I ' m going to disagree with the author . Mathematical notation does have some disadvantageds , but it is very good at what it does . Mathematical notation is very precise and concise . To achieve those goals it sacrifices detail , leaving a lot of essential information out , counting on the reader ' s knowledge of the notation to explain the meaning . It allows people to easily manipulate the formulas , while still having all the essential information . The existence of Wolfram alpha is proof that the language is precise enough to allow a computer to solve problems . The main disadvantage that I see is that mathematical notation requires a huge amount of knowledge to use properly . It ' s closer to a natural language than a computer language . I see students get tripped up all the time on simple problems because they don ' t understand the meaning of things . However , I believe that tradeoff is worth it . Not everyone needs a very strong background in math , but those that do have the background will find that putting in the work to understand the meaning of the notation makes future problems easier .