Detailed Instructions: Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
Q: Variation lock seems more accurate by mathematical definitions Edit(to give it more context) Hey, can you tell me the combination of your lockbox ? Why don't we say variation(or permutation)? The order matters in this case and combination is an unordered set of numbers.
A:
Because most people are not mathematicians. I know that sounds like a flippant answer, but it's genuinely the answer. There are many words which have a more precise (or even different) meaning for specialists, and the fact is that these words simply have both meanings. The question 'Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?' is an all too familiar example: to a botanist, it's a fruit; to most of us, it's a vegetable. So the fact that mathematicians use 'combination' in a more restricted way is irrelevant to almost everybody who uses the locks.