matheme

"Can I enter your gate?"

"In order to enter this gate you must know what this symbol means."

"I am unfamiliar with that symbol."

"Well, I expect you to learn what it means before I allow you to enter this gate. Now go away."

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

You must be correct, because this interaction is completely devoid of any confusion between the two people attempting to communicate clearly.

> a bunch of operations.

Sorry, the notation is bit confusing. The 'A' here is a matrix.

I was calling you a gatekeeper rather than notation, but feel free to keep stuffing that man with your straw.

The sentence I called out, independent of the article's content: "You expect the players of the game to learn the rules before they play."

Is you explicitly stating your goal is gatekeeping.

> If the idea is that the right notation will make getting insights easier, that's a futile path to go down on.

I agree whole heartedly.

What I want to see is mathematicians employ the same rigor of journalists using abbreviations: define (numerically) your notation, or terminology, the first time you use it, then feel free to use it as notation or jargon for the remainder of the paper.

> What they are missing is that the notation is the easy part.

This is so wrong it can only come from a place of inexperience and ignorance.

Mathematics is flush with inconsistent, abbreviated, and overloaded notation.

Show a child a matrix numerically and they can understand it, show them Ax+s=b, and watch the confusion.

My entire being is anthithetical to this type of gatekeeping.

> You expect the players of the game to learn the rules before they play.

TFA is literally from a 'player' who has 'learned the rules' complaining that the papers remain indecipherable.

> You expect the players of the game to learn the rules before they play.

Actually, I expect to have to teach rules to new players before they play. We are different.

> Venkatesh argued that the record on this is terrible, lamenting that “for a typical paper or talk, very few of us understand it.”

> "few of us"

You see, if you plebs are unable to understand our genius its solely due to your inadequacies as a person and as an intellect, but if we are unable to understand our genius, well, that's a lamentable crisis.

To make Mathematics "understandable" simply requires the inclusion of numerical examples. A suggestion 'the mathematics community' is hostile to.

If you are unable to express numerically then I'd argue you are unable to understand.