• LeninWeave [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Yeah, those often aren't really written in an accessible manner. Probably mostly mathematicians writing them.

    • dat_math [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Can confirm. They're mostly writing them as reference material for mathematicians who already understand the concepts.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This is deeply annoying, since the intended audience should be "Guy who hasn't solved an integral for 10 years but wants a decent understanding of Metric Tensors."

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Advanced math on Wikipedia is so annoying. Like I just want to know wtf a Hypergolic Vector Space is so I know whether it'll be worth my time to go learn about them, but instead the intro paragraph is a list of ever more abstract kinds of math that it's a subclass of until we hit group theory, and the article body is just a giant list of obscure properties.

        Also, and this is not advanced math at all, the other day I needed the length of a chord in a circle, couldn't be assed to re-derive it myself, and thought this was basic enough that I should be able to just get it from wikipedia. But I was wrong because look how weird and useless the chord properties that make the cut are.

    • gammison [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah I had a class offer extra credit once for writing a summary of quantum key distribution suitable for Wikipedia. Tbh a lot of theoretical math and cs articles aren't particularly good either.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Probably math students, the presentation style is more similar to someone with an undergrad than a professional. You can check some scholarpedia articles and you'll see there is very often more motivation presented in them, despite those articles being technical literature reviews. Though I've definitely seen a few mathematicians I recognize in the discussion pages (and I think one of my high school physics teachers).