People petition about all sorts of matters, but who would have thought that the letter ‘xi’ would have so many enemies. Chad the math man from London, started a petition this year to make it redundant and no sooner did he post it on change.org, that hundreds signed up to ban ‘xi’. The reasons are as follows:
“No one likes xi. It is impossible to write, I mean which great mind thought it would be a good idea to turn a tornado into a letter, simply preposterous. With enough petitions, we can legally remove all “xi” found in the world. It will force all textbooks to utilise other variable or constant names and any manifestation of the letter after we achieve our goal will be made illegal, with punishments ranging up to the death penalty.
“This is part of a bigger campaign, where one step at a time we will get rid of annoying letters to write, in order to build a world that isn’t governed by chicken-scratch looking equations.”
Some of those who signed gave reasons for their disdain. “I’m an engineer and I already don’t know how to do math. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” wrote Joshua Arment.
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Tyler Macintyre from Canada argued that nobody writes ξ the same way, and this causes confusion. Though quarter Greek, Zachary Taylor from the United States had an objection to the ‘three horizontal lines’ of the capital of ξ. Even those who were good at math, stated they had difficulty writing this letter.
The goal is to gather 2,500 signatures and the petition is already more than half way there. “I can not believe we gained so many signatures in such a small time! This only shows the frustration that millions of mathematicians and physicists live with in their lives. Please share the petition with your friends, family and loved ones. The more signatures the better. Together we will eradicate xi,” Chad the math man stated.
Those interested in joining the crusade against ξ, can sign here.