[cgio]

It can be a bit intimidating but try to read it not as something you need to understand as in a truth revealed but rather as something you need to understand as in these are the terms we’ll be using to represent what we explain in text. I.e. f0 for objective function, fi for constraints etc. Many otherwise approachable books have this wall of conventions in the beginning + a set of proofs that underpin the key thesis. Try to speed through these sections, picking up as many symbols, findings, as you can , but not everything, and when you reach the actual essence you can go back and revisit. The good thing is that this wall in the beginning becomes very common between books the more you read on a topic. In a sense, if you are a programmer, think of this as the schema representation for the actual message to come.