Talk:Eventology

Independent references

I can't find any significant references to this anywhere other than by the author of this article himself. He also had an article on WP which was deleted (see discussion here and here). John Stephenson 04:16, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Comment

In its present form, the article is unintelligable, and therefore not suitable for an encyclopedia.

"Eventology" may or may not be an interesting new approach to probability, but this article definitely does not present it in a way such that a reader can follow the ideas. If it is a mathematical theory, the assumptions/axioms of the theory have to be clearly stated, and some consequences (theorems) have to explained.

Moreover, since the theory is intended to be applied, e.g., to economics, the relation of the (not mentioned) assumptions and the field of application has to be justified.

Up to now, the author has not succeeded to propagate his ideas: All the papers are by himself (and a few coauthors) and only available from sources without peer review. Some are listed in mathematical databases, but they also have not been reviewed there.

This leads to the conclusion that the article clearly is self-promotional, presenting a theory that has not (yet???, even after ten years!) been accepted by the scientific community.

Peter Schmitt 12:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Another comment

Boris, what is your opinion of Eventology? The author wrote some papers on it, for instance, this paper (in Russian). I don't read Russian—and I don't know if I knew the language whether I could make a judgment about its contents. I see references to very respectable Russian mathematicians. Is eventology a respected subfield of mathematics and worth an article in CZ? --Paul Wormer 07:37, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is basically the content of the article. Throwing a die 100 times we get interdependent random variables $X_{1},X_{2},X_{3},X_{4},X_{5},X_{6}$ satisfying $X_{1}+X_{2}+X_{3}+X_{4}+X_{5}+X_{6}=100.$ Namely, $X_{3}$ is the (random) number of events "3 pips", etc. The joint distribution of these 6 random variables is the well-known multinomial distribution. What about the joint distribution of, say, $X_{1}+X_{2}$ and $X_{2}+X_{3}+X_{4}?$ This is an example of the distribution introduced in the first part of the paper under the name "multidimensional binomial distribution". The second part of the article treats in the same spirit the case of a large number of trials of rare events, which leads to a generalized Poisson process. Clearly, not a notable achievement in probability theory.

In spite of the "references to very respectable Russian mathematicians" (and even more respectable non-Russian philosophers, etc) I do not see any notable mathematics in the "eventology". However, non-mathematical aspects of "eventology" are beyond my competence. If, say, its philosophical (or economic, or social, etc) component is notable and is really related to its mathematical component, then the latter may inherit notability.

Boris Tsirelson 18:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

One exception is "Vickrey auction" mentioned in the CZ article. It is economics, but I happen to know its theory. It is quite successful without any help of "eventology" (to the best of my knowledge). Boris Tsirelson 19:00, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

In fact, the English version of that Russian article is available: [1] Boris Tsirelson 20:42, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed solution

I have replaced the page by a short explanation about "Eventology" and the claims of its author. I think this is better than deleting the page. "Eventology" is present in the internet, and -- if someone is looking for this term -- it is better to offer such a description instead of leaving the field to arbitrary sources.

Peter Schmitt 00:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. --Daniel Mietchen 01:15, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Notification

Hi Daniel, You were certainly correct to move this. Did you send him an email? Do you think that *I* should send him one? Par politesse.... Hayford Peirce 17:14, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I just left him a message on his talk page but it may be helpful if you'd send him an email in addition to that. --Daniel Mietchen 17:26, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw your message. I will send him an email. Hayford Peirce

I'm going to move a copy of his article to his user space. D. Matt Innis 01:57, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with moving it, but not linking to it. This notice is adequate; otherwise, what's the point of moving it out of the space considered "expert-guided" if it gets linked anyway? Howard C. Berkowitz 15:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)