I am in a General Relativity class, and I am finding the usual tensor notation very difficult to think about -- it seems like there are too many names to express something simple. E.g., I think of the equation X^\mu_\nu = \eta_{\nu\nu'}X^{\mu\nu'} something like this:
+---+ +---+ -| X |- = | X |- +---+ | |----+-----+ +---+ | eta | ---+-----+
I don't know, it's just a sketch (and doesn't handle the punning of using indices to represent different bases, for example). But I'm interested in all alternatives; what notations are available to make tensors easier to think about?