zlacker

As mentioned elsewhere, the right notation[0] allowed us to discover new juggling patterns that had never been done[1][3]. I freely admit that current mathematical notation has problems, but most of the proposed reforms seem to lose the predictive and creative power, becoming mere notation and nothing more. The problem is that without experiencing that extra dimension it's impossible to see that, and you can't experience that extra dimension without investing the time and effort to learn mathematics to a significant level.

Tricky.

[0] https://www.numberphile.com/videos/juggling-by-numbers

[1] As far as we know. Without the notation we don't actually know what had been done, but when I took the new patterns to juggling conventions, no one knew them[2].

[2] Actually it's stronger than that. I showed people some of the new patterns at the British Juggling Convention in 1985 and no one knew them. Then at the European Juggling Convention just 4 months later, people from the USA were proclaiming them as the latest patterns that they had just learned, and were perplexed at how I not only knew them, but knew many, many more.

[3] And actually Paul Klimek had beaten us to it, but hadn't been able to get others interested in the notation. As far as we can tell, Paul was the first to get the notation.

>>ColinW+(OP)
Siteswap is really wonderful. It's so good that many nerd jugglers (myself included) enjoy reading about weird and extreme patterns that are way beyond our skills (or even human skills) but technically possible.