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griffzhowlyesterday at 1:03 PM1 replyview on HN

> People who really grasp a subject can usually explain it well in plain language.

That's very much a matter of style. An equation is often the plainest way of expressing something


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rsp1984yesterday at 8:04 PM

The problem is that equations give the illusion of conciseness and brevity but in reality always heavily depend on context.

You give a physicist an equation of a completely unrelated field in mathematics and it will make zero sense to them because they lack the context. And vice versa. The only people who can readily read and understand your equations are those that already understand the subject and have learned all the context around the math.

Therefore it's pointless to try to start with the math when you're foreign to a field. It simply won't make any sense without the context.

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