[quote=@wheels]
i was ok with math all the way to sixth grade or seventh but once they add letters to it and other stuff i was like uh what the world is this. 
[/quote]

I work in a school on a daily basis. I encounter children who have not yet taken the time to memorize the multiplication table. I regularly encourage them to do that very thing. Because once you do, math makes so much sense and becomes easier. 

Regarding [i]variables[/i], if you do not know the value of a factor, it is easier to replace it with a letter that can change value as you need it to. In some forms of advanced math, you are not searching for a specific numerical answer but a sequence of them that might be plotted on a coordinate plane. The variables are quite necessary.