[ivansavz]

Very good point about reading/verbalizing symbols and notation. Once you know what they mean, they are super useful for expressing complex concepts precisely and compactly, but when you're getting started they look like an alien language...

[mindcrime]

This is why I'm using Anki to memorize the Greek alphabet, and to keep basic algebraic (h.s. algebra that is) stuff in mind. It might seem like a small thing, but remembering the various rules for factoring, working with fractions, dealing with exponents / root, etc. is not easy when you don't do math all the time.