> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but
>> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not
>> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained
>> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ...
> I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly > great".
42 seems like a very small sample, but I don't know if it's a difference that would be considered "statistically significant" or not. I expect it would also depend on questions like, "how many facts are there in an entry, anyhow?", "does the wiki entry contain more facts than the Britannica?", "are these results representative of topics other than science?", and "are the results different for topics that are relatively static, vs. topics in areas where knowledge is rapidly changing?" And note that there was *no* difference in accuracy re "serious" ("author doesn't have a clue") errors.
There's far too many questions that the study doesn't answer. But I'm thinking it doesn't show a particularly great difference (which did surprise me a bit). In any case, nobody should ever expect definitive answers from an encyclopedia.
Dave