I've been reading mathematical notation for decades. You face three things I've noticed:
1. People are typically _really_ bad at writing mathematics -- notational brevity is not a virtue when attempting to communicate ideas. You may find value reading through notes on Knuth[0] and what he taught regarding writing mathematics.
2. There is a certain level of field/conceptual awareness needed when translating the coded concepts in an academic paper/textbook. However, consistent with (1), people are bad at encoding. Using several topical texts at your disposal can help. For example, in econometrics your standard masters year 1 texts are Greene, and Wooldridge. Wooldridge is expansive and simpler to read, Greene is more fundamental and uses horrendous notation. I found reading the same topics in Wooldridge helped me decode Greene, from which I was able to deepen my understanding of Wooldridge.
3. Very few people can read a paper or text once and know it immediately. The most studied professors I know will take months to fully digest a seminal article that incorporates new ideas -- if you're new to a field, _every_ article is seminal to you.
Don't give up. It takes practice to decode, to put the concepts into a mentally straightforward order, and so on. The fact you're asking about it shows that you care, and if you let that grow you'll get to the point you want to be.
1. People are typically _really_ bad at writing mathematics -- notational brevity is not a virtue when attempting to communicate ideas. You may find value reading through notes on Knuth[0] and what he taught regarding writing mathematics.
2. There is a certain level of field/conceptual awareness needed when translating the coded concepts in an academic paper/textbook. However, consistent with (1), people are bad at encoding. Using several topical texts at your disposal can help. For example, in econometrics your standard masters year 1 texts are Greene, and Wooldridge. Wooldridge is expansive and simpler to read, Greene is more fundamental and uses horrendous notation. I found reading the same topics in Wooldridge helped me decode Greene, from which I was able to deepen my understanding of Wooldridge.
3. Very few people can read a paper or text once and know it immediately. The most studied professors I know will take months to fully digest a seminal article that incorporates new ideas -- if you're new to a field, _every_ article is seminal to you.
Don't give up. It takes practice to decode, to put the concepts into a mentally straightforward order, and so on. The fact you're asking about it shows that you care, and if you let that grow you'll get to the point you want to be.
[0] http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematica...