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I can barely believe I'm reading this comment! Wikipedia is my first and almost always only stop whenever I want to learn something related to math.

by creato 6y ago

oooooooooooow 6y ago
Yes I had the same thought, then I guessed parent might be referring to how wiki doesn't present topics in a way that's easily digestible for someone approaching new topics in math, which I can get behind. It is an encyclopedia after all.
e12e 6y ago
Sometimes the "simple English" version is better than the "full" English version - perhaps especially for mathematics.
- vmurthy 6y ago
  I came here to post that simple wikipedia exists :) . Just to prove your point, have a look at the simple page for "Prime number" [0] and the regular page for the same [1] If I were just starting out with mathematics, I'd be rather intimidated by the regular page. I find the simple version to be the right start for any topic and then move on to the regular one. [0] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number
  - qsort 6y ago
    What do you think are the problems with the regular page? I just skimmed it, and it seems to me like high-school level math is more than enough to understand what the page is saying (at least superficially). I get the idea behind simple.wikipedia.org, but more often than not it's just a dumbed down version of the main article that uses worse English (which is obvious, since it presumably has less contributors than en.wiki, but that doesn't help your average reader)
    - vmurthy 6y ago
      @qsort: To give you an analogy, think of the "original" wikipedia article as the equivalent of an academic paper. It is absolutely the right level of detail for a particular audience (with references and links and even fancy language) whereas the simple wikipedia article is the equivalent of a NYT article introducing the same idea and probably going a bit deeper. As a further analogy, if I had to learn about Covid-19, I'd likely start with NYT (no affiliation) and then move onto Nature/Science/BMJ

I can barely believe I'm reading this comment! Wikipedia is my first and almost always only stop whenever I want to learn something related to math.

by creato 6y ago

I can barely believe I'm reading this comment! Wikipedia is my first and almost always only stop whenever I want to learn something related to math.

oooooooooooow 6y ago

Yes I had the same thought, then I guessed parent might be referring to how wiki doesn't present topics in a way that's easily digestible for someone approaching new topics in math, which I can get behind. It is an encyclopedia after all.

e12e 6y ago

Sometimes the "simple English" version is better than the "full" English version - perhaps especially for mathematics.

vmurthy 6y ago
I came here to post that simple wikipedia exists :) . Just to prove your point, have a look at the simple page for "Prime number" [0] and the regular page for the same [1] If I were just starting out with mathematics, I'd be rather intimidated by the regular page. I find the simple version to be the right start for any topic and then move on to the regular one. [0] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number
- qsort 6y ago
  What do you think are the problems with the regular page? I just skimmed it, and it seems to me like high-school level math is more than enough to understand what the page is saying (at least superficially). I get the idea behind simple.wikipedia.org, but more often than not it's just a dumbed down version of the main article that uses worse English (which is obvious, since it presumably has less contributors than en.wiki, but that doesn't help your average reader)
  - vmurthy 6y ago
    @qsort: To give you an analogy, think of the "original" wikipedia article as the equivalent of an academic paper. It is absolutely the right level of detail for a particular audience (with references and links and even fancy language) whereas the simple wikipedia article is the equivalent of a NYT article introducing the same idea and probably going a bit deeper. As a further analogy, if I had to learn about Covid-19, I'd likely start with NYT (no affiliation) and then move onto Nature/Science/BMJ