[madez]

There is a formal language for mathematics because we need it for efficient work. This formal language is intelligible, clear and instructive, given adequate education. This formal language is mandatory to be present in an encyclopedia.

Some articles about mathematics like for example that of determinants are noisy for me because of the well-intentioned “educational” parts. In this example I even think they do more harm than good for people who are struggling with the concept.

The first part of the section “Definition” starts with explaining in horribly ununderstandable natural language english a way to compute the determinant of some matrix. That text is unnecessarily confusing and complex. That text also serves as a good example where formal language can be easier to grasp than natural language. Would you explain quicksort in natural language rather than with a formal description?

If mathematics is taught like in that article, no wonder kids find math boring and hard.

[brownbat]

Yeah, if a "natural language" explanation is just writing out mechanical mathematical steps or formulae in clumsy english, it's completely missing the point.

Use natural language for what it's good at. Where did this mathematical idea originate? Who introduced it? What was the problem this mathematical idea helped address? How much does it help address that problem (assuming the why and how are beyond the layman, just describe how helpful it was.)

The Quicksort intro by gohrt is a perfect example.

You're not using the natural language to do away with the thorough mathematical explanation, you're giving the lay reader an idea of why the concept is important, why they should care, in the most general sense.

[gohrt]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort

> Quicksort (sometimes called partition-exchange sort) is an efficient sorting algorithm, serving as a systematic method for placing the elements of an array in order. Developed by Tony Hoare in 1959,[1] with his work published in 1961,[2] it is still a commonly used algorithm for sorting. When implemented well, it can be about two or three times faster than its main competitors, merge sort and heapsort.[3]

[detaro]

Next paragraphs as well: they name and link properties it has, but also give a short definition of them, where you'd otherwise have to follow a bunch of links and read the definitions there.

[DanBC]

The encyclopedia articles are not supposed to teach math. And most of the article can be incomprehensible to most people.

Having a plain English lead paragraph that put the article in context is very important, but the leads are often hopeless.