This is a bad take of epic proportions. It's also a perennial mental pothole that people have been falling into forever, and relevant beyond mathematics, so it might be useful digging (no pun intended) a little further... When I was studying, this was the joke: Someone who's never shown the slightest interest in mathematics complains "I'm sure I'd be one of the greatest mathematicians ever... if only someone would tell me what all the symbols meant".

Thanks so much to everyone who came to my #ylj18 talk on category theory!

Here's a list of my favourite resources for learning more about this fascinating subject. The Catsters, @DrEugeniaCheng and Simon Willerton.

ncatlab.org/nlab/show/The+…