A colleague of mine who gets confused by "all the symbols" said that they appreciated the verbose stream notation that I build throughout the article. I would recommend giving the article a earnest try up through to page 5. Then after that, jump to page 17 and read Section 5C on Set Operations. See if the standard concepts of union, intersection, difference, etc. mixed with the verbose stream notation gives you insight and ultimately, the confidence to keep trying to tackle the work.