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by xanderlewis
790 days ago
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> To this day I am frustrated when reading papers about abstract algebraic relations and other such concepts, without even a sentence or two discussing any intuitive way to think about them. Just their symbolic relations. If you’re talking about research papers, that’s just because they’re written for domain experts and aren’t really for giving you intuition. They’re written in a deliberately terse (one might say elegant) style to convey the research findings in formal mathematical language and nothing much else. If you want to gain an intuitive grasp of things, read a proper textbook in detail or play around with the ideas on paper. Or both! I guess the reason is that once you’ve acquired the intuition, having the literature cluttered up with the same explanations again and again becomes clunky and increases the volume of material to be sifted through when you’re just looking for a result you need in your research and don’t need all the extra chatter. It’s just cleaner that way. But to an outsider it does look more opaque. It’s a trade off. |
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I think that really is the best reason for not being more accessible. Along with less work - given a good paper already can take a lot of work to write clearly even for the immediate audience.
But there is tremendous value in reaching a wider audience, for readers, writers, and the very real serendipity of cross pollinating ideas. So an easily skipped concise titled section, that gave a little context or example for the non-inside crowd, would be a nice tradition. Even an appendix - although that might strike the established culture as too quirky.
Some papers manage to do something like that, a colorful example or perspective adding levity as well as clarity. So it is not breaking any barriers. Just not standard or prescribed.
Or maybe it wouldn't have much impact. I tend to find reasons to dive into many different new topics, so it is a prevalent need for one!