4 ms·

"Its math and science content is too nonsensical to be useful." Can you name a example? I found them to be generally of higher quality than controversial topi

"Its math and science content is too nonsensical to be useful." Can you name a example? I found them to be generally of higher quality than controversial topics. So maybe not always with the best didactic approach, but usually a good start. And then I follow the links, if I want to dive in deep. Wikipedia is useful for me, for quickly checking something. Not scientifically dive into a deep topic.

thebooktocome 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equatio... Repetitive content, written at several levels simultaneously, weird fixations on tangential topics.
- scythe 4y ago
  >written at several levels simultaneously, I don't understand why this bothers people. If something on Wikipedia is above or below my level, I just skip it. It takes all of three seconds to recognize. I've consistently found it to be a great starting point for self-study in all sorts of math.
  - thebooktocome 4y ago
    A novice isn’t always going to know the difference between something they could understand with effort and something they don’t have the context to understand. It’s an incredibly common cause of anxiety in math education, and even if you’re not personally affected by it others may be.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      For sure, but Wikipedia aims to be a Encyclopedia and not a math course. Now it surely would be nice, if it could work more like it. That wikipedia knows my skill set and automatically hides or show additional paragraphs in certain topics etc. or even the paragraph in a simpler language etc. But this a bit more ambitious - and not really achievable with the current approach. So if I want a math course, I search for a math course.
    - scythe 4y ago
      >It’s an incredibly common cause of anxiety in math education I question whether this can be a root cause of anxiety. Simply not understanding stuff does not normally cause anxiety. Most people don't get anxious looking at, for example, Chinese characters. On the other hand, imputing that something should be frightening can actually cause a fear response: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-20380-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-20380-001 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030105110600024X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030105110... https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1968 Teaching students that incomprehensible math should frighten them doesn't seem like a good approach. There are no grades or critical teachers when you're passively reading a Wikipedia article.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Not only that, 4 paragraphs until the first citation, 16 paragraphs until the next one. All that information might be correct, but there's no easy way to confirm it. PDEs are a significant enough thing that the article is probably correct. But once you get into more niche math articles, a lot of the writing is incorrect.
  - random314 4y ago
    Once again, any articles with incorrect content that you can cite?
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_base_of_numeration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_base_of_numerati... I know enough to know the examples for Base sqrt(2) are not correct, but I don't know enough to write a proper example. For example if this is true "Base √2 behaves in a very similar way to base 2 as all one has to do to convert a number from binary into base √2 is put a zero digit in between every binary digit" Then Base(10) 3 aka Base(2) 11 converted to Base(sqrt2) would be 101. But it is actually 1000.000001 As RDBury on the Talk page mentions, "bases that are not Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers are not guaranteed to terminate or even be periodic". Whomever wrote that example just happened to pick an integer where the Base(sqrt2) version terminates and has such a pattern, and treated it as if it applies to all integers. > Once again, This is your first comment to me
      - random314 4y ago
        > Then Base(10) 3 aka Base(2) 11 converted to Base(sqrt2) would be 101. But it is actually 1000.000001 I don't see how. As per the expansion definition in the article 101 = 2+0+1 = 3 1000.000001 = sqrt(8) + epsilon.
- nuancebydefault 4y ago
  Would you be so kind as to mention the issues in the talk page of said article?
  - thebooktocome 4y ago
    Nope. Been burned by Wikipedia editors being territorial and deletionist way too many times.
bhk 4y ago
A problem in mathematics is that mathematicians do not always agree on the definitions of things -- even very fundamental concepts [1] [2] -- and so Wikipedia in the interest of neutrality presents all definitions in use. In a given textbook, an author will choose one set of definitions and stick with them, which makes things manageable for the reader. In Wikipedia, the number of alternative interpretations of a sentence grows geometrically with the number of ambiguous terms. [1] What is a "natural number" (do they start at 0 or 1?) [2] What is a "function"? Does it carry along a "co-domain"?
xg15 4y ago
My personal annoyance with Wikipedia articles on advanced math is that often it's "monoid in the category of endofunctors" on steroids. A lot of those articles seem to follow a pattern of: "An A is a B that also does C". If you click on the link to understand what a B is, you get "B is a D in the space of Es with properties F and G". and so on... I can understand that this appears logically consistent and very satisfying for people who have already understood the concepts, but it doesn't help at all if you're trying to gain an understanding. A good textbook has a sense of order in which dependent concepts are introduced. With Wikipedia, the task of discovering that order is outsourced to the reader. Maybe you could develop some kind of path finding algorithm to figure out the optimal reading order for understanding a given concept, but to my knowledge, that doesn't exist yet. The other problem is that no shortcuts are offered. Even if you figure out the order yourself, Wikipedia gives you no hints how much of B, C, D, E and F you have to understand to get the idea of A. The expectation seems to be to read the entire articles on the dependent concepts, which can be long, rambling and full of obscure special cases.
- Nimitz14 4y ago
  Wikipedia is by definition a reference. If you want to learn something use different material. Trying to make wikipedia articles tutorials is out of scope (not that it isn't nice to get practical examples for concepts, which ime there often are!)
- GTP 4y ago
  But I think that this is a core difference between an encyclopaedia and a textbook. If you need the topics presented in an order that takes you from a certain level of understanding to the next, you need a textbook.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Well that's the problem. An encyclopedia should neither provide nor need such an ordering. But Wikipedia often does need it, while also not providing it, the worst of both worlds.

thebooktocome 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equatio... Repetitive content, written at several levels simultaneously, weird fixations on tangential topics.

scythe 4y ago
>written at several levels simultaneously, I don't understand why this bothers people. If something on Wikipedia is above or below my level, I just skip it. It takes all of three seconds to recognize. I've consistently found it to be a great starting point for self-study in all sorts of math.
- thebooktocome 4y ago
  A novice isn’t always going to know the difference between something they could understand with effort and something they don’t have the context to understand. It’s an incredibly common cause of anxiety in math education, and even if you’re not personally affected by it others may be.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    For sure, but Wikipedia aims to be a Encyclopedia and not a math course. Now it surely would be nice, if it could work more like it. That wikipedia knows my skill set and automatically hides or show additional paragraphs in certain topics etc. or even the paragraph in a simpler language etc. But this a bit more ambitious - and not really achievable with the current approach. So if I want a math course, I search for a math course.
  - scythe 4y ago
    >It’s an incredibly common cause of anxiety in math education I question whether this can be a root cause of anxiety. Simply not understanding stuff does not normally cause anxiety. Most people don't get anxious looking at, for example, Chinese characters. On the other hand, imputing that something should be frightening can actually cause a fear response: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-20380-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-20380-001 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030105110600024X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030105110... https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1968 Teaching students that incomprehensible math should frighten them doesn't seem like a good approach. There are no grades or critical teachers when you're passively reading a Wikipedia article.
squeaky-clean 4y ago
Not only that, 4 paragraphs until the first citation, 16 paragraphs until the next one. All that information might be correct, but there's no easy way to confirm it. PDEs are a significant enough thing that the article is probably correct. But once you get into more niche math articles, a lot of the writing is incorrect.
- random314 4y ago
  Once again, any articles with incorrect content that you can cite?
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_base_of_numeration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_base_of_numerati... I know enough to know the examples for Base sqrt(2) are not correct, but I don't know enough to write a proper example. For example if this is true "Base √2 behaves in a very similar way to base 2 as all one has to do to convert a number from binary into base √2 is put a zero digit in between every binary digit" Then Base(10) 3 aka Base(2) 11 converted to Base(sqrt2) would be 101. But it is actually 1000.000001 As RDBury on the Talk page mentions, "bases that are not Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers are not guaranteed to terminate or even be periodic". Whomever wrote that example just happened to pick an integer where the Base(sqrt2) version terminates and has such a pattern, and treated it as if it applies to all integers. > Once again, This is your first comment to me
    - random314 4y ago
      > Then Base(10) 3 aka Base(2) 11 converted to Base(sqrt2) would be 101. But it is actually 1000.000001 I don't see how. As per the expansion definition in the article 101 = 2+0+1 = 3 1000.000001 = sqrt(8) + epsilon.
nuancebydefault 4y ago
Would you be so kind as to mention the issues in the talk page of said article?
- thebooktocome 4y ago
  Nope. Been burned by Wikipedia editors being territorial and deletionist way too many times.

bhk 4y ago

A problem in mathematics is that mathematicians do not always agree on the definitions of things -- even very fundamental concepts [1] [2] -- and so Wikipedia in the interest of neutrality presents all definitions in use. In a given textbook, an author will choose one set of definitions and stick with them, which makes things manageable for the reader. In Wikipedia, the number of alternative interpretations of a sentence grows geometrically with the number of ambiguous terms. [1] What is a "natural number" (do they start at 0 or 1?) [2] What is a "function"? Does it carry along a "co-domain"?

xg15 4y ago

My personal annoyance with Wikipedia articles on advanced math is that often it's "monoid in the category of endofunctors" on steroids. A lot of those articles seem to follow a pattern of: "An A is a B that also does C". If you click on the link to understand what a B is, you get "B is a D in the space of Es with properties F and G". and so on... I can understand that this appears logically consistent and very satisfying for people who have already understood the concepts, but it doesn't help at all if you're trying to gain an understanding. A good textbook has a sense of order in which dependent concepts are introduced. With Wikipedia, the task of discovering that order is outsourced to the reader. Maybe you could develop some kind of path finding algorithm to figure out the optimal reading order for understanding a given concept, but to my knowledge, that doesn't exist yet. The other problem is that no shortcuts are offered. Even if you figure out the order yourself, Wikipedia gives you no hints how much of B, C, D, E and F you have to understand to get the idea of A. The expectation seems to be to read the entire articles on the dependent concepts, which can be long, rambling and full of obscure special cases.

Nimitz14 4y ago
Wikipedia is by definition a reference. If you want to learn something use different material. Trying to make wikipedia articles tutorials is out of scope (not that it isn't nice to get practical examples for concepts, which ime there often are!)
GTP 4y ago
But I think that this is a core difference between an encyclopaedia and a textbook. If you need the topics presented in an order that takes you from a certain level of understanding to the next, you need a textbook.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Well that's the problem. An encyclopedia should neither provide nor need such an ordering. But Wikipedia often does need it, while also not providing it, the worst of both worlds.