Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Symbolic analysis Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Symbolic_analysis

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 delete. JForget 00:31, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Symbolic analysis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

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I am also nominating Symbolic Program Analysis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), (edit 06:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC): based on Robin's findings below, extending the nomination to: Symbolic evaluation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Symbolic generalization (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and Symbolic information (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) all of which are written as spin-offs this very same topic.) Reason summary: both all fail WP:GNG, in particular the part about significant coverage in third-party publications. Further, both articles are uninformative, and unlikely to become so given the publications that they're based on.

Despite the use of "symbolic analysis" in their name, which may suggest a generic or well-known notion, these two articles are entirely based one man's relatively obscure and fairly recent line of research, who in all likelihood also wrote the wiki articles. While he did publish a few conference papers about these topics, none are published in significant venues. A red flag is that while the main application of this line of research is to programming languages, none of these papers were published in a programming language conference or even workshop.

I think I have a graduate-level understanding of programming language topics (please check my contributions on this wiki). Despite this, I fail to understand what these two wiki articles, or one of the conference papers given as reference which I've read, are actually proposing as an analysis framework or as a theory for understanding programs. Idiosyncratic jargon is presented instead of technical details, which are a simply missing not only in the wiki article, but also in the paper I've read.

It might be possible that once some third party publications appear about this topic, someone other than this research's author may be able to write an informative wiki article about it. Until then, I don't see how this stuff can be salvaged as an encyclopedia article.

(Please be advised that I won't be able to reply to questions for 12 hours or so, but I will be happy to clarify any issue that may arise in this discussion thereafter.) Pcap ping 22:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - At first glance, this looked like a real topic, but it's more like one person's thesis. Need reliable sources to show its importance. Also 'symbolic analysis' sounds like using it is using neologism to attach a made-up meaning to a familiar-sounding phrase. No evidence that other writers use 'symbolic analysis' in this sense. EdJohnston (talk) 23:15, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - All the literature on this concept seems to be written by the same person, including this Wikipedia article. No evidence of notability. The fact that there's a website (again created by the same person) about this concept makes it even more suspicious. --Robin (talk) 23:38, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. What about Symbolic_generalization, Symbolic evaluation and Symbolic information. They're all created by the same person and seem to be describing the same concept. --Robin (talk) 23:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment More of the same. Delete them, they are a disservice to information. As with this article, no wp:rs--Work permit (talk) 01:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Symbolic analysis is notable as a circuit engineering term, and has extensions to other fields. But this article has nothing to do with that. This article has no citations, and for good reason. It seems like something the author has made up. For a sense of "real" symbolic analysis, a Google scholar search is a good place to start. There is also a textbook that uses the term, Symbolic analysis and reduction of VLSI circuits. The first line in the first chapter is a good way to define the term: symbolic analysis is to characterize the behavior or characteristics of a circuit in terms of symbolic parameters. In this context, you can think of it as the antonym of numerical analysis. This article is worse then useless, it is grossly misleading for people looking to understand what the term really means. --Work permit (talk) 01:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for pointing that out. I would add that even if we restrict our attention to compiler theory, where this terminology is not that often encountered, symbolic analysis can have a more generic and fairly similar meaning with the one you found for circuit analysis. This thesis (at a major research university in CS) defines symbolic analysis as "compile time methods for reasoning about program values that may not be constant."—the techniques used in this work are similar to those used in programs like Mathematica, e.g. rewriting. So, the wiki article is misleading even in the narrower context of programming languages, appropriating a generic term for a narrow line of research. Pcap ping 08:01, 5 September 2009 (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.