Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shell (mathematics)

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:({{Find sources|Shell (mathematics)}})

Hoax r.e.b. (talk) 00:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Delete. I know that someone is going to come here and protest, so let me point out that a shell is supposed to simultaneously generalize sheaves, presheaves, and closed differentiable manifolds in three dimensional space. This does not make sense (it is not possible to represent all sheaves as closed differentiable manifolds in three dimensional space, let alone generalize them). The supposed "Lang-Lang program" does not exist and is probably a pun on the pianist Lang Lang. A closed differentiable manifold in three space is either a closed surface or a circle, and so it is impossible for it to contain more than a single sphere, contrary to the suggestion of the definition of a closed shell. The Grothendieck construction is abstract category theory and has nothing to do with manifolds. And the reference to Herstein's Algebra is wrong; Herstein does not discuss these supposed objects. Ozob (talk) 00:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Delete, hoax and misuse of references. Peter Karlsen (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Delete. A hoax that attempts to confuse the reader with jargon, etc., into believing this is a legitimate article. Multiple inaccuracies and disingenuously sourced, as already pointed out above. --Kinu ^t/_c 08:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Shell theory is an actual mathematical theory. I agree that some of the specifics of the theory have been inaccurately presented in the article. It is obvious that the person who wrote the original article is not an expert in shell theory himself. The thing to do in these cases is to correct these mistakes, not delete the entire article. I promise to do my fair share of the work and present a better case as to the theory's mathematical validity later today. I also urge everyone considering deletion to wait for a few days as most of the experts in the field are attending a conference these days. --129.67.149.66 (talk) 12:56, 26 October 2010 (UTC) — 129.67.149.66 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Delete as hoax. The name Matsudo seems central in this field; the Matsudo campus of Chiba University does exist, but "J.D.Matsudo himself", so liberally quoted from, is an elusive figure:

::{{findsources|J.D.Matsudo}}

:-- JohnCD (talk) 13:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. Indeed, this is an actual theory. The generalisation is rather abstract and it is not very well presented. It is related to category theory and topos theory (hence sheaves and presheaves), and the 3D manifolds come as an early example that actually gave rise to the name "shell". I agree that the mathematical content is not very well presented in the article and often confused with the "intuition" (shells, contents, etc). IMHO, we should give a few days for experts to evaluate this and improve on the article. I will personaly contact some coleagues who have worked in the subject and try to find some actual references. The name Matsudo is indeed a funny coincidence that is often pointed out as an inside joke. Regards, Jacob B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.184.43 (talk) 14:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

::Comment: you say you will try to find some "actual references." Do you maintain that the references in the article are genuine? Does "J.D.Matsudo" exist? Can you provide a checkable source for his existence and his alleged quotes? (see Wikipedia:Verifiability). If this were a case of genuine material unclearly presented by a non-expert, then correcting it might be the way to go; but if, as appears from the comments above, it is false material, sources and quotes presented as a joke, that is an unpromising starting point for a genuine article. Best to dump the whole mess and let someone write an article from scratch who (a) is serious and (b) knows what he is talking about. JohnCD (talk) 14:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Delete User:129.67.184.43 already stated in an edit summary:

::Definitely not an hoax. Shell theory exists indeed. I have worked in the field myself for years. It is simply a not very clearly written article

:I don't think we need to wait for our expert to appear. Probably a prank intended to catch out a fellow student at the university mathematics department the IP address traces to. Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk) 14:45, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Delete Has anyone not considered the quote in the box? "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" is a line from an old British music hall song (and a rather good tongue-twister), and I could assume Y. Yum to be either Yum Yum (see The Mikado) or simply the sound of delight made by slightly old-fashioned children. On the other hand, the Shigeo Koshitani and Yutaka Yoshii work exists (but is mis-spelt here as 'Eigenvales' which should of course be 'Eigenvalues'), but only seems to be available online by paying (which I do not intend to do). As regards Matsudo, there are Victor and Sandra M., scientists but not apparently in maths, Mie M. who may be involved with maths (but I'm not downloading a vast pdf to check) - but I can't find a J.D.. Can the full names of J.D. and also of Y. Yum be supplied to us? And what the heck they have to do with things anyway as nothing is actually attributed to them (apart from Matsudo's mixture of surreal and banal quotes). I agree with JohnCD (above) about the article's present and future - as it stands). Peridon (talk) 15:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment There are 'Keeps' from two IP addresses above, 129.67.149.66 and 129.67.184.43 - both of which trace to a certain very well known and very long established English university. Interesting.... Peridon (talk) 15:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

::At least six IPs from Oxford University (let's not beat about the bush) have edited the article or removed tags. Of course, it could be all one person - the history doesn't show a lot of overlap. What is interesting is that the article was [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shell_(mathematics)&diff=392830863&oldid=392814585 first tagged as a hoax] by an [http://www.ip2location.com/163.1.181.49 Oxford University IP]. JohnCD (talk) 15:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

:::Interesting too that the article started out as being about Kan extensions, until Shell0101 got to it. There's an Asia Pacific IP putting on and apparently taking off hoax tags too. Peridon (talk) 16:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

::::Although WHOIS gives "Asia Pacific Network Information Centre" for two of them, Traceroute for those two ends up with wolf.ox.ac.uk - Wolfson College. The rest are comlab.ox.ac.uk or maths.ox.ac.uk.

• Delete Looks very likely that article in its current state is a hoax. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Keep I am a professor of mathematics from Cambridge University and I can attest to the fact that shell theory is an existing mathematical theory. To be honest, I am one of the people who are not entirely convinced as to the correctness of this line of research. The question here is not whether this article is a hoax; it is whether shell theory is valid mathematics and not quackery. Alas, the answer to this question is not for wikipedia to decide, but for the greater mathematical community, where it is still an open problem. My biggest problem with shell theory is that it leads to paradoxical informatic ontologies. I would like to add a number of citations that reflect this view to the currently existing article. Unfortunately 1) the article is currently protected and 2) many of these citations are from japanese journals that are not available online... but I could arrange to email scanned copies to anyone interested! --188.221.247.39 (talk) 21:57, 26 October 2010 (UTC) — 188.221.247.39 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• :You are welcome to put useful information here. But I would much prefer if you stopped wasting our time. Ozob (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Keep with a notice for modificationsI agree to a certain extent with the last comment, although not with its excessive tone. I would myself think this is a hoax, did I not know Matsudo and its research. Although this guy (Matsudo) is more or less crazy, he has done some valuable yet largely unknown work. Also, in line with last comment, some of the claims of the article (for example the TOE hope) are clearly over the hype, and a section should be added where this claims of (some) shell-theorists should be clearly refuted. The article itself also needs reformulation: filling in more details would help explain the subject more clearly. On a different note, about the Oxford thing, I believe Matsudo has some connections with research groups there. In fact, it was one Oxford student that sent an email today alerting some experts in related fields (including myself) about the (probably) bad article and all the discussion generated that puts the good name of the field and its researchers in questions. I am not the person indicated for this job as I no longer work on related fields (and to be honest never understood the theory very well myself), but I would suggest that we let such experts edit it. Clarence Takahashi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.68.17.214 (talk) 00:08, 27 October 2010 (UTC) — 111.68.17.214 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Delete. This is an obvious and somewhat lame hoax. The article has no verifiable content, and all of the "keep" votes above are from sock puppets of the author of the article. Jim (talk) 04:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
• Speedy Delete G3 as a hoax. Ray^Talk 04:46, 27 October 2010 (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.