[4gotunameagain]

It is not arbitrary, it is heritage. Apart from the fact that Greek was the de facto scientific language of the west (which is no longer the case), I think we can agree that the characters of a single alphabet are not enough for notation, especially given the fact that it is very useful to be able to discern different types of entities, e.g. constants from variables or vectors from matrices.

If we changed symbols now, it would create an even bigger mess. Because the people that learn the new symbols, could not read any textbook published before 0 A.D. (Anno Discombobuli)

[atoav]

So you read my comment and thought: "That guy who can read the greek alphabet doesn't know there are historical roots for greek letters in mathematical notation".

Sure, back then when everybody who learned trigonometry had a classical education with ancient greek picking greek letters when the latin alphabet wouldn't do was a rational decision. It just hasn't aged well.

[4gotunameagain]

I'm just saying that changing the symbols will make things worse, not better.

Virtually all the textbooks use those symbols. Do you have a viable and better alternative to suggest or are you just complaining? And I didn't assume that you know or don't know something, I just wrote it down for the sake of the argument. We are not having a private conversation, we are contributing to a public discussion.

[necovek]

That'd not what they said: they made a claim that a single alphabet is insufficient, and thus Greek makes as good a choice as it was used historically too (and allows easy differentiation).

Math also uses made up symbols specific to math a lot (integral, summations, arrows, operators...).

If you want to claim that Greek is the problem, how would you solve the problem of insufficient symbols?