Off the top of my head: - More international, I can read an equation from a french mathematician without issue - Historical, you point out this out to an exta

Off the top of my head: - More international, I can read an equation from a french mathematician without issue - Historical, you point out this out to an extant, but part of this is that to read papers you need to know the notation anyway. - When reading a paper in mathematics I will often extract some equation from the text and play with it to better understand the idea on paper, again, this is easier with a more terse notation. - Most importantly, mathematics is a different process than software engineering. Mathematicians still write more than they type, particularly on chalk boars. This is not a point to be hand waved away. Mathematics usually involves a lot of writing and playing with these symbols in notepads and on blackboards either alone or in collaboration with other mathematicians. The speed and conciseness from the symbols helps a great deal in this process. Switching to more descriptive forms in text would just end up confusing as people try to translate between symbols and text.