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We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we usually deal with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Christoffel}^i_jk$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P

We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we usually deal with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Christoffel}^i_{jk}$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P

We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we deal usually with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Christoffel}^i_jk$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P

We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we usually deal with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Christoffel}^i_jk$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P

We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we usually deal with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Chistoffel}^i_jk$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P

We are very, very lazy. I am very, very serious about this.

NB1: The history is told in Florian Cajori's book on the history of notation. In very old times, there were no variables (and no formulas, really) and everything was incredibly verbose. Cajori's book beautifully shows the very long and tortuous way from that to modern day notation for variables; there are several sections regarding the notation of unknowns and of their powers.

NB2: Additionally, we deal usually with very complicated expressions, so using verbose names for variables you render things almost impossible. Writing down the formula for Gaussian curvature in terms of $E$, $F$, $G$ and the Christoffel symbols if we wrote $\mathsf{Christoffel}^i_jk$ instead of $\Gamma^{i}_{jk}$ would turn differential geometry into a dead subject very soon :P