Talk:Homotopy groups of spheres

GA reassessment

Homotopy groups of spheres

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.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Delisted. lettherebedarklight, 晚安, おやすみ, ping me when replying 14:10, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

The article is tagged for lack of sources. Though it has a section of references, it lacks inline citations. The math markup is also a bit rough and probably needs to be converted to LaTeX style due to the MOS:BBB character, and italics not meshing well with superscripts. There are also equations in section headers, which might be good to avoid? -- Beland (talk) 07:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The article used a parenthetical inline citation style that was standard at the time it passed GA but has since been deprecated. I converted them to footnotes. This does not change the fact that, before I converted them, they already were inline references. Many many of the citation needed tags, added per above, were not actually citation needed, but had been added by someone unfamiliar with that citation style, often directly onto the inline citation, as if that person had not even tried to make sense of the text and just blindly applied citation needed tags whenever they didn't see footnotes in the style they were expecting. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Delist I'm not sure all of the citation needed tags need answering. The Wikipedia:When to cite explanatory essay says that subject-specific common knowledge does not need citations. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the topic to judge this completely (I've attended one lecture that talked about this iirc, long ago), but there are some statements I'm fairly certain need a citation.
  • This is the case that is of real importance: the higher homotopy groups πi(Sn), for i > n, are surprisingly complex and difficult to compute, and the effort to compute them has generated a significant amount of new mathematics
  • the higher homotopy groups πi(Sn), for i > n, are surprisingly complex and difficult to compute, and the effort to compute them has generated a significant amount of new mathematics.

Overall, the article is well-written, so it shouldn't be that much effort to bring it back to GA for an expert editor with access to sources. Femke (talk) 16:37, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - This article is incomprehensible to someone who doesn't have higher math education. I'm not sure that's an avoidable problem with something this esoteric, which is why I'm not taking a position on delisting. casualdejekyll 00:36, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.

Inconsistent figure for number of known stable homotopy groups of the sphere

The head section of the article mentions that the stable homotopy groups of the sphere $\pi _{n+k}(S^{n})$ have been computed for values of $k$ up to 64, while the §History section gives the figure 90, citing a freely-available research paper as a source. Although I have nowhere near the required expertise to examine this source myself, I don't know where the first number of 64 came from, and since there is no accompanying citation I am questioning its credibilty. I choose to put a 'citation needed' tag, and write this topic in case someone knows of a credible source for this figure. If no one manifests any knowledge after some time I will probably replace this 64 with the 90 and add a citation to the aforementioned paper, and update this topic. Tommpouce (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Tommpouce, it looks like the paper calculating out to 90 was published just a year ago. I think it would be ok to update the earlier part. Do you want to go ahead and do so? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 23:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I thought so as well. I'll update the article right away! Tommpouce (talk) 12:31, 17 May 2024 (UTC)