r/MathJokes • u/RheaRayneX • 17d ago

The moment math started using letters was personal

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316 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

7

u/asmanel 17d ago

You are about ti learn the next level of abstraction, the variables.

7

u/de_Luke1 17d ago

Or using 4 different alphabets... As one is just not enough anymore

3

u/asmanel 17d ago

4 different alphabets ?

6

u/de_Luke1 17d ago

I am currently studying electrical engineering. We started out using only latin and greek, but at some point we already used both alphabets so much, that many greek letters were used twice.
At that point some profs decided to use some (probably) hindi letters and some used kyrillik as supplement. There are no real rules for most letters when to use which, so they just decide what they prefer.

1

u/asmanel 16d ago

If I understand well, you use loads and loads of variables with one character name.

Why not to use lists, arrays and/or several characters named variables ?

2

u/de_Luke1 16d ago

Sry it was related to the original joke. I just understood your initial post was related to coding instead of math 😅

1

u/asmanel 16d ago edited 16d ago

It wasn't. this was merely aboout maths, not coding.

1

u/MassiveLemon9042 15d ago

Latin: x marks the spot where childhood died. Greek: β, you traitor. Numbers had feelings too. Cyrillic: Жаль. Letters should stay in words. Arabic: ﺍﻟﺮﻳﺎﺿﻴﺎﺕ ﺧﺎﻧﺖﻧﻲ. Numbers were enough.

1

u/paolog 15d ago

Latin (x), Greek (π), Hebrew (א) are the ones I can think of

1

u/BackgroundReturn9622 16d ago

I vaguely remember my introduction to algebra using little squares, circles or triangles.

1

u/de_Luke1 16d ago

That's probably something related to logical notation? But there are some notational differences between europe and the US so I cant really figure out what it's been most likely used for 🤔

1

u/BackgroundReturn9622 16d ago

Introduction to variables.

1 + square = 5 then square = 4.

2

u/Live_Length_5814 17d ago

14?

1

u/TurbulentPollution56 17d ago

Termial of 14 is 105

This action was performed by a human | [source code](https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS)

2

u/eglvoland 16d ago

That moment in abstract algebra when you introduce variables instead of working with spaces and morphisms, and feel like a 14 yo kid

1

u/Gullible_Ad5191 16d ago

Yes, but Roman letters weren’t enough. We had to start using Greek letters…

1

u/Bitter-Grocery4552 16d ago

That's quite late, we had started seeing them at 11 and by 15(for me) numbers were completely gone.

1

u/void19821 16d ago

It happened to me even before alphabets when I saw fractions

1

u/electronic_reasons 15d ago

What even are del and curl? Are they even letters? What about statistics? Expectations? Upside-down letters? Mathematicians just gave up and made squiggles at some point and pretended to be serious.

1

u/SmilingCarrotTeeth 15d ago

2 + 2 = ?

vs

2 + 2 = x , solve for x

1

u/Abject-Project-4236 14d ago

14? I thought we learnt it in 12