[dahart]

The learner presumably doesn't know maths or what the symbols in maths are yet, so perhaps they haven't understood yet, rather than they misunderstood something.

Symbols are in fact intimidating to some people. Not after you learn them, but before.

Your argument is abstract and theoretical. It doesn't make any difference to a computer which symbols you use, because it's a lookup table. But to a human, learning new characters takes effort. That effort could be used to learn the concepts, but instead we take time learning new symbols.

Try typing your reply in trinary. It shouldn't make any difference if the symbols are ascii or trinary. You should be able to type just as fast.