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. ✗plicit 13:17, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

250 (number) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Compared to the standards at Wikipedia:Notability (numbers), info in the article seems somewhat trivial. -- Beland (talk) 11:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Beland (talk) 11:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)#Notability of specific individual numbers lists three criteria for the notability of integers. I believe this article should likely be kept because it meets at least two out of three of the criteria.

1. Unfortunately, I'm not well-versed in what is considered an "interesting mathematical property" of a number; I'll leave that to the folks at WikiProject Numbers.
2. In Chinese culture, some pronunciations of 250 are used as an insult — "二百五" in particular. This is non-trivial, since it has implications on corporate decisions — for instance, the Gulfstream G280 was originally the Gulfstream G250 but was renamed due to concerns about the original name's implications on the Chinese market. See this Fortune China article and this FLYING Magazine article for details. This was originally in the article, but was removed as "trivia" — I believe the G250 example sufficiently demonstrates that it is not.
   • Chinese has plenty of other number-based slang, such as erbaiwu, or “250,” which means “idiot” The New Republic article on Chinese slang
   • The only problem with the number 250 is that you need to remember that the number represents an idiot. If you speak to a Chinese person and say the number 250 it will indicate that you are calling the person you are speaking to an idiot. Being called 250 in China is an insult. Forbes Advisor guide to the Chinese number system
   • Istilah ini digunakan untuk menyebut seseorang yang bodoh atau tolol. Konotasinya negatif, jadi berhati-hatilah saat menggunakannya, umumnya digunakan dalam candaan antara teman dekat. -> This term is used to refer to someone who is stupid or foolish. It has negative connotations, so be careful when using it, generally used in jest between close friends., according to Google Translate. Post from the Dept. of Mandarin Language at the State University of Surabaya
   • Coverage from Chinese state-owned media on the history of the term
3. On his website, Erich Friedman writes, "250 is the smallest multi-digit number so that the sum of the squares of its prime factors equals the sum of the squares of its digits." Additionally, in David Wells's Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, he writes, is the second sum of 2 cubes which is also the sum of 2 squares in more than one way. [Thayer]

Feel free to point out mistakes in this analysis; I'm quite new to AfD and still learning! If you do respond, please ping me so I can read through your feedback. Best, Staraction (talk | contribs) 00:42, 6 January 2025 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]

Courtesy ping for @Beland — I can hardly ask for one myself if I don't ping you too! Staraction (talk | contribs) 00:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've requested more opinions from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers and restored the item on Chinese slang. -- Beland (talk) 18:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. (1) This is a round enough number to be culturally significant. (2) We actually have sourced information about one particular kind of cultural significance in the article. (3) For small enough numbers that are not individually significant, we round them to tens or hundreds and summarize the rounded numbers in a single grouped article. For this number, rounding it would put it at 250 (number), where we already have it.(4) The listing by Wells described above is explicitly given in WP:NNUM as a criterion for notability of individual numbers. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Passes the relevant standard. XOR'easter (talk) 19:58, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as per above. Also, there is a lot more to add; see United States Semiquincentennial. Bearian (talk) 05:39, 8 January 2025 (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.