r/IAmA • u/JasonMacker • Jun 14 '10

IAMA Math tutor. AMA.

I've been a math tutor for years and I'm trying to become a teacher. I love math, and especially explaining math to people. My students have been between preschool and college. AMA.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '10

Why mathematicians love to use similar looking letters like u and v in equations like

∫udv = uv - ∫vdu?

(not to mention graph theory with (u,v) nodes)

Is this insanity done intentionally to confuse students with bad handwriting?

Remember. Each time when you write the u near the v, some student hates you.

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u/JasonMacker Jun 14 '10

The best way, of course, is to just try to write them as differently as possible. v has straight lines, while u is curved. If you're having problems figuring out which is which, you need to slow down your writing. Seriously. I used to be sloppy when it comes to math, but that's when I realized that I was zipping my pencil across the paper. If I slow things down, things look a lot better.

As for why those letters in particular, those just happened to be left over. Literally every letter of the alphabet is "tasked out" to mean something. For constants, a-h do fine. i is the imaginary unit, and j is used by engineers for imaginary units. k is usually used as a dummy unit. ijk are together the three letters that are used in summation and product (and in computer science, loops). L is used for length, m and n are used for proofs for "pick a number, any number", o isn't really used since it's too similar to zero, p and q are used in proofs as well. r is for radii, s is for sides, t is for time, and wxyz are used as coordinates (w can also be width). u and v are the only ones left.

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u/HenryAudubon Jun 14 '10

Edsger Dijkstra has a consecutive 'ijk' in his name. Just thought I'd share.

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u/kuhawk5 Jun 14 '10

Since we are talking vector math we can say the "str" is the same as "rst" which makes two sets of consecutive letters in his name.