Talk:Quadratic formula/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cedars (talk · contribs) 00:17, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for nominating this article. Unfortunately, I'm not passing on this occasion primarily because of the choice to present "Derivation of the formula" in an instructional tone, which I believe does not accord with WP:TONE. If all references to "the student" were removed the article would be very close to being a pass.

The really good points of this article are:

• Apart from its tone, the derivation of the formula is excellent. Some Wikipedia articles seem to treat proofs as an exercise in exposition of techniques rather than trying to help readers understand the basis for the theorem. This article does not fall into that trap. So don't worry too much about a refactoring this section - just get rid of talk of 'the student'.
• The history section is excellent. A really informative treatment of the topic.

Some suggestions for the article (only a few of which matter in terms of becoming a good article):

• The quadratic formula could be included in text as well as image form in the lead.
• I prefer full colons for introducing equations (e.g. "The general quadratic equation is: <equation>") but I wouldn't penalise an article for using the full sentence approach in this one.
• References to 'the student' are arguably not consistent with WP:TONE in the "Derivation of the formula" section.
• Instructions like "Divide the quadratic equation by a" may also cause the article to deviate from WP:TONE although this would be less apparent if references to 'the student' were fixed.
• You might like to list as dot points/paragraphed list items some in-lined lists. For example, "These derivations either (a) are simpler than the standard completing the square method, (b) represent interesting applications of other frequently used techniques in algebra, or (c) offer insight into other areas of mathematics."
• "At this point, we recall the identity" may be more consistent with WP:TONE if simply written "At this point, recall the identity", a few more "we"s occur throughout the "Using algebraic identities" section and in some other sections.

Finally three inclusions you might consider (but be careful not saturate the article with information):

• The article has no discussion of applications or relevance of the quadratic formula. You wouldn't want to spend more than a few paragraphs on this but it is quite possible someone might come to the article and wondering why the quadratic formula matters?
• For many readers it may be obvious that the roots of a quadratic equation are the same as x-values where a quadratic graph crosses the horizontal axis but some readers may appreciate an illustration.
• A sentence acknowledging complex roots may benefit the article.