lol agreed. Every Wikipedia article about math is:
<math term> is a <math term2> that <math term3s> a <math term4>'s <math term5>. It is an example of a <math term6> that cannot <math term7> a <math term8>.
Me: I learned nothing from that.
(Yes, which is partly my fault, but it's really not helpful for an intro to any math topic unless you already have mastered 99% of the topic and just want to resolve the last few things. The encyclopedia model really goes against what you need for the general population here. Arbital tried to do a more helpful model here but is defunct; Khan Academy is a generally better for this but requires more investment.)
The problem is that math is inherently more abstract than any other topic. It’s so abstract that the vast majority of math terms have no simple, intuitive translation into everyday English. Everything is built upon a tower of abstractions that have developed over centuries.
In this community, we’ve witnessed the difficultly first-hand with the much-maligned monad tutorials. A mathematician would have no trouble understanding monads —- they’re just a matter of reading the definition and the laws. That’s what you do every day when you’re studying math in university. Read some definitions and some theorems, play with things a bit, try to prove stuff, then move on to the next topic.
<math term> is a <math term2> that <math term3s> a <math term4>'s <math term5>. It is an example of a <math term6> that cannot <math term7> a <math term8>.
Me: I learned nothing from that.
(Yes, which is partly my fault, but it's really not helpful for an intro to any math topic unless you already have mastered 99% of the topic and just want to resolve the last few things. The encyclopedia model really goes against what you need for the general population here. Arbital tried to do a more helpful model here but is defunct; Khan Academy is a generally better for this but requires more investment.)