[andreasvc]

This sounds to me like a pointless exercise. There is a reason for using mathematical notation for non trivial formulas, which is that is more compact and succint, to allow it to convey information efficiently and unambiguously. Think of a formula with a few levels of parentheses; you're not going te be able to express that clearly in a paragraph of text. It's not so much the symbols and notation itself which is hard to grasp, but the mental model of the problem space; once you have that, the formula will usually make sense because you can relate it to this mental model.

[jcutrell]

I agree to some extent. However, I do think that there is a level of "ramping up" that requires a good bit of teaching and understanding.

It sort of is the members only cigar club of academics. While I can read, understand, and subsequently implement most things in computer science land, when it comes to mathematical notation, there is a lot left to understand.

I think a LOT of people would benefit from a five or six video course simply showing a translation of complex notations to a working algorithm in a popular language, so the commonly used symbols start having meaning.

[icelancer]

>There is a reason for using mathematical notation for non trivial formulas, which is that is more compact and succint, to allow it to convey information efficiently and unambiguously.

Maybe, but not always. Remember that Richard Feynman took great issue with how integration was taught in most math classes and devised his own method (inspired from the Calculus for the Practical Man texts).

[andreasvc]

You can always try to find an even better notation, but the only point I was making is that for certain cases anything is better than a wall of akward text.

[kskz]

No. Feynman never took issue with integration notation or how integration is defined or taught. The story you're referring to is how he learned of a technique for computing integrals that was not covered in schools. The technique is called "differentiation under the integral", and is arguably even more involved.

[DennisP]

Translating in a nice programming language might work out more nicely, for coders at least.

[andreasvc]

Not in the context of a length limited conference paper. An implementation adds details for memory allocation and use of data structures &c. This is a distraction in the exposition of an algorithm. It's useful if authors make a well commented implementation available, but the actual paper should contain an abstract definition of the algorithm.

[DennisP]

No I was thinking of csmatt's suggestion, to automatically translate the math in the paper to something more accessible to programmers.

[kskz]

Many mathematical concepts cannot be translated into programming, since computation is by definition discrete. For example, even a simple concept like irrational numbers cannot be completely captured by code.