[mattmanser]

We use i, x, y, etc. all the time as variable names as professional programmers.

So you're sort of arguing against a straw man there, almost no programmer would expect you to name such a concept 'arbitraryNumber2', we would also name it x or y if it made sense in the code.

[IngoBlechschmid]

Sorry, I didn't want to argue against a straw man. You are right. I just wanted to indicate that in mathematics, we are much more often in such generic situations than in programming. Accordingly, I wanted to argue that the increased brevity in mathematics is to some extent to be expected.