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In addition to Arabic notation, mathematics also makes use of Greek letters to denote a wide variety of mathematical objects and variables. On some occasions, certain Hebrew letters are also used (such as in the context of infinite cardinals). Some mathematical notations are mostly diagrammatic, and so are almost entirely script independent.
In mathematics, a variable (from Latin variabilis, "changeable") is a symbol, typically a letter, that refers to an unspecified mathematical object. [1] [2] [3] One says colloquially that the variable represents or denotes the object, and that any valid candidate for the object is the value of the variable.
Latin and Greek letters are used in mathematics, science, engineering, and other areas where mathematical notation is used as symbols for constants, special functions, and also conventionally for variables representing certain quantities.
The OpenType font format has the feature tag "mgrk" ("Mathematical Greek") to identify a glyph as representing a Greek letter to be used in mathematical (as opposed to Greek language) contexts. The table below shows a comparison of Greek letters rendered in TeX and HTML. The font used in the TeX rendering is an italic style.
Greek letters (e.g. θ, β) are commonly used to denote unknown parameters (population parameters). [3]A tilde (~) denotes "has the probability distribution of". Placing a hat, or caret (also known as a circumflex), over a true parameter denotes an estimator of it, e.g., ^ is an estimator for .
an unknown variable, most often (but not always) from the set of real numbers, while a complex unknown would rather be called z, and an integer by a letter like m from the middle of the alphabet; the coordinate on the first or horizontal axis in a Cartesian coordinate system, [10] or the viewport in a graph or window in computer graphics; the ...
Here thus in the history of equations the first letters of the alphabet became indicatively known as coefficients, while the last letters as unknown terms (an incerti ordinis). In algebraic geometry, again, a similar rule was to be observed: the last letters of the alphabet came to denote the variable or current coordinates.
List of letters used in mathematics and science; Glossary of mathematical symbols; List of mathematical uses of Latin letters; Greek letters used in mathematics, science, and engineering; Physical constant; Physical quantity; International System of Units; ISO 31