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 keep. IP !vote is discounted, but remaining keep votes are strong enough to result in a keep outcome. BD2412 T 02:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Power of three[edit]

Power of three (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This is a partial bare copy of powers of 2 with different numbers filled in. As is, there's no encyclopedic content, and it fails WP:IINFO. It was previously a redirect to a dab page, but my attempts to restore that have been reverted without explanation. The previous redirect should stay, with or without an intervening delete. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 07:22, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 07:22, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Power of Three There is nothing here that is not WP:OR or the result of elementary computations. A redirect to 3#List of basic calculations would make sense, but the easy confusion between Power of Three and Power of three requires a disambiguation. That is, redirecting to the dab page Power of Three, and having a link to 3#List of basic calculations in this dab page. D.Lazard (talk) 08:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I know about the powers of 3. Please don't redirect and there are no photos in this page. 176.88.98.46 (talk) 08:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and Redirect to the dab page. Little useful information, none referenced. Very little literature on 3^3^n; 3^2^n is much more common. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 11:06, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom, allowing a redirect to Power of Three if people want to do that. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 14:20, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. By the standards of notability for integer sequences, it easily passes: everyone knows it, it is listed as "nice" in OEIS, and it comes up frequently in combinatorial enumeration and other contexts (for instance as the number of faces of all dimensions of the hypercubes); http://oeis.org/A000244 has many more properties. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:13, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• There's also A025192 for doubled powers of 3. XOR'easter (talk) 00:00, 9 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per David Eppstein. Wiki-notability isn't about whether an article is currently stellar, but about whether an article on that topic should exist, and I think this passes. XOR'easter (talk) 23:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

*Redirect to Power of Three for now, also consider incubation in draftspace. It is currently a bunch of indiscriminate information, but I can find some promise in it. Nevertheless, it in its current form doesn't qualify (yet) for an article. I have created a draft here at Draft:Power of three. If there is no promise, I would kill it by G7, but draftify for now. tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message) 13:20, 14 March 2020 (UTC) I did a bunch of research, apparently it has pretty much no interesting properties that can be found. Mathematicians usually look into powers of 2 separately as 2 has a very special status in number theory as an even prime. Powers of 3 are usually considered together with powers of other primes (e.g. powers of 5) in nearly all cases except in some scenarios in which powers of 3 have a unique property (such as being perfect totient numbers. In anuy case, powers of 3 are, quite surprisingly, not notable enough for Wikipedia. tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message) 03:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC) [reply]

• • Having done more research, let me iterate my view. Consider the articles Power of 3 with the two other existing articles, Power of 2 and power of 10. I shall look into why powers of 3 are much less notable than powers of 2 or 10.
    1. Powers of 2 are very commonly used in digital computation - you keep hearing of stuff from 16-bit to 2048-bit, and hard disks can bbe 256MB but never 243MB. This point requires pretty much no further explanation. Powers of 2, being related very heavily with the binomial coefficients (see the article), and also as a special class of prime powers, have an extremely special status. I can go on for pages about how important powers of 2 are as compared to powers of any other number. In short, powers of 2 are often discussed separately from powers of other primes, for example in the discussion of primitive root modulo n.
    2. Powers of 10 occur prominently as we use the base 10. The powers of 10 are particularly simple, and we usually start with base 10 before moving on to other bases for maths considerations. These powers occur readily in these analyses problems, and they are the main features of scientific notation. Powers of 10 also have their applications (e.g. [1]), but the importance of these powers of 10 comes from our use of base 10. When we say that "123456" has 6 digits, we are referring to base 10, and the powers of 10 already appeared in the statement in the form 10^6-1≤123456<10⁶.

• for instance, we use base 10 for the naming of numbers, and our familiar "large number" naming comes from powers of 10. When we say that "123456" has 6 digits, and say that it is "one hundred and twenty-three thousand four hundred and fifty-six", we are referring to base 10, and the powers of 10 already appeared in the statement in the form 10^6-1≥123456<10⁶.

• • To conclude, I acknowledge that powers of 3 have many applications, including in Cantor set discussions and items like hypercubes and so, but its real-life applications are much less extensive than powers of 2 and 10. Powers of 2 are used extensively in computation and appeared in PlanetMath. Powers of 10 appear commonplace and are one of the first large numbers we meet, as one of the most commonly used in discussions. Powers of 3 may be used in the game Tower of Hanoi and in discussions related to Hypercubes, but its uses are limited. tLoM (The Lord of Math) (Message) 02:49, 18 March 2020 (UTC) Keep. David Eppstein has made a really strong argument in favour of a keep by modifying it radically. Many thanks to him, TLOM (The Lord of Math) (Message) 03:08, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - My opinion is the same as XOR'easter. The article is imperfect as is, but it is a notable topic by our standards. Patiodweller (talk) 15:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Much less notable than powers of 2 or 10 doesn't mean not notable at all. XOR'easter (talk) 20:58, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I have cleaned out much unsourced material from the article and added sourced material in its place documenting the applications of these numbers. So the article is significantly changed from what it was like at its nomination. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:09, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - the topic is notable and the article is now improved (last by David Eppstein). JohnThorne (talk) 01:54, 19 March 2020 (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.