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Alexander Grothendieck

• Nominated by Maitn (talk · give credit)

• Support RD only. He was a significant figure in his field (mathematics) but he's been a recluse since retirement in the late 1980s. "Old man dies of natural causes" is not a blurb-worthy event, but exactly what RD was intended for. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. The article is full of dense jargon: "Within algebraic geometry itself, his theory of schemes is used in technical work. His generalization of the classical Riemann-Roch theorem started the study of algebraic and topological K-theory. His construction of new cohomology theories has left consequences for algebraic number theory, algebraic topology, and representation theory. His creation of topos theory has appeared in set theory and logic" and largely unreferenced. Nor are we given a rationale or sources in the nomination template. I don't see any awards, although this may be a result of his asociality and life as a recluse, rather than lack of merit. So work would need to be done give WP:ATTRIBUTE attributed sources saying how influential he was. μηδείς (talk) 23:23, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
  • The infobox states he won the Fields Medal (the most prestigious award in mathematics) and declined the Crafoord Prize (roughly equivalent to a Nobel prize), so I think it is clear he meets the RD criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 19:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Thanks, but is this not a section in the text? a sentence or two about the awards, explaining their significance and his reaction belongs in the influence section, does it not? μηδείς (talk) 19:28, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
• Definite support for RD once the article has been tidied up and the maintenance tag addressed. You're pretty much not gonna getta more prominent mathmo than a Fields medallist. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support RD, Oppose blurb, pending article cleanup ("Mathematical work" and down need more in-lines, and there's a few broken refs). No question on RD posting but not seeing, given death by old age, a significantly important figure equivalent to Thatcher or Mandela. --MASEM (t) 19:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support RD, Oppose blurb pending article improvements. Clearly notable in his field, which meets the RD criteria, but this doesn't warrant a blurb. If a blurb is supported, it should not include the unquantifiable "greatest mathematician" statement. 331dot (talk) 21:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose mainly on article quality grounds, would support for RD if it were fixed up. Most of the important text is entirely unreferenced; entire sections are either unreferenced, or very poorly so. Needs a major overhaul with someone putting a whole lot of work into referencing it before I could support highlighting this on the main page. --Jayron32 01:05, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support for RD, and possibly for a stand-alone blurb. A major figure in 20-th century mathematics, much bigger than a run-of-the-mill Fields medalist. Nsk92 (talk) 15:23, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
• Jargon and Citation the article has large swathes of unsourced material, including entire sections. Worse for the reader, unless you've got a BA in mathematics you've probably never heard of many of the terms and none of them are defined in the text, so there are literally dozens of technical phrases you'd have to open the link for and read, rather than just being given a basic in-article definition that allows continuous reading by the layman. μηδείς (talk) 19:28, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
  • "rather than just being given a basic in-article definition that allows continuous reading by the layman" — you seem very certain that the mathematics can be summarized in a "basic" way that allows a layman to understand it. The mathematics that Grothendieck worked on was very deep and very hard, even for experts with PhDs in mathematics. If you have some concrete way of making this accessible to someone with no knowledge of mathematics, I would love to hear it. But just observing that it's too technical for laymen to grasp is not terribly constructive. This is, after all, a mathematician whose life work was among some of the most technical and hard-to-understand in history, not some footballer. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Your comments are getting personal, emotional, and on the article talk page, contrary, Sławomir. According to MOS:JARGON an article at a graduate level of expertise should be written down one level so a reader at undergraduate level can get the gist of it. Brief explanations and definitions as well as examples should be given in lieu of bare links where complex ideas are discussed, I've already show how that can be done on the article's talk page, and you've ignored it. There's also the issue of references. No one is attacking your idol personally, just suggesting the article has problems that someone with the proper understanding can address. μηδείς (talk) 23:20, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

The assertion that Grothendieck is my "idol" is not true, and I suggest that it is you that are here becoming personal. What I do take issue with is your apparently arrogant attitude that, by adding a few words here or there, the ideas of the Langlands program, Scheme (mathematics), or Weil cohomology can be made accessible to someone with zero mathematical knowledge. That's simply not true. For instance, the Langlands program itself is a sort of glue that holds together many very difficult branches of mathematics, such as representation theory, local field theory, and automorphic forms. And that's kind of the "point" of Grothendieck's whole perspective, to weave this sort of glue. There's just no sound-bite for that, no matter how hard you try. Even the concept of "cohomology", which is "elementary mathematics" from the Grothendieck point of view, would be nearly impossible to explain in a brief inline form. (And then, is it topology? is it algebra? is it geometry? Not easy questions to answer.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:36, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

At this point you are just outright lying, no one has said anything about making the article "accessible to someone with zero mathematical knowledge", I have mentioned a familiarity with calculus on the article's talk page and the MOS again says, write one level down. I suggest you stop addressing me (especially here), and do what you can, if you are interested, in making the article more accessible to those like hard science majors who might actually be interested in this article. μηδείς (talk) 02:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

• Frankly, your assumption that there can be nothing in mathematics that is deep enough to be difficult to explain to non-mathematicians comes across as anti-intellectualism. Is that an appropriate attitude for a Wikipedian? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support for RD, major figure in the world of mathematics.--BabbaQ (talk) 00:05, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support. A towering figure in 20th century mathematics. And despite the seeming mundanity of "old man does of old age" as a headline, this is actually an important development for mathematics and not just a human interest story, because it could lead to a resolution of the embargo he made on translating and re-releasing his publications, which are still valuable today. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

  Cool. When do you plan to clean up the article so it can be placed on the main page? --Jayron32 02:42, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

David, I do see User:Cenarium has been adding references, but I do not see you on the edit history. I have quoted from write one level down in bold on the article's talk page, and given an example of how I would do that with the concept pleiotropy, which is undergrad level biology at best, but can be explained to any secondary schooler who knows what a gene is. I'd be adding references myself, but it's our mathematics wizards who should be doing this, in order to get it right. μηδείς (talk) 04:27, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, do we need credentials to post here? Or is that only a requirement of supporters? I have not done much editing on the main Grothendieck article, but I wrote most of dessin d'enfant, one of Grothendieck's contributions (but far from the biggest of those). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:15, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Grothendieck's work is notoriously abstract and hard to grasp, even among professional mathematicians. I doubt that there are any comparable examples in biology; can you think of any idea in biology which is so difficult to understand that it intimidates even professionals? But Grothendieck's major work does, and he didn't introduce just one intimidating idea, he introduced several (nuclear spaces, stacks, topoi, motives, and others). Not because he was intentionally obscure (he took pains to write carefully, building up his foundations slowly and methodically), but because the ideas are so different than anything you've ever encountered before.

At one point I wrote one of his ideas one level down. This became the article Grothendieck topology. It's appropriate for a mathematics graduate student. Quite frankly, I don't know how to express it more simply without betraying the technical content. I invite you to look at it, but you won't understand it. Without knowing what a category and a topological space are, it will be incomprehensible, and without some understanding of algebraic number theory it will be appear to be abstract for abstraction's sake rather than the profound advance that it was. These prerequisite subjects are beyond the scope of most undergraduate mathematics studies; they're usually studied in graduate school.

I don't mean to say that the article Alexander Grothendieck is perfect (it's not). But I do feel that your specific complaint about his mathematical work being made too difficult to understand is unjustified. It just is difficult to understand. Ozob (talk) 05:12, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Repeated claims of I can't explain it don't help, I see no attempt at clarification of any terms on the page. Frankly, it's a plea of incompetence. Apparently a topological space is a set of points and an area in which they can move while still following certain rules. Those might not be the technical words, but are they wrong or misleading? μηδείς (talk) 05:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

This is wrong and misleading. There's no concept of area, or of movement. Cenarium (talk) 05:46, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support for a RD tag, but no on blurb --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 05:17, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
• Posted to RD. The article has been improved. --Tone 05:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
• Belated support/concurrence for posting to RD. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:14, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
• Good job to whoever did the referencing work. It's nice, for once, to see the article quality take precedence over other concerns. Thanks to whoever took care of it. --Jayron32 02:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Highest ever ODI cricket score

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Nominated by NG39 (talk · give credit)

• Oppose. How does this relate to the same statistic for Cricket World Cup, which is more than double at 673? Is runs the critical metric for Cricket? Why would any of the other records on this list page not be the critical metric? Is this event/league the defining one for Cricket, and not Twenty20 or Cricket World Cup or any of the others? I remember that a certain American football record did not get posted because it wasn't clear that the record being set was the critical metric of the sport. I think that same principle applies here.128.214.53.18 (talk) 05:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• The 673 figure is an aggregate for the entire tournament, while this one is for a single innings. And, yes 'run' is by far the most crucial metric in cricket. Event/league doesn't matter here because this is a world record set for one particular format of the game. —Vensatry _(ping) 08:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support Highest Individual ODI score is by far most prestigious and arguably hardest record to beat (apart from the total career runs that's not going down any time soon). 264 wow and wth -- Ashish-g55 05:47, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose now I like this kind of "good news" story but sadly this record has been broken five times in the last five years, so it's not uncommon. Nor is it inconceivable that it could be broken tomorrow (or whenever the next ODI is played) so we'd have to post it again and again and again.... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support The record may have been broken 5 times in 5 years, but this time it has been broken by 45 runs, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone will better it, for quite some time. It is also the 2nd highest List A score in history - the highest, Ali Brown's 268, has stood for over 10 years - so we're nearly entering the 'it may not be possible to score any higher' range. 101.162.201.229 (talk) 09:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  "... it seems highly unlikely that anyone will better it ..." what evidence do you have to support this claim? Why couldn't Rohit beat it in his next innings? The Rambling Man (talk) 09:50, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  To use an analogy, suppose a golfer broke the record for the lowest 4 round score by a significant margin - the score was 20% lower than the previous record - would it be logical to believe the same record could be beaten again anytime soon, seeing as the old record was bested by an unusually large margin. In other words, Rohit's record is an outlier (just as the golf record would be), as it is 20% larger than the previous record; his 264 is not a normal record progression - it would be akin to the 100m world record dropping from 9.7 seconds to 9.5.101.162.201.229 (talk) 12:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  The golf record is a bad analogy, because golf is limited in its scoring by the number of holes. You cannot score an infinitely lower score; you literally cannot score lower than 18. In cricket, there is no practical limit to how high the score can rise. A sufficiently skilled batsman playing against a sufficiently bad, uninterested, or demoralized team could score forever. --Jayron32 12:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  So basically this also eliminates from comparison sports that are timed (basketball and any code of football), while only allowing sports that could literally go on forever like baseball, tennis and volleyball? –HTD 13:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  I haven't eliminated anything, with regards to posting, nor have I opposed this posting. I've merely pointed out the inappropriateness of an analogy. I'm officially undecided on this one. I just don't like letting bad logic go without correction. --Jayron32 13:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  What I meant was you can't compare this "record" to anything from those sports. –HTD 13:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  Probably not. It's also difficult to compare to baseball, as a single batter in baseball doesn't face consecutive pitches once they have hit the ball, the way that it happens in cricket. FWIW, if I recall correctly, we did post an ITN item for that ridiculously long tennis match a few years back. Talk:Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships confirms that. --Jayron32 13:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  A baseball batter can still face the same pitcher if the pitcher is not replaced after the entire order was finished in one inning... that's not very common. So basically, this can't be compared to anything, which means we'd rely on cricket people to assess how important this is. This is a single match record, right? ITN doesn't usually post single-match records in team sports, preferring career records in a very select sports. –HTD 13:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  Cricket matches cannot go on for ever. In this case it was a ODI where each team is limited to 50 overs, so the theoretical maximum score for a single batsman would be 50 (overs) × 6 (balls per over) × 6 (runs per ball) = 1800 (extras don't get added to the batsman's score). However the batsman would need to change ends on the last ball of the over to retain the strike (which doesn't happen when a boundary is scored) they would have to run an odd number of runs (running more than 3 is uncommon, so we'll say 5 for practical purposes) which means 50 x 5 x 6 + 50 x 1 x 5 = 1750. Scoring 6 sixes in an over has only been achieved 7 times in professional cricket (Boundary (cricket)#6 Sixes in an over) and never more than once by any one player. No player has ever (afaict) faced every ball of an innings (201/300 is the record ), and the highest ever team score in an ODI innings is 443 . Test matches are also time limited (5 days), but there are restrictions on the number of overs in each session and at least three innings (usually 4) need to have been completed to get a result (and once you've won you stop playing) so for practical purposes the number of runs scoreable is finite. Thryduulf (talk) 15:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  Actually, 1800 is theoretically possible, but it would require the batsman's team mate to score an odd number of runs off a no ball bowled as the first ball of every over (except the first over) - this would basically require the cooperation of the opposition to achieve. Thryduulf (talk) 21:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  Actually, isn't infinity theoretically possible if bowlers continue to bowl no balls which are struck for ones/two/threes/fours/*fives!*/sixes etc? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:41, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  Very theoretically but only if the bowlers weren't suspended for dangerous bowling or time wasting (see Fair and unfair play). Thryduulf (talk) 05:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, of course, my "infinite" score is about as likely as your 1800 though. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:01, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  Being extremely pedantic I'd say 1800 is more likely than your scenario as it doesn't require the non-applying of rules. In any other scenario than extreme pedantry though they are as equally far fetched as each other! Thryduulf (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. I like cricket, but this record doesn't really seem that significant. Our readers are likely to be underwhelmed by the story, which just isn't that interesting. If this was a Test record then I would support, but ODIs aren't even the top form of the game. Modest Genius 11:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose An astonishing innings, but while this is a important record it is by no means the most significant one in cricket. Test cricket remains the most prestigious form of the game - and, if anything, one-day cricket is losing ground to 20/20. Records such as the highest test innings, most career test runs, or most wickets in a career or a test are all more significant. Neljack (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose because we forgot Peyton Manning ... In all seriousness, while this is by all accounts an impressive record, ITN has historically been loathe to post individual sports records, with very few exceptions.--WaltCip (talk) 13:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's been broken five times in five years. We don't usually post sports records that get broken with such frequency. -- Calidum 17:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

November 13