User talk:Roar~enwiki

Hi! I saw your contribution to the page about Ivan Moscovich in January 2012 and I wonder how or where you got that information, do you have any reference or document about that? I can't find anything on internet. Best MartinLjungqvist (talk) 11:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Martin

I got the two titles of BrainMatics in question in a danish translation. But as they mainly containes graphically quests and challanges - I find it quit hard to belive that the many errors are down to translation alone. Allthough translation and typesetting of the danish edition is of very poor standard as well. On my bookshelf I got a few other titles by Ivan Moscovich also having notes of several errors. Just a few minutes with Google proves that some Nick Baxter did take the time to compile a quit impresive errata of one of these (1000 Play Thinks). Se: http://www.baxterweb.com/puzzles/playthinks.htm. Given this by a prof-reader of one of Ivans other popular titles I think it's fair to state that the error rate is quite high.

To the best of my judgment the error rate is much higher in the 2 titles of BrainMatics that I mentioned than it is of 1000 Play Thinks. Especially the background stories are providing many myths and highly unlikely tells as facts.

Roar 18:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Roar!

Thank you for your answer. Your opinions are very interesting. I also found the errata of the first edition of PlayThinks 2001 but it seems as they released a 2nd edition of it so maybe they fixed some things then. Then I also found some critical readers on amazon and goodreads claiming to have found errors in PlayThinks, for example: http://www.amazon.com/000-Playthinks-Puzzles-Paradoxes-Illusions/product-reviews/0761118268/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending and http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/626990.1_000_Playthinks. But they are not confirmed and some readers were criticizing each others error results etc. Only one (but long) comment there on BrainMatics 2 discussing errors in one of the exercises in the book: http://www.amazon.com/Brainmatics-Logic-Puzzles-Ivan-Moscovich/dp/0841611408/ref=pd_sim_b_1. The wiki text you wrote was about BrainMatics but there is not much documentation about that except that amazon review comment about one exercise in the book and your opinions. Your opinions are very interesting but they are not facts or documented so I argue that they are not wiki material. If you want to investigate this error rate then you should produce lists of them for these books and other books and compare them statistically. Best would be to confirm them with someone involved in the book or another party. Then document this elsewhere and refer to it from wikipedia. I am taking the liberty to remove your wiki text about this on that page, and maybe replacing it with a general overview of his books and mention errata and criticism. I have not yet read any of the books but plan to do so and then I will have your and others comments in mind. Thank you for that!

MartinLjungqvist (talk) 08:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

02:42, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

18:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)