> The use of greek letters in academic writing has a single purpose: Compact notation. It has nothing to do with abstract readability. The compactness of the n

> The use of greek letters in academic writing has a single purpose: Compact notation. It has nothing to do with abstract readability. The compactness of the notation is a major factor in overall readability. Long variable names make it harder to see the overall structure of an expression. When operators, numerical constants and parentheses mostly are represented with one or two characters each but variable names are all much longer, then the only thing you can tell about a long line of code at first glance is what variables it uses as inputs. Mathematical pretty printing can help with some operators (eg. fractions) and make it more visually apparent what's being grouped together by parentheses, but even then long variable names will still detract from the ability recognize the structure of an expression.