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I am not sure how to answer the message you sent me. There does not seem to be a way to respond attached to the message you sent. Do I just respond in this open forum? Thanks.
I am not sure how to answer the message you sent me. There does not seem to be a way to respond attached to the message you sent. Do I just respond in this open forum? Thanks.
== Math ==
Greetings, Ed. We haven't communicated in quite a while.
The reason I am writing is that I saw your recent [[Essay:Campaign_to_make_Conservapedia_unusable]]. I know that this has long been an issue, and that you and I have both put a lot of effort into making math/science articles accessible. I have one comment about it: ''Your audience for this essay is just yourself.'' All the people who made things inaccessible—Foxtrot, Lemonpeel, Jaques, etc, are long gone. So, if you want the situation to improve, instead of writing an essay, you're just going to have to make the improvements yourself.
Actually, I'm not sure what articles you have in mind for your criticism. If it's all the topology stuff ([[Regular_space]], [[Sequentially_compact]], [[Hausdorff_space]], ...), you have my sympathy, and you will just have to delete them. No one will improve them. But I strongly advise you ''not'' to delete them. They aren't doing any harm, and no one reads them (except me :-). An encyclopedia is not judged by how esoteric its most esoteric articles are, but by how well its mainstream articles are written, and how well those mainstream articles cover the field. I think the mainstream math articles at Conservapedia, like integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and complex numbers, are pretty good.
Which brings me to my specific point. It isn't true that no one edits math articles any more. There was a small amount of activity on integers and natural numbers recently. Perhaps this is what led you to write the essay. I don't think there was anything over-the-top about the recent edits, and I think you sometimes over-react to things like this. I believe that the recent edits in that area were well-intentioned, and trying to do a good job.
Giving a really good definition of the integers or natural numbers, in the way that you and I would like, at the appropriate level but with real clarity, is ''impossible''. Saying "evenly divisible by 1" doesn't work, because the reader who doesn't know what an integer is will have no conception of what division is or what "evenly divisible" means. Saying "has no fractional part" doesn't work either. I can see what the author intended--numbers are things like "3.7", and ".7" is the fractional part. So, having no fractional part means it is something like just 3. That's correct, but it relies on having an intuitive notion of real numbers, that is, things like 3 and 3.1 and 3.7 and 3.14159.... (Speaking of which, happy pi day!!!) Now most people have an intuitive feel for numbers with fractions well before they have to think about a formal definition of natural numbers. I know I did. That is, I knew about "3" in the context of "3.7 without the .7", or "the biggest markings on a ruler, rather than all the small ones."
So how do you write the article? You do the best you can, giving an imprecise defintion in terms of "numbers that you count with", or something like that. (By the way, I really really liked your "mathisfun" web link explaining these things on an elementary level, and I used it (crediting you) in my article at Ameriwiki.) So the right thing is probably to define "counting numbers", as in the web link, and accepting that that's the best you can do. Then address, very lightly, the issue of how that might be different from "natural numbers", and whether zero is included, and so on. It's not worth making a big deal about. Just pick some definitions, and stick to them. Mention that maybe not everyone agrees. Don't worry about students getting a bad grade on an exam because of a nit-picking difference--people taking exams will presumably have attended a class and gotten the instructor's view on this, if the instructor thinks it's important. The way you addressed the issue in the natural number article is just right.
Yeah, the stuff about integers being "the only integral domain whose positive elements are well ordered and in which order is preserved by addition" is over the top. Either take it out or move it to the very bottom. Other than that, I think the natural number / integer articles are in pretty good shape.
One more thing: Don't be put off by the fancy "N" symbol. The people are not trying to show off. The symbols are cool, and the students will think so. When I was in junior high, I thought that the summation and integral symbols were really cool, long before I knew what they meant. Let the students see them.
And I still say that the Peano axioms would be a good thing to have at Conservapedia. Nowhere near as complicated as "integral domain whose positive elements are well ordered", and really interesting for the target audience. You may copy my Peano article from Ameriwiki if you wish.
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 23:34, 14 March 2013 (EDT)