5 ms·

the notation you need to know should be defined somewhere in the book or paper you're reading if it's not, try intuition if that fails, email your mathematici

• kergonath 5y ago
  > if it's not, try intuition If it’s not, the book is badly written. Most of the time, you can’t rely on a specific bit of notation to be consistent across books or articles. Smart arses who try to impress the readers with their fancy unique notations are the bane of scientists doing literature reviews. 90% of the time, there needs to be a keyword when a symbol is introduced, e.g. “where Λ is the time-dependent foo operator” so you can get a textbook to find what the fuck a “foo operator” is. Then, the first time you spend a day learning what it is, and the next million times you mumble “what a stupid notation for such a straightforward concept”.