[erezsh]

That's not a genuine example.

Most academic texts I've read will use something like

    s = d/t

And sometimes not even explain what the components mean, because obviously 't' stands for time. That's what all their lecturers used, so why bother explain it.

Some will even make up their own notation:

    s = d(t)

And somewhere will say "f(x) in this article describes an inverse multiplicative relation", without explaining that it's actually simple division, so other academics won't find them too obvious or boorish.

Some even take it a step further and use random greek letters (without exhausting the English alphabet first ofc.), where small gamma and big gamma mean completely different and unrelated things.

[HPsquared]

That sounds more an issue of unclear naming, than with notation itself.

Edit: Though I agree, mathematical notation lends itself to using single letters to denote objects. This can of course be problematic. I'm a fan of 'pseudocode' - somewhere between natural language and rigorous notation - where possible.

[swilliamsio]

>s = d/t

Slightly worse than that. That equation is always written as v = s/t. v represents velocity and s represents distance, for some reason.

[Sharlin]

I would assume that the "s" comes either from Latin spatium or German Strecke.

[abenga]

This is (velocity) = (displacement) / (time). s is used because of the Latin word _spatium_ for space. If I remember correctly, there was a difference between distance and displacement. (displacement is "net").

[quietbritishjim]

Displacement is a vector whereas distance is a scalar (similarly for velocity vs speed). Even if you restrict to 1 dimension there's a difference as displacement (and velocity) can be negative.