User:Chmstr/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Signal-to-noise ratio

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I remember learning about the signal-to-noise ratio in my analytical course last year, and I was wondering how different the wikipedia article was. I think being able to calculate the signal-to-noise ratio is very important in any science, so that we can determine validity of findings. My primary impression of the article it was quite well done – it seems to be well written and to have multiple citations.

Evaluate the article
I think the lead section provides good insight into the topic. There are quite a few links, and, from a brief look at the references, the sources seem relatively up to date (although I'm sure we could find more recent literature as well). The lead is a bit too long, in my opinion, but it does give a good overview of the topic, so I'm not horribly against it.

The sections are all relevant to the overall topic. The content within the sections are also quite relevant to the topic. There are a few sections that are slightly less developed, but overall, it seems to be a reasonable overview of signal-to-noise ratio. The sources, although on the older side, are all still reasonably relevant, and I think that the discussion of signal-to-noise ratio is one that won't be modified greatly due to time. I also think that there could be much to be added to this article, and that, although it is great background information for a beginner, it would not do for someone more advanced.

Once again, due to the relatively non-controversial nature of the topic, the tone does not stray to one side, and it presents the questions in an unbiased manner.

In regard to the sources, I think this article could do with slightly more sources. There are only 14 references for this entire article, which is quite a small number considering the article is quite long.

There are relatively little images within this article, which is one thing I think it could improve upon. I believe images can be very helpful in any article, and help readers to pay more attention to the content. However, there are a number of formulas within the article, that I believe could be broken up slightly better. I think at times, the article looks like it's just a number of formulas back to back to back, without much information outside of this.

I think the organization, however, is quite good. All the sections are organized in a way that makes sense to the reader, and I think the writing style supports this as well. I do think, as I mentioned before, that more images would be helpful in understanding this topic, and again, that breaking up the formulas with more words to explain what it is they're calculating could be useful.

The talk page is quite heavily populated, and I think that, although there seems to be relatively little talk still ongoing for this article, it brings up a few good points. It is a part of a few wikiprojects, and is currently rated as C-class.

The strengths of this article are that, although it is not the most in-depth article, it presents the facts that it has in a way that allows for a casual reader to understand. It gives all the necessary formulas that one would need, and, although it is quite a technical concept, it's presented in a way that a lay-person could feasibly understand. It could be improved by expanding on a few topics, and by inserting more images. I think this article has the bones to be well-developed, but is still in the creation stage, and requires further editing to be perfected.