Jimmy Wales Says Students 'Should Use' Wikipedia 345
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has up an article chatting with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Wales views the Wikipedia site as an educational resource, and apparently thinks teachers who downplay the site are 'bad educators'. '[A] perceived lack of authority ... has drawn criticism from other information sources. Ian Allgar of Encyclopedia Britannica maintains that, with 239 years of history and rigorous fact-checking procedures, Britannica should remain a leader in authoritative, politically-neutral information. Mr Allgar pointed out the trustworthy nature of paid-for, thoroughly-reviewed content, and noted that Wikipedia is still prone to vandalism.'"
Not a spec of Bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well color me surprised at the answers.
Next interview (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not a spec of Bias. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been caught up in the anti-wikipedia controversy lately. I'm still a very happy and frequent contributor/user and so I'm all the more concerned when I hear about overt manipulations that occur at the very top by a core group who (except for Jimbo himself) hide behind their usernames and are completely anonymous. That adds to the grain of salt I have from the subtle sources of bias that can creep in.
So, no, I don't consider Wikipedia to be sourceable, certainly not at the university level, perhaps not even at the high school level. Instead, you should use wikipedia as a starting point in your research, maybe going to the references in the articles you find. But as the recent controversy shows, you can't just stop there. You need to really hunt around for opposing viewpoints that might be intentionally suppressed.
At the graduate level, using wikipedia does more harm than good-- it biases your thinking without providing you with depth. At that level, you should already have the overview of the topic anyway. Instead you really should use traditional research techniques and bypass Wikipedia altogether.
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They are bad teachers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They are bad teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. That's a policy worth following even at the level of internet debates. If someone asks me for a summary of a topic, I'll point them at the article. However, if what's called for is a discussion of one aspect, or an authoritative reference, WP is not the right answer. However, more and more I find that WP is the fastest way to find a good reference on a subject -- find the relevant article, look at the references section, and the odds are good there will be an appropriate link.
Knowing how to use, and more importantly, how not to use, and encyclopedia should be basic knowledge. Teachers should be teaching it, and shouldn't matter in the slightest what encyclopedia you use for a paper, because the reader will never know.
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Found it interesting having a factual debate on a particular Wiki page about a particular fact.
Source A (me) was a first-person participant, but was barred from directly describing something since no original research is allowed to be posted on Wiki.
Source B was also a first-person participant, and agreed in private email
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Source criticism (Score:3, Insightful)
"A critical mind is a questioning mind" is a good lesson and should be taught at every level of education.
Virtually all sources are biased, in one way or another, and students need to be aware of this and treat the information in a manner befitting the source.
Wikipedia is just another source (not a primary one, of c
Re:They are bad teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever actually read Wikipedia? Is there a different one I'm not aware of? That statement is wrong in two major ways:
1) Many things do NOT have links. You can find whole articles full of nothing but [citation needed] or ones without even that. Many things have links to sources, however many don't. As such while it can potentially be useful for background research, it isn't like a scholarly paper where you are guaranteed a list of works cited. Maybe you get that, maybe you don't.
2) Equally important many of the sources are not primary and often no good. I can link to a page saying anything I wanted. If I wanted I could just make some shit up, post it on my own website, and link to it. Bam, there's a source. However that doesn't mean the source is any good or that the information is true. A reference to a source is only good if the source is accurate, and really to be useful it needs to be to a primary source (meaning for statistics from research you don't link to an article discussing someone's research, you link to the research itself).
Wikipedia really isn't a good starting point for a scholarly paper unless you know nothing about the topic and are looking for general background. A search through a good library collection is going to get you far more useful starting points, and the works cited from those will continue it. With Wikipedia it's a crap shoot. Maybe you get a good article, edited by experts, with proper citations that will lead you to material you can use. Maybe you get a page written by an idiot, that links to misinformation.
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Re:They are bad teachers (Score:5, Funny)
Revision as of Fri Dec 07, '07 11:52 PM:
Every fact on Wikipedia has a link back to the primary source. All you have to do is tell kids to look up the fact from the primary source and cite that, and obviously not to cite it if there is no link back or they can't find the material. Any teacher who is too intellectually lazy to take the time to understand this is by definition a bad teacher. You aren't allowed to cite Britannica in any real class either, you have to follow the exact same procedure, so there is no difference. I don't even see how someone could defend a teacher who would lie to kids about the purpose of an encyclopedia.
Revision as of Sat Dec 08, '07 01:23 AM:
Every fact on Wikipedia has a link back to the primary source {citation needed}. All you have to do is tell kids to look up the fact from the primary source and cite that {citation needed}, and obviously not to cite it if there is no link back or they can't find the material {citation needed}. Any teacher who is too intellectually lazy to take the time to understand this is by definition a bad teacher {citation needed}. You aren't allowed to cite Britannica in any real class either {citation needed}, you have to follow the exact same procedure {citation needed}, so there is no difference {citation needed}. I don't even see how someone could defend a teacher who would lie to kids about the purpose of an encyclopedia {citation needed}.
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As has been recently brought up [slashdot.org], Wikipedia is not above corruption. It can be used to push an agenda, simply by leaving out sources which contradict your age
Sure they should, sorta (Score:5, Insightful)
Students should definitely use Wikipedia as a good place to find real sources. Of course, if they actually cite it, they're freakin' insane and should go back and re-learn how to research.
Re:Sure they should, sorta (Score:5, Interesting)
It also depends on your point of view if you think that some information is correct or not.
And don't forget - Wikipedia may actually contain original information from time to time and that's worth to consider. Just because some abuses the tool doesn't mean that the tool is useless. On the contrary - it means that the tool is actually useful enough to draw the interest of abusers. The only catch is to identify the abusers.
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Wikipedia policy is to not contain original information [wikipedia.org], so you shouldn't be looking for it there.
Re:Sure they should, sorta (Score:5, Insightful)
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I must have missed the boat on this one in high school--I cited Britannica in most of my History papers, and Wikipedia a couple of times as well. I was never told "Don't cite an encyclopedia" or why encyclopedias aren't good sources. I did, of course, provide other sources as well.
My Computer Science undergrad curriculum doesn't have me writing any research papers, so perhaps I just haven't been exposed to college-level expectations of research papers, APs nonwithstanding. So, what exactly is wrong with ci
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I consider citing Wikipedia okay... (Score:2)
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1. You haven't done your research and have no idea whether the article is correct or written by a 12 year old with an editing fetish.
2. If it's OK today it could be complete bullshit tomorrow, and your quote will be seen to be *not* in the original article.
The smart way to cite Wikipedia (Score:2)
1. Go to WP and look up the subject
2. Visit the references of the article
3. Use those references in my work, quoting directly from them
4. Cite those references in my work
5. Never cite Wikipedia
This way, I achieve:
1. Making it seem like I did an assload of research on my own, with lots of good sources cited. WP does most of the work for me in not only providing reasonably realiable sources (well, most of the time),
rubish... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way referencing Wikipedia is OK. It's not peer reviewed. Not only is the information often wrong, but the information it does has is very biased (which is OK - all information is biased, but you need to see the whole range). Referencing Wikipedia is like saying "Some random guy on the internet once said...". Not exactly a lot of weight.
But using Wikipedia for a starting point - that's a good thing to do. When researching a new subject, I will often read Wikipedia for initial information, and use the sources it cites as a starting point.
Re:rubish... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If someone's got advanced degrees in a subject they've been studying for five or ten or thirty years, I somehow doubt they're going to consider J. Random Wikipedian to qualify as a "peer" as far as expertise or experience go.
Peer review (Score:4, Interesting)
You're kidding... right?
Just in case you're not, you might want to read about peer review [wikipedia.org] (at Wikipedia, of all places) as you don't seem to have a clue what it is...
Wikipedia can misappropriate the term "peer review" for itself all it wants, but that doesn't make it peer reviewed.
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I could review an article about anything on wikipedia and if I would be verbally skillful enough or had a 'clique' around me of supporting wikipedians (who may kno
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I'm sorry.. what? Wikipedia isn't peer reviewed?
Before having a go at me - learn what peer review is. Perhaps check Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
And to others who have had a go at what I said - perhaps I was hasty in saying Wikipedia was "often" wrong, but it often struggles with nuances. Though it does give you a good general overview - and suggestions on where to go.
Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia. But you shouldn't cite it. A teacher who tells students (at whatever level) to not reference it is not a "bad teacher". They're a good teacher!
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Re:rubish... (Score:5, Interesting)
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To make it clear, Wikipedia is a peer reviewed reference. It is *often* either correct, or so obviously wrong (i.e. vandalized) that it does not matter. Most people who argue it is biased don't realize anyone can hit the "edit" or "discussion" button on the top. This is all irrelvant in the academic world, hoever. You do not reference a secondary source -
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The other things you say is right, except you do reference secondary sources all the time "Academic A argued that Primary Source X Suggests Y in 1979, but this runs against the popular view Z first held by Academic B in 1988" or something like that at least (you get the idea).
But yeah - I agree. Wikipedia is a great source of information. Students should be using it. But they should *not* be citing it, nor sh
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You should read the article before calling rubbish (Score:2)
University students should obviously quote research papers and other primary sources, and not Encyclopedia of any kinds.
But using Wikipedia as a "stepping stone to other sources" as Wales also suggest is applicable to everyone, which means Wikipedia is far more useful than traditional encyclopedia at academic institutions.
Vandalism is overblown. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when it's not allowed as a direct source, Wikipedia is always a great first stop to find more information about something.
Wikipedia's Downplayed Because (Score:5, Informative)
Hitting a moving target (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem there lies in referencing something which is changeable.
You reference it,
Someone edits the article,
Your reference is potentially no longer valid.
Referencing the 2006 edition of Britannica is fairly straightforward.
Referencing the 7:13 AM EST July 24th, 2007 version of a Wiki article on the other hand....
Now, his comment about how Wikipedia should be seen as a 'stepping stone' to other sources is 100% on the mark
Re:Hitting a moving target (Score:5, Informative)
See that "Cite this article" link on the left column of Wikipedia?
Click on it. [wikipedia.org]
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How well does that work when the articles get deleted [slashdot.org]? If Wikipedia was append-only, sure, but entire articles go missing all too often to ever reliably cite.
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Anyone who claims the only articles on Wikipedia that get deleted are those which 'need' to be needs to lay off the paint chips.
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Example: I read about Krill [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. I think the information is well sourced and written. I decide to cite it. I click on "Cite this page", which takes me to this link [wikipedia.org], which provides me with 7 different citation styles, including APA, MLA, Bluebook and Chicago style citations. If that isn't enough
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Inaccurate summation of Jimbo's words (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that he says this about those who fully ban students from reading Wikipedia. He doesn't say that those who "downplay" the project are bad educators, he says that those who fully ban students from even reading the website are bad. And you know what? He's right, as that's censorship. Those teachers who undertake bans are bad - they do a great disservice to their students. Sure, criticise Wikipedia, but don't ban it! in life students need to be able to read a source critically and at least assess what is being written. Banning it doesn't help build critical faculties. I should also point out that as a first source for information, in general Wikipedia can be really good.
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Note that he says this about those who fully ban students from reading Wikipedia. He doesn't say that those who "downplay" the project are bad educators, he says that those who fully ban students from even reading the website are bad.
But this is a problematic statement, because he's attacking a stawman. Is there any evidence of teachers banning students from simply reading Wikipedia? I know many teachers ban their students from citing Wikipedia, but that's nothing like banning students from reading it. So, who is he referring to?
OMG Vandalism! (Score:3, Insightful)
and noted that Wikipedia is still prone to vandalism
Yeah, that would suck if because of vandalism on Wikipedia kids wrote in papers that the Earth is the largest planet in the world [wikipedia.org], or that Mark Taddonio built the pyriamids (sic) [wikipedia.org].
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Earth isn't the largest planet in the world? If you define "the world" as Earth (as most people do), then it definitely is.
O RLY? How insightful! Thanks, Captain Obvious! Obviously it is, but it's an absurd claim, aduh! I didn't claim it was a false claim, only that it was vandalism.
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And there are admins who are involved in that process. We all know about the Ayn Rand issues here. That's just one example among many.
There is a fundamen
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I wholeheartedly agree. The real problem with Wikipedia is not the aforementioned type of vandalism, but people pushing their agenda, and as you said actual admins, who do a tremendous job, but who on a few topics push their agenda, sometimes without meeting any resistance, as few people besides the ones trying to push that very agenda care about.
That's what I find profoundly irritating about trying to edit Wikipedia, you can meet topics that are entirely controlled by sorts of special interest groups, in m
Lazy Teachers = Lazy Students (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia and pulp culture... (Score:5, Informative)
Eg, it is a great resource if you want to learn about say, Cop-Tur [wikipedia.org] of the Go-Bots [wikipedia.org] (eg, if you are wondering about a random Robot Chicken [wikipedia.org] episode).
As an academic resource, it is nonciteable and nontrustable, due to the volatile nature and anonymous content.
(Admittedly, I have edited Wikipedia to add corrections. But I would never cite it, but instead use it as a smarter google for some topics)
Re:Wikipedia and pulp culture... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I consider it basically the same as asking a question on Slashdot. You may get lies, stupidity, and egregious stories about pooping in response to your query, but there are generally a few informed people who can at least point you in the right direction.
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That someone would write a multiparagraph article like that was too weird a thing to even annoy me. I need to find it again..
How far along is wikipedia into it's corruption? (Score:2, Interesting)
It used to be Free and open.
Now it has secret overlords and secret mailing lists.
Anyone notice lately less and less pages can be edited?
How long until the same people who puppet the US mainstream media have total control?
Without TOTAL transparency wikipedia is nothing but a half-rotten corpse.
Re:How far along is wikipedia into it's corruption (Score:2)
I think wikipedia is becoming a tool of propagandists and commercial interests. Alot of stupid entries like one for some Taco restuarant. Dumb.
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Re:How far along is wikipedia into it's corruption (Score:2)
Now that you mention it I am kind of curious as to what percentage of the pages are locked or under some other kind of protection policy. Anyone have those numbers?
The assholes have definitely taken over (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Jimbo Whales has experienced this. He started an article on Mzoli's Meats [wikipedia.org], a butcher shop and restaurant in South Africa. When it was almost speedily deleted, he told the deletors
Not a primary source. (Score:2, Insightful)
So if it's paid for, it's 100% accurate? (Score:2, Insightful)
- one's free, the other isn't.
- one's updated in the blink of an eye many times to be filtered, altered, retouched, changed and quite possibly modified; the other has to wait a year to be filtered, altered, retouched, changed and quite possibly modified.
- one requires a computer, the other requires a lamp or the sun.
- one weighs many pounds and takes up space, the other can fit in one
This is interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a new tack! This has basically been the same thing that the WMF has been saying for years now [wikimedia.org] ("Wikipedia, and all Wikimedia Foundation projects, are not in competition to EBI or other companies in the business of reference works. Our goals differ significantly from other reference publishers, and only overlap in that we are all striving to create accurate and useful knowledge tools.")
Is this a turning point in relations between the two projects? Are we going to see an end to the stupidity of Robert McHenry style "toilet" comparisons?
So many times when people fight technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I often think wikipedia is an excellent source in itself and for deeper knowledge, a reasonable starting point. Too often, the oft-heard admonishment "dig deeper!" does not always apply to students using wikipedia as their single source for a report, but also by the teachers criticizing wikipedia - usually they scan the surface of one edit of one article to look for those errors - while wholly ignoring the revealing and complete log of wikipedias discussions and history behind that single article. Behind that one surface, you get most of the interesting parts of a subject -- the common misunderstandings, misperceptions, and myths. The genuine points of contention and controversy and the gray areas where the truth is not wholly understood or available.
Instead, teachers indulge of what they criticize in their students - intellectual lethargy. Personally, I like what this professor is doing with wikipedia:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071030-prof-replaces-term-papers-with-wikipedia-contributions.html [arstechnica.com]
It's about the smartest embrace of wikipedia I have seen so far.
Oh, the irony... (Score:2, Insightful)
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If I let you in you'll sell me encyclopedias (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
"Reliability" of Encyclopedia Brittanica (Score:2, Interesting)
Personal experience... (Score:4, Interesting)
I found it and added some references to information that others might see past the usenet troll and flamer bias that was indirectly referenced in the article.
I then started up another article to further clarify the subject matter for which the bias in the article on myself was centered around.
It went up for deletion and realizing the negativity bias of Wikipedia I called upon the usenet trolls and flamers against me to contribute to the discussion with the bias of removing both articles.
Both articles were deleted. I'd decided I'd rather not be mentioned, nor do I need such unfairly biased publicity by being listed in Wikipedia.
I recently discovered even more unfair bias towards someone who is no longer alive to defend themselves. The article contains half truths and outright lies.
This persons certainly has more public status than I, but I will not mention who they are but rather collect up references not found on the internet that expose the unfair bias of wikipedia and share it with real people in real time, so that they can see how cleverly corrupt wikipedia really is.
Wikipedia is built upon hearsay, upon what they call as "references". That's its rules and done so in order to remove RESPONSIBILITY. Put the blame on the reference,
and we all know how much crap is on the internet. This is where the references must be found and be kinda be accessible, as wikipedia does not verify all references regularly and many become broken.
They pick and chose which things they reference off the internet and tend to bias on the negative by the weakness of facts the nature of the machine the internet is and likewise wikipedia is.
So they find the opinions of others written somewhere on the internet and they have their references. Hearsay is not allowed in court, facts are.
Wikipedia is not based on facts, its based on hearsay and THEY DO NOT HAVE THE PROPER RESOURCES TO DO UNBIASED RESEARCH and they never will.
I expect Wikipedia to be very capable of writing the next bible.
Wikipedia needs a "in your face" disclaimer on every article and every page.
Wikipedia is OK for basic information, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
When using anything for citation, you need to make absolutely sure, that your sources are valid and not just some made-up story of creationists or school boys from Wisconsin (nothing against Wisconsin
Recently, a big scientific magazin (Nature?) officially withdrawed an art
Paid-for == trustworthy?? Since when? (Score:2, Insightful)
In use here. (Score:2)
I've said it before and I'll say it again (Score:5, Insightful)
An encyclopedia of any source should be the start of your research, not the end of it. It gives you the keywords and background necessary to find the real information from a primary source.
As a former Britannica customer (Score:2)
I gave up my paid Britannica online access, and I have found the wiki model to work better for encyclopedias or any other kind of work. I do cite wikis regularly, including Wikipedia, albeit I do have my own criticisms for it.
Inappropriate content in "safe" articles. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can fully understand the use of "questionable" content in articles ABOUT the "questionable" thing. (For example, the use of the f-word in articles about rappers as direct quotations from the rapper, or the use of a photo of a topless woman in the article on "breasts"; although there do seem to be so many in that article as to be gratuitous.) But in an article on stereoscopy? The picture belonged in an article on "turn of the 19-20-th century erotica", and if it was a prevalent use of stereoscopy, then maybe a MENTION in the stereoscopy article, but not an example. For example, the article on the VHS/Beta video format war mentions porn, but it doesn't have any screenshots of said porn.
Re:Institutions (Score:5, Insightful)
All the grad students look stuff up on it. There are lots [wikipedia.org] of [wikipedia.org] pretty scholarly [wikipedia.org] physics articles [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia, and it's a good place to go when you need to look something up or get guidance on a fundamental topic.
Of course, in physics, you're supposed to think about anything you read and confirm that it makes sense before you repeat it or believe it. This really should be true in all fields, but for some reason it's beaten into physicists' heads more than some others, I think.
Wikipedia is never the final authority on anything, but it's a good starting point. If you can't remember which one of Maxwell's equations has the minus sign, it's a quicker place than most (unless you have your copy of Jackson [wikipedia.org] at hand.)
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Wikipedia Natural Science/Math articles are very useful. They really are the best place to start most of the time (so long as you don't end your "research" there).
Humanities are much trickier however. There are many more pitfalls when, say, paraphrasing Heidegger's definition of "Being." It is much easier to verify that a mathematical derivation follows the same steps as a cited source. So Wikipedia editors' reliance on primary sources can't always be taken at face value. For more obscure articles, key
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I'm not really sure there's any debate about the accuracy of math and physics articles in Wikipedia, because there's really not much motivation to edit those articles unless you know what you're doing. I've had similar experiences with the computer science and computer engineering areas in wikipedia. They're all very accurate and for the most part well-written, too. The ones everyone keeps complaining about are the ones that constantly get vandalized or are trolled frequently by bored teenagers.
Re:Institutions (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless he's a Republican politician from the Christian Right, in which case all bets are off.
[See, I was just kidding there. It's a Saturday, after all, and I'm drinkin' early.]
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Even worse, the article on Gibb's Phenomenon [wikipedia.org] states:
The overshoot is a consequence of trying to approximate a discontinuous function with a partial (i.e. finite) sum of continuous functions. A finite sum of continuous functions is, by definition, continuous, and therefore cannot approximate the discontinuity (and the area "near" it) to within any arbitrarily chosen accuracy. An infinite sum of continuous functions can be discontinuous, and hence, does not exhibit the Gibbs phenomenon.
Which is just wrong. A square wave (the example on the page) exhibits Gibb's Phenomenon even if you take the infinite sum. A true square wave simply cannot be represented
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Why wikipedia is an excellent resource is the requirement for articles to have some type of references listed for accuracy and peer review
Re:Institutions (Score:5, Interesting)
And, yes, while the Feynman Lectures were intended for undergrads, a whole lot of people use them to study for PhD quals.
Quantum physics makes a great deal of sense in the only way that physical theories can: it explains our observations, to an uncanny level. *Why* it should be this way we don't really know. Quantum mechanics really isn't terribly counterintuitive; it's just *different* than the rules that govern large collections of matter. Those rules -- macroscopic mechanics, classical electromagnetism, and so on -- are just what happens when you look at the limit of quantum mechanics when a great many particles act together.
Re:Institutions (Score:5, Insightful)
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Until the average undergraduate is capable of making that distinction
If you're not capable of making that decision, you shouldn't be an undergraduate.
Shouldn't we demand some basic critical thinking skills from our undergrads at all?
Re:yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even Britannica is 100% correct, so I'm not sure there's any substance to the point you're trying to make.
Re:nope (Score:2)
No contest as to which is the more reliable reference.
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So, what's the difference? The end result is the same.
Students should be taught to be skeptical of all sources - rather than having one considered "bad" and others considered "correct". Because they can all be wrong.
Re:No conflict of interest here, of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, what?
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=Smidge=