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by Aachen 1528 days ago
> imagine making a calculation or transforming a complex formula with words and full sentences

... that's why I said "I'm not proposing to turn everything into English prose. Rather, using (abbreviated) names for variables"

1 comments

Anything other than a single letter variable with at most subindexes, bold, upper/lower case simply doesn't work in maths and science. And because we only have 26 letters, you do have to go to Greek.

Actually, that might be a good exercise: try doing some moderately abstract equations with variable names such as you'd write in a programming language and you'll find yourself shortening them pretty quickly. We literally do it sometimes when modeling an equation for a new domain: we start by writing words and at the end of the blackboard they already became a symbol.