Why do we use Greek letters, like alpha (α), beta (β), and gamma (γ), in mathematical notation?

Question

Why do we use Greek letters, like alpha (α), beta (β), and gamma (γ), in mathematical notation?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Because sometimes you want to have a variable stand out more, or you used all of the Latin alphabet. For example, in electromagnetics, electric permittivity is lowercase epsilon because e is almost always taken to be Euler’s number.

It doesn’t matter; variable symbols can be anything you want, as long as you can get the point across. I once had a professor use wingdings as variables just to prove that point.