Ask HN: How can I learn to read mathematical notation?
I love how there are these two parallel threads going in HNville: (1) COLLEGE SUCKS BURN IT DOWN and (2) &quot;I&#x27;d like to learn complex things like machine learning and math that take more than reading 5 blog posts to master, how do I do it&quot;?<p>Sometimes this place just cracks me up.<p>I honestly think the answer is pretty simple: go to college. It doesn&#x27;t have to be expensive. Take a community college course in calculus or undergraduate-level probability. Skip the gen eds and don&#x27;t worry about the degree if you want to learn something narrow like this.<p>In any case, just find a mentor. On-the-job if you can, otherwise pay for a class.<p>What you shouldn&#x27;t do is try to self-study by reading a book. You can perhaps do this but only if you&#x27;re smarter than average and more motivated than most. Since you probably aren&#x27;t, just take a class. Night school, maybe a MOOC. Preferably something heavy on analysis or proofs.<p>But you should do it with others. Math is a very social discipline, it&#x27;s good to be able to discuss and have partners to work through things when you get stuck. And if you&#x27;re like me, you WILL get stuck on things. This stuff is <i>hard</i>.<p>Another thought: this whole &quot;college is great&quot;&#x2F;&quot;college is terrible&quot; dichotomy seems to occur people people don&#x27;t think enough about quality. I think bad colleges are terrible and great ones are fantastic. I don&#x27;t know any way I&#x27;d have learned all the complex topics in math, stats, probability, etc., I did without attending a big 10 engineering school (UIUC in my case)