4 ms·

> Mathematicians seem to go out of their way to make their work as obtuse as possible. Mathematicians go out of their way to make their work as understandable

> Mathematicians seem to go out of their way to make their work as obtuse as possible. Mathematicians go out of their way to make their work as understandable as possible. If they wanted to make it as obtuse as possible, you'd just see a picture of chaotic scribbles on a blackboard. > That's what reading math papers feels like. It feels like you stopped at C and are unwilling to even consider that there could be a better way to express things. Do you have any suggestions? Mathematics is a hard subject because it deals with concepts in several levels deep of abstraction. That's a complexity that you can't escape. You can't expect to read a math paper (aimed at researchers in the same field) and understand everything, the same way it would be unreasonable to ask you to write your code in a way that someone who isn't familiar with either programming or the concepts your code works with to understand it if they went to read it.

jimbob45 5y ago
If I give you suggestions, you're just going to say, "well that's the way we've always done it and people will be confused if we change now", which is exactly what they said about C until someone decided enough was enough. Even something as simple as the set of integers being the letter Z requires you to understand German to know why we chose Z (and not I) in the first place. Or d/dx being totally unintuitive for anyone not well-versed in differential calc. I'm quite certain that every student learning calc thinks "Well the d's just cancel out there". Granted, I've heard the intuition behind the notation and I understand why it's tolerated. Still, it seems less helpful than it could be if mathematicians weren't married to tradition.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > If I give you suggestions, you're just going to say, "well that's the way we've always done it and people will be confused if we change now", which is exactly what they said about C until someone decided enough was enough. Believe me, there are a lot of people trying to find better ways to teach and communicate mathematics. There's inertia, of course, but it wouldn't be the first time people change notation because it's better. > Even something as simple as the set of integers being the letter Z requires you to understand German to know why we chose Z (and not I) in the first place. I mean, you'd just move from confusing people who don't speak German to confusing people who don't speak English. > Or d/dx being totally unintuitive for anyone not well-versed in differential calc. You are not going to find any notation for a derivative that makes the concept intuitive for people that don't know differential calculus. If anything, it's more intuitive than f'. > Still, it seems less helpful than it could be if mathematicians weren't married to tradition. Or maybe the tradition has been built because after decades of mathematics nobody has found anything better.

jimbob45 5y ago

If I give you suggestions, you're just going to say, "well that's the way we've always done it and people will be confused if we change now", which is exactly what they said about C until someone decided enough was enough. Even something as simple as the set of integers being the letter Z requires you to understand German to know why we chose Z (and not I) in the first place. Or d/dx being totally unintuitive for anyone not well-versed in differential calc. I'm quite certain that every student learning calc thinks "Well the d's just cancel out there". Granted, I've heard the intuition behind the notation and I understand why it's tolerated. Still, it seems less helpful than it could be if mathematicians weren't married to tradition.

gjulianm 5y ago
> If I give you suggestions, you're just going to say, "well that's the way we've always done it and people will be confused if we change now", which is exactly what they said about C until someone decided enough was enough. Believe me, there are a lot of people trying to find better ways to teach and communicate mathematics. There's inertia, of course, but it wouldn't be the first time people change notation because it's better. > Even something as simple as the set of integers being the letter Z requires you to understand German to know why we chose Z (and not I) in the first place. I mean, you'd just move from confusing people who don't speak German to confusing people who don't speak English. > Or d/dx being totally unintuitive for anyone not well-versed in differential calc. You are not going to find any notation for a derivative that makes the concept intuitive for people that don't know differential calculus. If anything, it's more intuitive than f'. > Still, it seems less helpful than it could be if mathematicians weren't married to tradition. Or maybe the tradition has been built because after decades of mathematics nobody has found anything better.