Letters That Shouldn't Be Used In Math

The eternal struggle of every math professor trying to write clearly on a blackboard! These letters are the bane of our existence. Try writing a lowercase 'a' that doesn't look like a '2' after three hours of lecturing. And don't get me started on the "u and v shouldn't be used together" rule—it's like putting two identical twins in the same classroom and expecting everyone to tell them apart.

This is why mathematicians develop that peculiar handwriting style that only other mathematicians can decipher. It's not pretentiousness—it's survival! And then we wonder why students think math is hard. Maybe it's because half the time they're trying to figure out if that symbol is a "z" or a "2" while we've already moved on to explaining eigenvalues.