Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fuzzy matrix theory

:{{la|Fuzzy matrix theory}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Fuzzy matrix theory}})

Deeply fringe; cargo-cult mathematics. bobrayner (talk) 21:42, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep change to no opinion, see below.--Pgallert (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC) (and improve, obviously) The term is not only used by the authors of the cited book (which does exist even if the link in the article does not work for me; find it [http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0702144 here]). [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5565103 This] and [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1254775 this] paper use the term, and both Automaton and ieeexplore are respectable publishers. From checking at Google Scholar it [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22Fuzzy+matrix+theory%22&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 looks] like an established term to me. --Pgallert (talk) 08:26, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

:: Can you even find the home page for the Automaton (which is actually misspelled, it should be Automation) publishing company? WorldCat indicates virtually no holdings for this book anywhere in the world. [http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=wikipedia&q=isbn%3A1599730057] Tijfo098 (talk) 21:43, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

:: And what's with the IEEE red herring? There is no such reference in the article, and your searches above don't support the theory claimed to be introduced in this article/book. Tijfo098 (talk) 14:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

:::Fair response. Was mistaken with my Automaton remark--I thought I had such journal on my desk the other day, but it must have had a different name. Sorry for adding to the confusion. What I meant with my Google Scholar link and the papers was this: It is clear this title is not a hoax, and not a neologism. The remark "fringe" does not make much sense in mathematics. It can be wrong, or it can be utterly unimportant, in which case it will be forgotten soon, but the platform for opinions is rather small. Change my !vote to "no opinion" because I did not read those papers and can thus not say whether the article does at least rudimentarily sum up what they say on fuzzy matrix theory. --Pgallert (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep (striken, now agreeing with Tijfo, Eppstein and others.) The subject dates back to at least the 1970's and there are plenty of academic references. I think the nominator is mistaken in saying that it is fringe. I agree that the current article is extremely poor; the only reference in it may not even be mainstream for fuzzy matrices. Dingo1729 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC).
• Is "fringe" bad? And is it grounds for deletion? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
• I think there is some confusion here. The term fuzzy matrix does appear in many sources; e.g. [http://books.google.com/books?id=IzN93YlrKlwC&pg=PA26], and it usually represents a fuzzy relation [http://books.google.com/books?id=Fq-eXnV56coC&pg=PA70] (Springer book's author home page [http://www.rc.mce.uec.ac.jp/]) [http://reference.wolfram.com/applications/fuzzylogic/DemonstrationNotebooks/3.html]. But the so-called "Fuzzy matrix theory" (which I'm not really sure what it describes) appears to be limited to Smarandache et co. A more appropriat title would be fuzzy relational calculus, [http://books.google.com/books?id=18dYP3JL-rcC], but I doubt a separate page from fuzzy relation is needed give we don't even have that. Like always, Wikipedia first gathers spam on a topic before useful articles. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

::I admit to the confusion. Having read more of the single reference in the article I now realize that it is not the fuzzy matrix theory which I thought it was. I thought it involved probabilistic, normally distributed entries in the matrix. I really don't know whether this mathematics is used by social scientists.Dingo1729 (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

::: The standard textbook in the area [http://books.google.com/books?id=AOhQAAAAMAAJ] by Klir and Yuan has some 4000+ citations in google scholar. It has a chapter (#5) on fuzzy relations (which can be presented as matrixes if they are finitary fuzzy binary relations) but no such topic as "fuzzy matrix" or "fuzzy matrix theory" which are present in Wikipedia. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:16, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• Strong delete per my analysis above. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. The book on this topic given as the sole reference has only 4 citations in Google scholar, which appear to be references in passing. An example: "As a final conclusion, the approach opens the door towards more future extensions of the proposed approach to other global optimization techniques [11-15] and for solving other mathematical programming problems ...", in which the book is one of those included in the mass citation "[11-15]".  --Lambiam 10:35, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete a theory included in a book published in 2007 cannot have gotten that notable in this few years. Nergaal (talk) 16:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• The actual theory predates these authors by decades, and is notable. It's just not called this way by almost everyone else. The wiki article sadly imparts no real information as to what the theory is about; it just advertises a book which is not even remotely a mainstream one on the topic, and it makes a false claim of priority—false in any substantive sense; the only contribution of these authors seems to be the clever reuse of a commonly used term with "theory" attached to it. Tijfo098 (talk) 18:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. The confusion already present in this AfD (and the Google scholar citation counts) makes it obvious that fuzzy matrices are notable but that the Smarandache approach to it is not. And as an aside, the social scientists I've worked with are quite mathematically sophisticated and aren't interested in making their math fuzzy. After deletion, a redirect (without merging any of the content) to fuzzy associative matrix might make sense, but that article is in very sad shape too. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:11, 14 April 2011 (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.