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Two reasons: They're often quicker to use and they make for a great filing system.

1) Speed - Suppose I had a set of objects {n1, n2, n3, n4, n5, n6, n7, n8, n9, n10, n11, n12, n13, n14, n15, n16, n17, n18} that I wanted you to add up, but I wanted you to show your work. Would you rather write this down:

n1 + n2 + n3 + n4 + n5 + n6 + n7 + n8 + n9 + n10 + n11 + n12 + n13 + n14 + n15 + n16 + n17 + n18,

or an equivalent expression, using indexes, like this:

∑(ni, i, 1, 18)?

2) Filing - Suppose I had a 6 X 6 matrix, or array, and I wanted to talk about one specific element in it. If I hadn't done the proper filing, I would be fumbling for words in an effort to describe where it is. "Go two down from the top and 3 over from the left." I'd rather just have them filed and labeled with indexes, like this n3,4.

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14y ago

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