Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Probability derivations for making low hands in Omaha hold 'em

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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 transwiki to Wikibooks. There are two issues involved here. One is the issue of whether the page is original research. The article contains nothing but mathematical derivations, which would seem 'obvious' and not in need of sourcing to some mathematicians. The article could do with a description of why the derivations produce the correct answer sourced from an reliable source outside Wikipedia, but this seems reasonable. The description of

reliable source by the definition, and shouldn't really be used to source itself. However, the issue of whether the content is appropriate for Wikipedia is more important. Giving long derivations isn't really the sort of thing that would be found in an encyclopedia; it's much more the sort of thing that would be found in an appendix of a textbook or other such work, as many of the comments below indicate. This content isn't appropriate for Wikipedia, but there are sister projects where this content is appropriate (and will still serve the same purpose, of backing up the assertions in the 'parent article'). I've asked the Wikibooks administrators to transwiki this article there; this closure is without predjudice against the article also being transwikied to Wikiversity. --ais523 16:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC
)

Probability derivations for making low hands in Omaha hold 'em

Probability derivations for making low hands in Omaha hold 'em (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Quite simply,

AmiDaniel (talk) 03:17, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
]

Additionally, the only edits made to the page since it survived its last AfD have been housekeeping tasks, such as adding the {{
AmiDaniel (talk) 03:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
]

== About Poker probability (Omaha)/Derivations for making low hands ==

I normally deal with articles that are too atrocious for Wikipedia - AFD and similar. I wonder if your article on poker probability is too good for Wikipedia. I found it as the second legitimate article on Wikipedia's list of longest pages. On a subject like this, that seems odd. Obviously, I'm not going to nominate the article for deletion or anything similar - and, as an admin, you know the rules at least as well as I do - but I'd like an explanation for why it's so long, and why all the material belongs. YechielMan 07:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Notice also that this is a subpage of the main Poker probability (Omaha) page. In writing this article, rather than simply providing the tables of odds and probability, which you can find many places on the Internet, the intent is to provide the derivations behind the tables. These are obviously too long to include in the main article, so thus the subpages. The subject doesn't really stand on its own as an article, so it's not a "main" article but rather a subpage.
The reasoning behind providing the derivations, which in some cases are quite expansive, is because this is precisely the type of information that makes the discussion of poker probability encyclopedic, rather than a simple regurgitation of tables. Without the derivations, the numbers in the Poker probability (Omaha) tables have to be taken at face value—there's no way to see where the numbers come from. By providing the derivations, the complete set of formulas necessary to derive the probabilities are available.
As I started writing the article, it wasn't clear to me that some of the derivation tables were going to get so large. As I've continue with the article, adding sections, some of the derivations, in particular this one, have gotten rather large. A lot of the size is due to the table mark up and math expressions. I've considered whether the final article when done should include the derivation subpages or not, but until the article is finished, I've been adding them under the understanding that
Wikipedia is not paper. The final disposition of the derivation tables is still an open issue, but I think they add an encyclopedic value to the article that sets it apart from the many poker probability pages on the Web that are just giving the resulting numbers and not exposing the math behind them. —Doug Bell talk
08:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Good answer. I'm impressed. YechielMan 06:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

YechielMan 12:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment-- Well, if and when this thing gets deleted, I think it should definitely be preserved somewhere, just because it is perhaps the most indiscriminate article I have ever seen :)--Cronholm144 14:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it indiscriminate? Are you suggesting it is not complete, and should be extended? Jheald 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A spectacular resource to point students to, who are encountering the idea of combinatorial probabilities for the first time. Even if you'd only ever actually work through a couple of these as worked examples, what I like is the way this table succinctly shows that for any of these classes of hands, there is a (quite short) formula for the probability. So think of its value like that of a picture -- not necessarily in each pixel, but in the impression overall conveyed by the whole. Jheald 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia is not a textbook for math students; it is an encyclopedia. Please consider the material on the basis of its appropriateness as an encyclopedia article. There are other projects, such as Wikibooks and Wikiversity, that may accept such material aimed toward students; however, Wikipedia is not one such project.
    AmiDaniel (talk) 19:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Keep Well, wikipedia is not a student resource, it is an encyclopedia.
    WP:NOT speaks directly to this issue(indiscriminate collection...) and other issues, but I rather like the article and would like to see it stick around contrary to the policy. --Cronholm144 18:00, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    In other words,
    AmiDaniel (talk) 19:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Comments. I think this one is a bit more subtle than it seems at first sight and is certainly worth more thought than "Delete - OR" (although I have to admit that my first thought was "delete" as well). This article provides derivations of the numbers in some of the probability tables in the parent article which I will call Pp(O) for short. Other numbers are derived within Pp(O) itself, but these particular derivations are simply too long for the main article.
Now, an article isn't OR just because it was produced by a wikipedian (all articles are), neither is it OR just because it doesn't cite sources (we'd lose most of our content if we deleted all that): it is OR when it contains new information. There is little evidence for that here.
Indeed, it is claimed that the information in
binomial coefficients
, exactly as in this article.
Pp(O) links to a site which calculates these probabilities, which means that there is effectively a published computer program carrying out these derivations. This is of course, a very poor source, so is it reliable? Well, the article we are considering, as Septentrionalis has suggested, actually provides a way to check the reliability of the source.
This article itself has no references. We don't, however, normally delete articles without references unless there is a good reason to do so (copyvio, libel, living person etc.). In this case, unless we want to put
Geometry guy 18:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply
]
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.
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