seems to fail the "accessible" part. Pretty much every math topic is written for path professors.
Do you disagree about the purpose of an encyclopedia? There's clearly space with web media to include more comprehensive articles, but IMO this should be _as well_.
It's kinda the "if I had more time I'd have written more briefly" concept writ large (at web scale, if you will).
Seems like it.
As another commenter wrote: “Encyclopedia is not supposed to be an introductory learning material, it's supposed to be a reference work.”
> but to me they're not encyclopedic as they're not really introductory.
Encyclopedia is not supposed to be an introductory learning material, it's supposed to be a reference work.
There's also a Wikimedia's project called Wikibooks which is aimed at producing learning material.
What old collections of books obsoleted in the early 80s are you referring to?
> to someone of moderate learning/intelligence.
It's mostly about the learning, not the intelligence, i.e. current state of research shows only loose correlation to intelligence (g factor) and favors models that use a domain-specific skill to explain maths competency. Intelligence will certainly help, but its effect is quite overvalued.
No it isn’t. It is an extreme claim that advanced mathematics can easily be explained to someone regardless of their intelligence.
The evidence for this claim would be the presence educational programs that can easily educate almost anyone in advanced mathematics.
These do not exist.
But a shallower explanation is the essence of what encyclopedias are all about, IMO.
I think that’s due to encyclopedias having been sets of books with limited space.
If you expect it to be a review of subjects, like an abstract -- as encyclopedias generally were before the advent of Wikipedia -- then it seems like something can be said on most notable topics.
It's a difficult task, it not only requires a thorough understanding of a subject but a special skill as an educator. It's a hard task.
Yes, it's going to be impossible for some articles, but if they're notable aspects of mathematics then it's worth a try.
I note that shelves are filled with books explaining complex topics at lower levels (easier in a book than a few paragraphs!?). Also, YouTube is replete with explanations that get closer to being encyclopedic than simply splurging graduate level textbook pages into a wiki (which is also a useful thing, but useful to different people).