X is for x

If it weren’t for math, x would be the most useless letter in the alphabet (in my very own personal opinion of course, as perhaps you have a reason that x isn’t the most useless letter in the alphabet and it has nothing to do with math). My 2007 copy of Webster’s New Explorer Dictionary had exactly 75 entries for the letter x (yes I counted them, one by one) and not one of them was worthy as a word that could describe me (and not many of them were adjectives anyhow).

As such, we’re going to look at x in terms of my favorite subject, math. I had problems spelling/writing/reading in school, but math was never a problem. In seventh grade I entered my first enriched (I think it was called) math class. I was excited when I got to 8th grade and got to take high school level algebra, I believe it was then that I learned about the letter x as a representative for a number in a equation and I got to solve for it. x held so much power. You know what, I take it back, it wasn’t algebra where I learned about x, it was in enriched math I think where I learned about x because I’m thinking that we learned about slope at that time…or maybe it’s not necessarily valid that x be valued in that equation because really that’s just x as the x intercept on the graph (you know, x and y axis).

But x in an equation like 4x+7=2(x-3) now that’s when I learned about x, of course it was probably something easier like 4x+7=19 solve for x. That was really when the concept of x was introduced. I loved solving those and doing the math and my love for x really just grew from there. All the way to Calc 2 in college where I threw in the towel because I was frustrated and not learning as fast as the other students and I couldn’t understand my english as a second language professor.

If it weren’t for x being in math equations, we’d really have no need for x (or at least I wouldn’t.)

Edit:
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I take it back, x is needed, x is needed for x-ray which I’ve had a few in my life. If we didn’t have x we wouldn’t have x-ray, I’m sure some other word would’ve been created to mean the same thing, but we can’t just get rid of x now that it’s used in words like x-ray…and xylophone, some musical instrument something or other…x is more important than I thought it was…there’s just no x word that fits me.