Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Euclidean algorithm/archive1: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:58, 3 May 2009

Revision as of 19:59, 3 May 2009

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* '''Comments''' - sources look okay, links not checked with the link checker tool, as it was misbehaving. [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] - [[User talk:Ealdgyth|Talk]] 16:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

* '''Comments''' from '''[[User:Cryptic C62|Cryptic C62]] · [[User talk: Cryptic C62|Talk]]'''

**The lead does not adequately summarize all of the main sections of the article. Unless I am misreading, it appears that ''Other number systems'' is not represented in the lead.

**Caption: "The greatest common divisor of ''a'' and ''b'' is the largest square tile that covers an ''a''-by-''b'' rectangle exactly. Here, a 24-by-60 rectangle is covered with 12-by-12 square tiles." In the first sentence, it needs to be made clear that it is not one single square tile that covers the rectangle, but multiple iterations of that square tile. "exactly" is somewhat ambiguous, consider expanding. It would also be helpful to say "ten 12-by-12 square tiles". Addendum: upon reading the relevant paragraph, it might be helpful to make this into an animation which demonstrates the various ways in which a 60-by-24 rectangle can be divided.

**"The greatest common divisor is often written as GCD(a, b) or, more simply, as (a, b)." Yes, the second version is simpler, but that notation is also used for ''lots'' of other things in mathematics. What (a, b) represents depends on the context of the problem, and I think it would be wise to mention this so as not to mislead our less mathematically-inclined readers.

**"neither 6 = 2×3 nor 35 = 5×7 is a prime number, since they both have two prime factors" I think it may be a tad confusing to include the prime factorization at first; perhaps this should be added later: "neither 6 nor 35 is a prime number, since they both have two prime factors: 6 = 2x3 and 35 = 5x7." or something like that. Also, shouldn't it be "neither 6 nor 35 '''are''' prime number'''s'''" ?

**"Imagine a rectangular area a by b, and consider any common divisor c that divides both a and b exactly." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. No sentence in an encyclopedia should start with "imagine."

* More to come. Good work thus far. --'''[[User:Cryptic C62|Cryptic C62]] · [[User talk: Cryptic C62|Talk]]''' 19:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)