this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Hot take, in my opinion this is one of the reasons pseudo-code or even sometimes code is easier to parse than formal math expressions, especially in the context of physics.
What do the variables mean? It is often difficult or impossible to google them even if you know the correct name of the symbol and there is very little consistency to give you hints, a symbol in superscript is an exponent? A signifier?
Niche areas of academia will abstractly define a variable/constant as a community and then reference it in papers as if everyone who reads any papers on the topic from now on will magically know the variable. At least in programming the variable has to be defined in the code and is easily searchable on a search engine...
The only math notation I have encountered that I actually think is elegant is set theory and category theory notation.
In case of math literature, I'd say it is mainly because the equations would be horribly long. Things like integral computation comes with lots of details, or some kind of long exact sequence. Experts would have trouble understanding it, while normal people almost certainly have no interest in understanding the formulae.
Also, often there is no meaning to the variable. Like, in a real function f(x), x is just "a real variable". There is no additional meaning to it.
As for other fields, I dunno. They might have copied math literature style or something.