Why do we use letters like x and y to represent numbers in algebra?
In: Mathematics
Like you’re 5; it wouldn’t make sense to use numbers because we don’t know the number, so we use a letter to show it’s a number that changes, we call that a “variable”.
We use letters because they are symbols most of us know, we can all picture “y” or “x”, that letter could represent anything from dogs to coins to the length of rope.
If we made up our own symbols it would technically still work, but it would get quite confusing fast, you could even use pictures, but the equation would get crowded, easiest thing is to use letters.
In a lot of programming, we’d mostly use whole (or parts of…) words instead of just letters to help visualize and reference these variables as clear as we can bothered to make it i.e. “carrot_Thickness”, “carrot_Length”, “carrot_Colour”.
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