
Using Wikipedia for Mathematics Self-Study - vinchuco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Using_Wikipedia_for_mathematics_self-study
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teilo
Wikipedia's math content is, in a way, unique. I can read and comprehend
almost any scientific topic there except math. And, it's not like I am not
capable of understanding. I am a highly abstract thinker, and have an
intuitive understanding of many higher-mathematical concepts. I'm pretty
decent at functional programming (hopefully that's not too much of a non
sequitur).

Here's how this usually goes: I see a mathematical term in some article (for
example, eigenvalue). Go to Wikipedia to learn what it means. Find five more
terms that I don't understand. Look those up. Eyes glaze over while scanning
pages full of formulas that I also don't understand. Pretty soon I forget what
I was trying to understand, and I give up.

(The one exception, oddly enough, was set theory. For some reason that
clicked. The axioms of the ZFC made perfect sense to me, and the symbolic
representation, their conclusions, etc., just felt right. But I doubt that I
could truly learn even that subject using just Wikipedia.)

Wikipedia is great as a reference, but when it comes to a subject so intensely
technical as mathematics, the articles require too much context. They are a
great reference to someone well-versed in the specific field of math the
articles address, but are otherwise incomprehensible. This is not a criticism
of Wikipedia. It's just the nature of the subject.

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vinchuco
Are we getting closer to [0] instead of [1] ?

[0] [https://libraryofbabel.info](https://libraryofbabel.info) [1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvMxLpce3Xw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvMxLpce3Xw)

