I used to feel this way about statistics.
The language and terms are hard to understand and many of the formulas are taught as "just memorize this" instead of building up from first principles.
But then I started using statistics to analyze something I cared a lot about (paintball) and I quickly realized it's like learning anything new:
- there is jargon
- and core concepts
- when you learn the above, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Then I wrote some more about pro paintball stats in the below three Reddit posts:
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1h17f2m/intro_to...
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1jy5xqp/paintbal...
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1k6bzi7/paintbal...
Some highlights:
- I started with just pen, paper and a stopwatch (as a college coach)
- I assumed paintball would be more like football where it's hard to track individual effects
- Turns out it's a surprisingly simple and stable "state machine". e.g. the odds of winning with +1 body (e.g. 5v4, 4v3 etc) is, in college, about ~75%
- Paintball is one of those sports where "the weakest player determines the outcome". Why? b/c if 1 player gets out early, you are fighting out of a hole.
It also made me appreciate that as good a book as Moneyball is, reading it after you try to create analytics for your own sport makes it 3x as enjoyable/insightful.
One downside though:
I would watch games and I got so good at internalizing the stats per state of the game that it was like watching the world series of poker where I could see both player odds of getting eliminated and probability of winning over time charts as I watched the games. Made it harder to be the "come on guys! we can win this" coach when we were down on points + bodies.
- Millenials who were kids of the baby boomers being in their late teens early 20s
- Disposable income due to the real estate bubble / positive consumer sentiment
It dropped off a lot after the 2008 GFC though.
BUT
A lot of those kids playing in the mid 2000s are now parents of ~10 year olds so apparently there is a bit of a resurgence going on.
Technical language is a tool that allows insiders to say less and refer to more, and to be specific, but it's just a tool. Most things can be described in accessible ways.
I think you'd be surprised at what you could understand and at just how few domains are truly complex enough that a layman couldn't understand with a little bit of patience and an accessible summary.