[hdm41bc]

One of the aspects of math papers that I dislike is how unapproachable they are if you’re unfamiliar with some of the terminology and conventions. The esoteric symbols don’t make it any easier to Google their definitions either.

For instance, what does this mean? > μ is the law of Y μ is usually the mean or average. Is “law” something else?

[ebb_earl_co]

The law of Y means the distribution of Y. See the last phrase from this [0] StackOverflow answer.

[0] https://math.stackexchange.com/a/1397467

[hdm41bc]

Great thanks! I’ll remember to use math.stackexchange.com as a resource in the future.

[331c8c71]

Do you think a random production code snippet is approachable for someone lacking the necessary background?

The notation in this paper is totally standard.

EDIT: \mu there refers to a probability measure. Nothing to do with averages.

[hdm41bc]

Yeah, working code snippets would be great. That would provide an unambiguous implementation that someone could use to dig into the underlying functions used and learn the basic concepts that would be tedious for the author to go through.

In terms of the notation, it seemed like the author actually tried to keep his paper accessible, so my complaint isn’t with the author. My gripe is more with math notation in general.

In my opinion, unless you’ve read the appropriate textbooks or taken the right classes, math notation is hard to learn. The symbols are hard to Google for. Integral symbols, R for real numbers, sigma, delta, the round E that stands for IN are not found on a standard keyboard so it’s challenging for a layman to Google and learn that notation on their own. Math evolved over millennia and the notation wasn’t constructed with SEO in mind, so I understand why things are the way they are, but it’s a stumbling block for the uninitiated trying to learn more advanced math. Maybe there are resources like math.stackexchange out there that I’m unaware of that would help make learning notation more approachable.