I understand mathematical notation, but I do think it generally is best only used when necessary in day-to-day work. Whenever something is of sufficient complexity, trying to keep track of the 10+ variables in a mathematical notation is generally harder than just reading a description.

For a recent example, my thought process yesterday: "So let's see, it says to multiply all of the 'F' functions, from 'm' to 'n'.. 'F' is, what, the base array? OK, so that makes 'm' and 'n'.. hmm. Let's come back to that. OK, so we multiply the product of those 'F's times the product of all 'alpha's of 'm,n' over 'm'.. so alpha is, let's see, the.. message? And... uh.."

Long story short, I finally deciphered it just meant "Multiply the base array of values by the value of each message that comes in that shares a parameter," only it took about 5 minutes instead of 10 seconds.