One thing I've always wanted is a comprehensive guide to mathematical notation, which tells you what symbols mean or at least what field of mathematics they come from.
I frequently come across all sorts of weird mathematical symbols in papers, and of course these symbols are virtually never explained, so I have no idea what they mean.
Even better would be if there was some way an LLM could read through a paper itself and then explain the equations.
One problem (feature?) of math notation is that paper authors don't follow a consistent convention for symbols, so what you're asking might not even be possible... It doesn't help that different math domains might use different symbols for the same concept! That being said, there is the ISO 80000-2 standard that defines recommendations for many of the math symbols, with mentions of other variations, see https://web.archive.org/web/20210705180417/https://people.en...
You might want to read through that as a starting point.
Unfortunately, just knowing the notation (being able to read the symbols) is not usually enough. Understanding each symbol/concept usually requires knowing the math context and other related definitions of the domain where the notation is used. In other words, knowing the notation is not a shortcut for learning math... But still, I hear you about the need to select some symbols then right-click and choose "read this to me" or "explain this to me."
One thing I love about programmers is that they rarely use complex symbols. They are the complete opposite to mathematicians in this regard. Basically all programming languages consist just of ASCII keywords. So when in doubt about some keyword, you can just use Google and type it in. Together with the name of the language.
I guess symbols look fancier and are more concise.
Also, mathematicians do love their PDFs. No doubt because it supports their beloved symbols so well. Of course PDFs are terrible for the Web and screens in general, but only a programmer would care about that.
GPT-4 can probably explain LaTeX formulas pretty well, but when they are compiled PDFs, the encoded PDF plain text is often garbage, so GPT-4 probably couldn't understand much.
many books will have a page in the preface that lays out the notation, even for very common objects. it's hard to make a cheat sheet for something like this because many symbols are used in different fields, and even if different subfields of the same field.
I frequently come across all sorts of weird mathematical symbols in papers, and of course these symbols are virtually never explained, so I have no idea what they mean.
Even better would be if there was some way an LLM could read through a paper itself and then explain the equations.