Mathematical symbol in the context of "Variable (mathematics)"

A mathematical symbol is a figure or a combination of figures that is used to represent a mathematical object, an action on mathematical objects, a relation between mathematical objects, or for structuring the other symbols that occur in a formula or a mathematical expression. More formally, a mathematical symbol is any grapheme used in mathematical formulas and expressions. As formulas and expressions are entirely constituted with symbols of various types, many symbols are needed for expressing all mathematics.

The most basic symbols are the decimal digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), and the letters of the Latin alphabet. The decimal digits are used for representing numbers through the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Historically, upper-case letters were used for representing points in geometry, and lower-case letters were used for variables and constants. Letters are used for representing many other types of mathematical object. As the number of these types has increased, the Greek alphabet and some Hebrew letters have also come to be used. For more symbols, other typefaces are also used, mainly boldface ⁠${\displaystyle \mathbf {a,A,b,B} ,\ldots }$⁠, script typeface ${\displaystyle {\mathcal {A,B}},\ldots }$ (the lower-case script face is rarely used because of the possible confusion with the standard face), German fraktur ⁠${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a,A,b,B}},\ldots }$⁠, and blackboard bold ⁠${\displaystyle \mathbb {N,Z,Q,R,C,H,F} _{q}}$⁠ (the other letters are rarely used in this face, or their use is unconventional). It is commonplace to use alphabets, fonts and typefaces to group symbols by type (for example, boldface is often used for vectors and uppercase for matrices).