I work as a software engineer, but I don't have a maths background. I have long been interested in refreshing anything after/including pre-algebra. Often times I am reading papers and these have all these formulas I can't decipher. I think the bigger issue is that I don't even know how to ask the question. Essentially, I want to go from 'can't read' to 'can read and understand the maths being used (even if the problem domain may still not be clear)' - where should I start?
Thanks for all the comments and answers. I can't reply/upvote directly because I joined this site straight away, but I'll reply to some questions/statements below:
One example of a formula (apologies, I can't seem to copy it off the pdf and paste here) page 28 http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse567-06/ftp/k_24its.pdf
I am familiar with some of the symbols, for example, the greek E that means (performs?) sum. I understand some set's notation. Sometimes the difficulty lies also in understanding the precedence order and how to transform it into something more readable, so I can follow it along.
I think in general, I was hoping that there would be some area in mathematics that focused on the learning and practice of maths by means of expressing yourself using these symbols, but it seems a bit clearer now that that's not the case and it's probably all scattered around the place ? (confirmation would be appreciated)
Sometimes Greek letters are just variables, perhaps with conventions for what they mean, like $\nu$ for a frequency. Sometimes they have a special meaning: $\pi$, of course, and $\Sigma$ for sums.
You could ask particular questions here and learn bit by bit - show us a formula from a paper you're reading, with some of the context, and ask for an explanation of the parts you don't understand.
(Please learn enough mathjax to format the mathematics correctly.)