I'd like to see anyone build a plane, computer, or any other complex object without having some way to represent variable values in math and without using any math derived using variables. It's kind of a fundamental thing to have. As a programmer I do sometimes get a bit annoyed with math people using single character variables everywhere though.

EDIT: Additionally, the use of the Greek alphabet is kinda handy. After my first years in university I started to be able to finally decode the stuff my Greek family gave me. Though initially it sucked, because I understood the math but had no idea what character the "gamma" or "lambda" were.