Comment by Planktonne

I absolutely agree with this. My background isn't at all mathematical, but I've ended up working with machine learning. As part of that, I naturally want to understand what I'm doing, so I try to read the papers/textbooks/etc.

The problem I run into, again and again, is that all the notation is presented as already understood, even in introductory texts. It's not explained, and it's not clear where I'm supposed to go to get it explained. I can't search for it directly because it's a symbol, not a name for the symbol, and if I do manage to find the name, I'm left to wade through all the different contexts in which it might be used to mean something to find out which it is.

It's not an insurmountable barrier because I'm incapable of learning. It's an insurmountable barrier because I can't find a reference to learn from that doesn't already assume I know all the answers.