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> OED do you have an example? Coincidentally, Wiktionary had a math session last month. How do you like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/triangulation https://e

• forapurpose 9y ago
  >> OED > do you have an example? Off the top of my head and IIRC, harmony and root. > Wiktionary While I respect the efforts of Wiktionary and Wikipedia, I don't use them for mathematics. Mathematics is a field whose distinguishing feature, in a sense, is its exact precision. I don't have the expertise to read crowd-sourced material and identify which information reaches that level of precision, which is a little off, which is fringe, and which is just nonsense. In the case of mathematics, information of uncertain accuracy is worse than no information at all, IMHO. I once read an article by a mathematician reviewing Wikipedia. One page they looked at contained some good information, some imprecise information, and some nonsense: The thing I remember was a section about a discovery in the field; the discovery was insignificant, if it was real, and it was attributed to someone nobody heard of. The reviewer speculated that the person to which it was attributed must have added the section. > Mathematicians like Don Knuth take great care to source etymologies of mathematical terms, too That's great. It's hard to imagine he has the resources and expertise in etymology of the OED. When I want to learn something on a scholarly level, there's no substitute for resources who already have done some of the scholarly heavy lifting for me.