Ask HN: How did you learn math notation?

I suggest finding contexts first, and exploring math within those contexts. Different subfields have their own conventions and notation.

For example, you might be working in category theory, and see an arrow labeled “π”. When I see that, I think, “Ah, that’s probably a projection! That’s what π stands for!”

Or you might be in number theory, and see something like π(x). When I see that, I think, “Ah, that’s the prime number counting function! That’s what π stands for, ‘prime’!”

Or you might be in statistics, and see 1/2√π e^(-1/2 x^2). When I see that, I think, “Ah, that’s the number π! It’s about 3.14”

Or you might see a big ∏ which stands for “product”.

The fact that such a common symbol, π, stands for four different things in four different contexts can be a bit confusing. So if you want to learn mathematical notation, pick a context that you want to study (like linear algebra), and look for accessible books and videos in that subfield. The trick is finding stuff that is advanced enough that you’re getting challenged, but not so advanced that it’s incomprehensible. A bit of a razor’s edge sometimes, which is unfortunate.

Thank you. There's nothing else left to discuss.

Are you sure this is because the notation is unclear/imprecise or because you just don't like it? I like certain programming languages and certain programming styles and really don't like others. But in none of the cases (those I like nor those I don't) are they not 100% "clear". The code compiles and executes after all so there really isn't much of an argument that somehow it's underspecified.

The same thing exists in mathematics. There are certain fields of math whose traditional notation/style/approach/etc. are totally incomprehensible to me. There are also many mathematicians who would say the same about my preferences as well.

So my point is that all people are _different_. Some people like certain things and some people like others. How can you hope to please everyone simultaneously? In my experience, there is no field at all that is as precise as mathematics. Sure "code" is precise, but (imo) professional programmers are nowhere near as precise in any general design or conversation than mathematicians. So I find the attack on supposedly bad mathematical notation a bit odd.

Mathematicians constantly try to come up with better methods of explaining things. They put more effort into it than basically any field in my experience. The problems are really that we as humans don't all think the same and that mathematics is just plain hard. We've improved mathematical communication immensely throughout history and we will continue to do so. But we'll never reach some sort of perfect communication style because no single such style could ever exist.

Math notations are two-dimensional and don't suffer very badly from structural ambiguities, so that actually fixes almost nothing.

The problem in unfamiliar math notations is rarely the chunking of which clump is a child of which clump.

E.g say that some paper uses, say, angle brackets, with some deep meaning that you can learn about if you recurse three levels down in the list of references.

I'm not confused that in , the Ap thing is a child of the angle brackets; and calling it (frob (A p)) doesn't help much in this regard.

However, at least you can search literature for the word frob more easily than for angle brackets.