Decoding the Language of Maths

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”

There’s a lot of truth in this quote, which is often attributed to Galileo Galilei, who is most famous for advancing the fields of astronomy and physics. Mathematics is indeed a language. For many people, it can be a challenging one to learn.

Part of the problem is that it uses letters that are pulled from many other languages. It also uses a variety of special symbols that, unless you’ve had extended exposure to the various mathematical fields that use them, add a level of complexity that goes far beyond the words you might use in your ordinary, everyday conversations.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a decoder ring for math? One you could use to make sense of what mathematicians and scientists are saying in their work?

Numberphile has a short video to the symbols used by mathematicians presented by Asaf Karagila and Brady Haran. It makes for a nice introduction to the language and symbols mathematicians use to communicate the ideas they’re discussing:

If you’d like your own useful decoder ring for mathematical symbols, we’ll recommend RapidTables’ Basic Math Symbols site, which spans the symbols used in basic math, geometry, algebra, linear algebra, probability and statistics, combinatorics, set theory, logic, calculus and analysis, and also various ways of writing numbers.

As much as we’d like to say that all of it, it’s really a starter package. Fortunately, one that will take you far in decoding many mathematical discussions.