Comments | luvcraft: WIKIPEDIA IS NOT GOOD FOR LEARNING MATH.

luvcraft

WIKIPEDIA IS NOT GOOD FOR LEARNING MATH.

Mar 09, 2010 14:11

I've gone to Wikipedia several times to try to learn new math concepts, and been completely bamboozled every time. I recently noticed that even the Wikipedia articles on math concepts that I do know pretty well are really confusing, so I decided to look up the most basic mathematical concept of all: Addition. This is the result.

Comments 6

zerozander March 9 2010, 23:46:55 UTC

Regular encyclopedias are not good for learning math either. Just saying! :)
Learn from a text book or go back to college. Or, if you must learn from the internet, scour it to find a more reputable site. Good luck!

cuntchocula March 11 2010, 04:05:21 UTC

Seconding this. Take a class, or maybe try this?

zerozander March 11 2010, 04:09:18 UTC

yeah, I've been pretty pleased with MIT's open courseware program. I was using it to learn linear algebra for a while until I saw something shiny.

But anyway, I wasn't trying to use Wikipedia to learn a whole new subset of math, I was just trying to figure out what a single thing was, and I was able to find the answer on Wolfram Math World.

(The thing, for anyone curious, was a "tensor", which turns out to be a vector with any number of dimensions.)

ferrousoxide March 10 2010, 05:06:32 UTC

Holy lengthy article Batman!

anonymous March 17 2010, 21:59:42 UTC

Wikipedia is not supposed to contain instructional material. Instead it is supposed to be an encyclopedia. This means that, the article on addition shouldnt be a tutorial on adding, but should provide an overview of the operation throughout the mathematical landscape.

Not to question your mathematical knowledge, but concepts that you "know" are in fact much deeper and related with other branches of mathematics than you suspect at first. Therefore, when you look at the articles of the things you "know," you are confronted with a miscellanea of different contexts in which whatever you are looking for appear.

If you actually want to learn mathematics, the others have pointed out great sources. I can also recommend academicearth.org, or kahnacademy.org.

luvcraft March 18 2010, 21:06:51 UTC

dude, if you don't understand how the Wikipedia article on addition fails to provide an overview of addition that can be understood by "everyday people", then you're part of the problem. :)

(If this anonymous post is by someone I know rather than a random troll then let me know and I'll provide a less snarky response!)