[globular-toast]

Many programs are at a much higher level of abstraction than mathematics. If you are implementing domain logic then you should definitely use names from the domain. But when implementing an algorithm often the most meaningful name is a single character. I find it odd when people try to force the "no single character" rule everywhere.

But I've got to say, the short names are not the problem. If you rewrote F=ma as "force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration" this wouldn't suddenly make it more accessible to swathes of the population. People who are good at maths anyway have no problem with this.