eli5: What do you do when you run out of variables?

Question

you refer to variables like “x” “y” “z” so on so forth, but what happens when you run out? Do you go capital do you use a special symbol or something?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Yes, both of those things, there are many constants and variables expressed as capital letters, greek letters and other symbols.

You can also use subscripts, a lot of time based equations or something iterative with use like T0, T1, T2 etc… with the number as a subscript.

There’s hundreds of acknowledged symbols, and those can be modified with stuff like subscripts.

Even the most complex equation you’d ever deal with isn’t going to have like 200 different variables.

And if any equation did ever have that, you can create terms that equal another equation.

In some Equations, like the Black-Scholes equation in Finance there’s two values that actually refer to the solution to another equation.

So you can Say X = Y + Z where Z = A + B + C

So you’d never be able to run out.