implicity

That's a good point. I had the most trouble with symbols and such in general when I was a Junior in college. I was studying some crypto stuff on the side, and I hadn't been exposed to most of the symbols. Trying to identify them was maddening. Eventually, I would just give up and ask someone, who would give me a look like, "are you simple or something?"

For example, I couldn't figure out that capital pi meant 'just like a capital sigma, but with multiplication' because I'd just never seen it before. It drove me nuts until I asked a professor who made me feel like a total retard for even asking.

Come to think of it, I think only two books (Joe Gallian's Abstract Algebra textbook and maybe my graduate analysis textbook) even had a legend of symbols, let alone a poper index.

--Mike Sheffler
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable cone of ignorance