How to learn mathematical notation?

Question

Do you have any recommendations of books or websites that would teach me mathematical notation. As a developer I work on a wide range of projects from .NET/SQL Server stuff

Answer 1

A good book with explanations of notation is Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Differential Forms: A Unified Approach.

Answer 2

Though this is not exactly what you are looking for, the Princeton Companion to Mathematics has a sample chapter on The Language and Grammar of Mathematics. It explains not so much formulas but the formal use of the English language.

Answer 3

You can find a boat load of free math books here: http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/mathematics.php

If you're looking for just a table of symbols and what they mean, Wikipedia has a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_mathematical_symbols

Answer 4

On-line Mathematics Dictionary

mathworld.wolfram

Books

The HarperCollins Dictionary of Mathematics

Simon Singh has a great list of books at his site.

Your updated question prompts me to mention Gilbert Strang's free, online Linear Algebra video lectures. These are reasonably slow but very thorough.

Answer 5

It sounds like a lot of your applications are in computer graphics.

One of the classic textbooks is Foley and Van Dam. You might consider getting a copy. It may not slow down to explain matrices (see the link I gave for a page on coordinate transforms), but there's enough context there that you can probably do just fine if you either do some basic searches on some of the linear algebra concepts, or check out a linear algebra book from the library.

It doesn't sound like you'd benefit a lot from a full "digestion" of a linear algebra course (which goes into eigenvalues, matrix factoring, & other stuff). I'd just take one concept at a time as it comes up. You can learn quite a bit from slow osmosis.

Answer 6

Good answers already.

You should expect math notation to be hard, because it packs a lot of meaning into very few symbols, so you have to slow down and take it one equation at a time, without any skimming. And usually you have to read a book or article on the general subject.

I knew math professors who said that when they tackled unfamiliar work they had to get some coffee, slow way down, and parse each statement and each equation until they understood it.

I have to use quite a bit of math in my daily work, but it mostly all boils down to high school algebra and trig, plus basic differential calculus, and really basic differential equations and linear algebra. Most people only need the high-school stuff.

Best of luck.