[neutralino]

Thanks for your post. I'm glad you're finding the references useful!

Originally Posted by Profpat BTW Lloyd is somewhat critical of Wikipedia and it appears you may be also. May I ask why?

I'm not adverse to Wikipedia entirely, but I try and recommend people not to try and learn things off that site, for various reasons. The main problem with Wikipedia is that it can be edited at any time, and by anybody; whether they know what they're talking about or not. This sometimes means, especially for the more contraversial areas (some part of quantum physics, some general relativity and, surprisingly some higher mathematics) one doesn't know if what one is reading is entirely correct.

Another problem is that, since Wikipedia can be constantly changed, the page that someone reads and then provides a link to is not necessarily in the same form when someone comes to read the link. This could then provide problems in that, say, you may read a page I linked to, and think that I am pointing you towards a "good site," but in fact it may not be the site I intended to point you to in the first place. There is a way around this particular problem, by linking to the date version of the page, but very few people do this.

Wikipedia, in my opinion, is a good tool if used correctly; i.e. it's good to look up something you have either learnt in the past, and so would recognise once you see it again. In fact I do this almost daily. Another thing it is useful for is for some sort of trivial information that is not available elsewhere (like which public holiday falls on 7th November in mexico). However, attempting to learn something from Wikipedia can be disastrous.