Why do we use letters like x and y to represent numbers in algebra?
In: Mathematics
I’m not sure if this is “the reason” per se, but it is a good reason that I can think of. Symbols used in physics and engineering equations are often associated with their name – e.g. “G” is the gravitational constant, “c” often just means “constant”, τ is the time constant, “i” is an imaginary number, etc. “x” and “y” are not the first letters of many words, so they fit nicely when the variable does not represent anything specific. x + 5 = 10, for example, just means “some variable plus five equals ten”. x and y do not stand for anything, so they are nice to use as variables where they do not represent anything in the real world.
tl;dr – x and y just mean “some generic variable” because they do not correspond to a specific term
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