How to Read Mathematics

A reading protocol is a set of strategies that a reader must use in order to benefit fully from reading the text. Poetry calls for a different set of strategies than fiction, and fiction a different set than non-fiction. page

Mathematics has a reading protocol all its own, and just as we learn to read literature, we should learn to read mathematics.

Mathematical ideas are by nature precise and well defined, so that a precise description is possible in a very short space. The beauty in a mathematics article is in the elegant efficient way it concisely describes precise ideas of great complexity.

.

The author develops the analogies between reading fiction, poetry and mathematics.

Six tips follow with explanations.

Then the birthday paradox, 50-50 chance of same birthday in a room of 23 people, is developed as a formula, and, examined as a cautious reader might read it. Most tips are thereby illustrated.