Greek Letters In Math

Hi there. In this math post I cover Greek letters that are used in math. Greek letters can be seen as early as high school math and they do appear from time to time in university math courses, economics, finance, physics, science and chemistry.

Greek letters also appear in American fraternity and soriority clubs.

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Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta

Alpha

Alpha as an uppercase letter is A & the lowercase version is α. One of the first appearances of alpha for a math student is in trigonometry. Instead of the variable x or theta (θ), alpha may be used as a variable for an unknown angle of a triangle. α is seen in statistics (hypothesis testing), physics, astronomy and in chemistry.

Beta

The uppercase version of beta is Β while the lowercase symbol is β. An early appearance of β is in trigonometry. It can be used to represent an unknown angle in a triangle.

In finance & economics, beta (β) is a risk measure of a security or portfolio compared to the market. The S&P 500 stocks have a beta of 1.0. Stocks with β > 1 are considered more risky/volatile.

Gamma

Gamma (Γ uppercase & γ as lowercase) is another Greek letter that is used in mathematics and science. There is something called a Gamma function in math. This gamma function is a factorial when the input n is a whole number.

Delta

Delta is a well known Greek letter that is used in math, science, calculus and engineering. The uppercase version is Δ which looks like a triangle. The lowercase version of Delta is δ.

The slope formula from early algebra in high school usually uses the letter m as the variable. You can use the Delta variable for the slope of a line.

Sigma, Mu

These three symbols of Sigma and Mu are ones I want to feature. It is due to my statistics upbringing bias. These three are featured a lot in data management course, introductory statistics courses for math majors, business majors, economics majors (econometrics) and psychology students.

Sigma (Σ, σ)

Sigma in the uppercase letter form is Σ. The lowercase letter for Sigma is σ. Both cases are used a fair bit in mathematics. The uppecase letter Σ is used to represent a sum in a compact way.

Lowercase sigma σ is heavily used in statistics. σ represents the standard deviation for a random variable or for a data set of numbers. Squaring the standard deviation gives the variance which is represented by σ².

Mu (M, μ)

This Greek letter of Mu is pronounced Miu like the Pokemon Mew. The uppercase version of Mu is Μ and the lowercase letter is μ.
The lowercase letter μ is used often in introductory statistics as it represents an average.

One example of using μ is taking the average of 100 values from a population.