This is typical sophomoric writing, sometimes literally done by 2nd year students, actual sophomores. It is not limited to math; my particular pet peeve is our philosophy articles.
A skilled teacher with years of experience teaching at the college level can often make such subjects much more understandable. Fred > There has been some interesting debate on the site about technical > articles. There has been some (fairly heated) discussion here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:FAC#Some_thoughts_from_an_FA-newbie > > (That discussion is mostly over, so best not to stir it up again). > > And more here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_understandable#Guideline_status_restored > > And the section immediately below it. > > I found it ironic that when I discussed a particular article here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:CBM#Mathematics_article_I_found_difficult > > The edit that was made to make the article more accessible (to me, at > least), was reverted: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poincar%C3%A9_conjecture&diff=prev&oldid=414368190 > > With the edit summary: > > "It's a boundary not a surface--but no need to put in the lede, people > can follow the link)". > > Unfortunately, following the link didn't really help me. > > "In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a 3-dimensional manifold. The > topological, piecewise-linear, and smooth categories are all > equivalent in three dimensions, so little distinction is made in > whether we are dealing with say, topological 3-manifolds, or smooth > 3-manifolds." > > I found the edit made to the original article much clearer, in that it > said that the 3-sphere is the "the surface of the [[unit ball]] in > four-dimensional space." I suppose adding the word "informally" might > soothe mathematicians who insist on precise language. > > Carcharoth > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l