Why do we use Greek letters, like alpha (α), beta (β), and gamma (γ), in mathematical notation?
In: Mathematics
There’s a lot of tradition to reserve certain letters to mean certain things. For example, we reserve F and C to mean Fahrenheit and Celsius outside of math. In math they can reserve ‘ε’ to usually mean something or ‘ζ’ to mean something (god I hated writing that weird ass Z)
They don’t have to. At the start of your assignment, exam, or paper, you can say “actually I will use G to mean what ζ usually means” but it’s just extra work to break a standard for no real gain.
Like if someone said I’m going to use “D” to represent Celsius temperature instead. Why bother?
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