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As I ask more and more maths questions, the issue of terminology becomes ever greater for me.

While I feel that my maths is progressing, and is in fact knowledge-wise beyond others people of my age, I appear to be unable to understand a lot of terminology.

For example, take an answer I recieved to a question yesterday: enter image description here I understand all the maths about sines and cosines that he is talking about, but for some reason I always seem to get confused. "What does s sin 0" mean? "What is the 'speed' for a object travelling in a 3D world"? "What is gd"?

I'm not trying to get these specific questions answered, but I am pointing it out as an example of that even though I know all the maths he is talking about, I cannot understand a thing he is saying because I cannot understand the terminology.

Obviously questions like What do the dots and arrows on this article mean? are simply a lack of knowledge on my part. However, when it is about something I know all about, it worries me.

Where is the issue? Do I just not understand the notation well enough? Are people writing these documents poorly? Or is there something wrong with me that means I can't seem to understand this stuff?

What should I do to try and solve the issue of not understanding the terminology being used?

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user2722083
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    It all comes with practice and continuously seeing the terminology, so just keep going and it will become easier. – Eff Feb 26 '15 at 16:29
  • @Eff My problem is that I don't come up with the terminology enough. I learn almost all of my maths in the sense of using it for programming, meaning that I never seem to use on-paper terminology or see it enough to completely understand it. I feel I am progressing, but I still feel that I do not understand half as much as I would like to be able to - And I don't know how to solve that. – user2722083 Feb 26 '15 at 16:30
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    The only thing I can suggest is to spend my time on mathematics then, that's the only thing I know that works. To me the 'mathematics'-speak only became more natural to me because I encountered it enough. – Eff Feb 26 '15 at 16:34
  • @Eff I don't too much want to turn this into a chameleon question, but if that's the case, how can/should I ask a question asking someone to give me simpler notation in an answer? – user2722083 Feb 26 '15 at 16:35
  • Do you mean what to do, if you ask a question here and get an answer you don't understand? – Eff Feb 26 '15 at 16:39
  • @Eff Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. – user2722083 Feb 26 '15 at 16:43
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    When asking a question, it may be of help to clearly state that your mathematical understanding is not at a very high level, so you would appreciate 'pedagogical' answers, so to speak. If you still receive an answer you do not understand, then I guess the only thing to do is to kindly ask them to explain it in simpler terms. But do understand that mathematics cannot be read as you would read a fiction novel; that is it takes longer to read a section of mathematics to understand it, so be sure you try to understand it by reading everything slowly. – Eff Feb 26 '15 at 16:48
  • Why did you accept the answer if you couldn't understand any of it and it didn't solve your problem? – MJD Feb 26 '15 at 17:03
  • @MJD I was short on time when I read the answer and only briefly skimmed it - It looked like it was what I was after. – user2722083 Feb 26 '15 at 19:01
  • Why do I always seem unable to understand mathematical terminology? - Perhaps this might help... – Lucian Feb 26 '15 at 21:53
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    The fault is not always with you. Some people like to use less common terms and symbols. If you Google a term and you see nothing in that first page of results that uses the term the way your answerer did, it might be a nonstandard term, or worse, it could be an incorrect term. – Robert Soupe Feb 27 '15 at 03:36
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    And another thing: I don't remember where I read that "mathematicians use the term obvious to mean things that can only be understood after a little careful study." – Robert Soupe Feb 27 '15 at 03:37

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