pls see below picture, and https://math.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/1725174. $P(M_2, C_2)$ can't equal both 0 and 1/3. something is wrong!
Why did 2 users reject my suggested edit for 2 typos? How can $P(M_2, C_2) + P(M_2, C_2) = 0 + 1/3$?
-
1$\begingroup$ Your edit description could have been more descriptive, I guess $\endgroup$– Calvin KhorJan 1 at 6:55
-
6$\begingroup$ Shouldn't the third summand actually be $P(M_2,C_3)$ and not $P(M_3,C_3$ as in your edit? $\endgroup$– Martin SleziakJan 1 at 11:02
-
1$\begingroup$ Also for the numerator: $P(car,M_2,C_3)$. $\endgroup$– JRNJan 1 at 11:07
-
5$\begingroup$ I see you left two comments for the author of that Answer, but neither specifically points out the "typos" you spotted. It can be difficult to know what to do when a user doesn't respond within a couple of days, but then the Question is ten months old, so I would not hurry things too much. The Monty Hall problem has been addressed many times on this site and elsewhere, so I'd not personally be motivated to do a careful revision of the longish Answer given there. $\endgroup$– hardmathJan 1 at 15:55
-
6$\begingroup$ Tangential remarks. Your comment on the answer says "3. Your answer contains many typos. See Meta, or my rejected Suggested Edit. Feel free to edit your answer, instead of replying in comments. – PGTK 4 hours ago " (1) This sounds like a misunderstanding to me. On Math.SE, there is some 'ownership' of answers. In particular, the answerer does not need your permission to edit their own answer. (2) the bolding here is unnecessarily aggresive. (3) You have pointed one one minor typo. How is this "many"? $\endgroup$– Calvin KhorJan 2 at 3:04
-
1$\begingroup$ @CalvinKhor Sorry about misunderstanding. I meant...I know some people like to follow up in comments. But editing answer is better because comments can be deleted or moved to chat! Obvious now? I did not point to other typos. See above comments here. $\endgroup$– NNOX AppsJan 3 at 6:53
-
1$\begingroup$ The above comments are saying that you introduced a typo. There remains only one typo that I am aware of (but I did not read the answer closely) $\endgroup$– Calvin KhorJan 5 at 5:45
-
$\begingroup$ @CalvinKhor see my edited post. $\endgroup$– NNOX AppsJan 5 at 5:51
-
2$\begingroup$ Since the picture in the question changed, i link to the old one which shows that the numerator was changed (wrongly cf Martin's comment) - i.stack.imgur.com/UoyKA.jpg $\endgroup$– Calvin KhorJan 6 at 6:41
1 Answer
Math.SE works a bit differently than other SE sites you might be used to. I haven't found it written down very clearly, but my experience is that there is a general community wariness about making substantive edits to posts written by others. If I understand it correctly, the concern is that substantive edits might deviate from the intent of the author or might introduce inadvertent errors, and that it can be very hard to review such revisions to check for inadvertent errors, so the pragmatic solution is to err on the side of rejecting such edits. As far as I can tell, this is not a written rule, but it is a community norm that has evolved.
I can understand your perspective that an edit is better than a comment, when the fix is clear, but I hope you can also appreciate the other perspective. I hope this has given you a better understanding of what's behind the site's standard practices and expectations, so that you can figure out how to work within site culture rather than against it.
In your case, while I haven't reviewed your proposed edits, it looks like some others have suggested that your edit did introduce at least one typo. So, this is a good illustration that the concern about introducing new errors is valid.
See also https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/a/29754/14578 and https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/a/32617/14578 for more elaboration.