Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ordinal optimization (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 redirect to Mathematical optimization. There is consensus against keeping the article, but no consensus to delete or merge; redirection is a compromise. Content can be merged from the history as deemed appropriate.  Sandstein  16:49, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Ordinal optimization
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Subtly not notable. Based on the cited sources, the definition at the top that User:Kiefer.Wolfowitz is incorrect; "ordinal optimization" is just the name Ho, Srinivasan, and Vakili (HSV) give to the following strategy for developing an approximation algorithm:
 * Simulate as many options as you can think of, then pick the best one.

That's not a deep insight. Consequently, there's a lot of potential sources that you could cite to argue it's studied all the time. But very few sources explicitly call it "ordinal optimization" or consider it a concept worth remarking over.

With that said, a Google Scholar search for the term does find a bunch of electrical engineers using the term to justify making physical investments based on their simulation results. I can easily imagine a world in which this did deserve a Wikipedia article, because the name is a useful description of much work in applied mathematics and engineering, and sees explicit use in "selling" the intellectual products thereof.

But we don't seem to live in that world. Of the cited sources, only HSV use the name. Based on the same Google Scholar search, no one seems to have expanded, generalized, or refined HSV's heuristic argument for the strategy. And I understand why &mdash; I, personally, am not really convinced that HSV's argument tells us anything we didn't already know. One professor's neologism isn't enough secondary work for a WP article. (Maybe appropriate at Wiktionary?)

If the article is kept, there's no way that "ordinal optimization" is the best title...but I 'm not sure what a better one would be. Bernanke&#39;s Crossbow (talk) 10:01, 22 August 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗  plicit  11:26, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment Most of the current content of the article is just introducing posets and lattices. It doesn't really discuss optimization much at all. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:35, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's why I don't think it's worth merging anywhere. Bernanke&#39;s Crossbow (talk) 20:25, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I suspect that some synthesis has gone on here. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:16, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete The content of the article seems entirely separate from the actual use of the term, and whether that use could warrant an encyclopedia article is dubious. We'd need, first, not just engineering papers dropping in the term to puff up their prose, but reviews or textbooks indicating that it is a coherent subject area. Then, we'd need to completely redo the existing text on that basis. The text as it stands was mostly made by copying definitions and examples from elsewhere in Wikipedia, and it shows. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 13:47, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Merge to optimization, perhaps? I cut out all the unnecessary background, leaving a well-referenced stub. There is some evidence this is a coherent field in the form of a review paper on applied ordinal optimization, but I'd prefer to see a review outside of the cluster of research groups using the term. There is clearly work on optimization over posets and lattices, e.g., and, but calling that "ordinal optimization" might be a synthesis too far. The content may work better as a section in a broad concept article like optimization. --  12:49, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   15:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Guerillero  Parlez Moi 12:02, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment I'd tend to agree with merging into the article on optimisation after the work done by Mark viking. I didn't have an in-depth look at the references, but maybe those to [10], [11], [12] could be detailed a tiny bit more, by expliciting to which kind of poset they use (is it just that of subsets of the pouplation?). The batch of "raw" references in the first sentence is also near-useless as it is in my opinion. The last sentence could just be a link to vector optimization (maybe adding the given reference [13] to this article if it is relevant). jraimbau (talk) 06:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * 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.