User:Sanjana Venkittu/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
T. A. Sarasvati Amma

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I am interested in the history of women of color in fields such as mathematics. Being a woman of Indian origin myself, I find the struggles and success of Indian women in STEM fields to be closer to my own personal experience.

Evaluate the article
The article's introductory paragraph does not introduce the topic very well– the lead sentence describes Sarasvati Amma as simply a scholar, when it could have easily identified her as a scholar of Indian mathematics or as a mathematician and scholar of Indian literature. Both of these titles are ones that she has rightfully earned. The lead is concise, but somewhat too concise– it includes the briefest mention of Sarasvati Amma's birth and major accomplishments, but does not show why she and this article are significant.

The body of the article is well-written, professional, and concise. It mostly uses a neutral tone, but it is interesting that one whole paragraph out of the three total used to describe her accomplishments is dedicated to other mathematicians and scholars; her work is seen as just another contribution to a field that has been laid forth by other scholars, rather than a significant contribution to a burgeoning and important field of study. Facts are supported by sources, although there is not a variety of different sources for this topic as Sarasvati Amma was less well-known than others in her field. Since most of this article is a biography, the sources are current up to the time of her passing, with other sources regarding her work being more current (or as current as the works that hers are compared to).

Overall, while this article presents the most basic information on T.A. Sarasvati Amma, a lot more work could be done to improve the depth of this article. Much of the article focuses on biographical information rather than Sarasvati Amma's contributions to the field, and even these are diluted by the works of other scholars. This further marginalizes the work that she did in the field of Indian and Hindu Mathematics as her work is overshadowed by that of men and white women, when in reality hers forms a large proportion of the field.