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 17:14, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't use mathematics professionally, but enjoy playing about. The term 'order of a polynomial' was familiar to me from high-school maths 20 years ago, and seemed to more or less match the definition given in the article; I understand from the discussion above that this should be referred to as the 'degree', but acknowledging the difference in use around the world is worthwhile. I note that Wolfram uses order of a polynomial in the same sense that this page intends. So, I'm argue for retaining it.Klbrain (talk) 22:07, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. Look a little more closely at this page. In the example given, a degree one polynomial has order n, thus degree and order are not being used as synonyms contrary to what Wolfram is saying. The fact that the article led you astray speaks against keeping it.Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 22:30, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 00:37, 1 September 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:38, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete, not well-defined and not commonly used. After deletion, create a redirect to Degree of a polynomial. —Kusma (t·c) 09:43, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess this article is meant to be about the order of approximation, in the sense that x is a second-order approximation to sin(x) for small x (even though it is of first degree). I don't think this usage deserves its own article, though. --JBL (talk) 13:09, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as OR. de Boor defines a polynomial of order n to be a polynomial of degree n &minus; 1. There is no mention of a basis like in the article. Ozob (talk) 14:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm not sure why this was relisted twice.  Consensus seems pretty clearly to indicate deletion.  But in case a raw tally of votes is needed to push this solidly over some imaginary edge: delete.   S ławomir  Biały  17:46, 8 September 2015 (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.