[WikiEN-l] Re: Error on quadratic formula page

Mon Jun 7 23:49:29 UTC 2004

> From: kartik at townisp.com
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Error on quadratic formula page
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <1069.216.195.13.175.1085973610.squirrel at 216.195.13.175>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Dear Wikipedia,
>
> I love your encyclopedia and I use it a lot.
> One day when I looked at the quadratic formula page, it mentioned 
> another
> quadratic formula I had never seen before:
>
> x= 2c / b {+-}sqrt(b^2-4ac)
>
> I tried it out and found out that it had a mistake. It needs a 
> negative b
> (-b) in the denominator instead of a positive b. It should read:
>
> x= 2c / -b {+-}sqrt(b^2-4ac)
>
> If you would like me to send you the proof, just ask.
>
> Please reply promptly.

You're right!

Wikipedia is down right now so I can't do anything about it. It might 
be interesting to look at the page history and find out how long it has 
been that way without anyone noticing.

When Wikipedia is up and running again, which would you prefer: would 
you like to have somebody else to make the correction, or would you 
like to make the correction yourself?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate: 
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

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