Alphabet doesn’t make math harder, it’s used for harder problems where alphabet makes them actually easier.
And Greek letters are for when even the Latin alphabet can’t save you
This is true but it’s much easier to understand in retrospect unless you have a very very gifted math teacher (or series of teachers really) when you start learning it. For most people learning algebra it’s just another checkbox to tick for some reason. Plus pesky word problems that make you figure out the equations on top of that.
Now that I’m an adult I recognize what all of this was trying to teach me. But back in my school days it was just another thing I had to do between hanging out with friends.
Yeah! Satan was the good guy here.
As always. My guy is just misunderstood
People don’t think it be like this, but it do.
I’d like to see anyone build a plane, computer, or any other complex object without having some way to represent variable values in math and without using any math derived using variables. It’s kind of a fundamental thing to have. As a programmer I do sometimes get a bit annoyed with math people using single character variables everywhere though.
EDIT: Additionally, the use of the Greek alphabet is kinda handy. After my first years in university I started to be able to finally decode the stuff my Greek family gave me. Though initially it sucked, because I understood the math but had no idea what character the “gamma” or “lambda” were.
Sadly, I cannot remember which YouTube video featured this: But a guy basically speedran the description of how to solve a quadratic equation the Babylonian way, that is, drawing squares and circles and shit. It took quite a while for him just to list the steps. All that disappears once you learn the formula with the bad, scary letters.
You have never seen equations before the use of letters as variables. They had sentences, full fetched sentences
Oho, but he didn’t stop there, the old goat, he didn’t just stop at one alphabet, did he? Because we use the Latin and Greek alphabets, and even the odd spicy Hebrew character and god knows what else in the darker corners of mathematics.
When they pull out the Gothic font, that’s when you know it’s time to run. “Of course f, F, 𝔽, ℱ and 𝕱 mean different things” - statements by the truly deranged.
Oh, you thought that was a p? Haha! You fool! You imbecile! It was ρ! Look at this mathematical incompetent!
“Use Greek letters, too! I mean… why not? Do it, man… do it… DO IT…!”
“Hey, how you doin’ lil’ mama? Let me whisper in ya ear”
