| Reading a "simple" research paper requires a different approach compared to reading a newspaper or a blog. I hope the following explanation helps. The notation actually helps to keep things simple. I think of it as a kind of metalinguistic programming [1] where a notation is introduced which then makes the important parts easier to understand. I am not mathematically inclined but I have to read papers containing maths quite a lot of the time. I tend to read them 3 times. The first time, I tend to skip the equations altogether and just get a feeling for the paper - what is it about, is it useful for me to read? The second time I have a pen and a highlighter where I actually label the mathematical symbols with arrows and words (using the textual descriptions). I also highlight important sentences. I think of this stage as trying to make the paper as clear as possible for later reading. In the third stage I am trying to understand the paper as a whole - something it seems you try to do on the first read, I am familiar with the frustration because this is what I used to do. I quite enjoy reading papers now and I have more respect for the notation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalinguistic_abstraction |
Gee, it's almost as if we should be writing the words out instead of writing one letter variable names.
Funny how programmers found this to be good practice and mathematicians still write with a notation that's purposefully unreadable.