[R] [EXTERNAL] Re: "chi-square" | "chi-squared" | "chi squared" | "chi square" ?

Dalthorp, Daniel
2019-10-18T22:25:59Z

oh my...

I'd like to see the statistics on it before jumping to a conclusion that
the American preference is "chi-square" and the British preference is
"chi-squared". I don't see that at all.

------
In keeping with the pronunciation of x^2 and 3^2, maybe "chi-squared"
makes
the most sense,.

The "chi-square"? Because the iterated dentals in "chi-squared
distribution" and "chi-squared test" are a little cumbersome to
pronounce,
an even slightly lazy pronunciation would sound like "chi-square
distribution" and "chi-square test". There's no need to write
it that way
though.

-Dan



On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 2:28 PM Richard M. Heiberger <rmh at temple.edu>
wrote:

> What a delightful question.  Bill Cochran discussed this in class
> one day about 50 years ago.  He said the British usage (which I think
> he said was chi-squared,
> as is consistent with the other memories in this thread)
> is what he learned and previously used.  But he had been in the US for
> so long that he was now using
> the American preference (chi-square).
>
> Rich
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 8:51 AM Martin Maechler
> <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
> >
> > As it's Friday ..
> >
> > and I also really want to clean up help files and similar R documents,
> > both in R's own sources and in my new 'DPQ' CRAN package :
> >
> > As a trained mathematician, I'm uneasy if a thing has
> > several easily confusable names, .. but as somewhat
> > humanistically educated person, I know that natural languages,
> > English in this case, are much more flexible than computer
> > languages or math...
> >
> > Anyway, back to the question(s) .. which I had asked myself a
> > couple of months ago, and already remained slightly undecided:
> >
> > The 0-th (meta-)question of course is
> >
> >   0. Is it worth using only one written form for the
> >      ?? - distribution, e.g. "everywhere" in R?
> >
> > The answer is not obvious, as already the first few words of the
> > (English) Wikipedia clearly convey:
> >
> > The URL is  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi-squared_distribution
> > and the main title therefore also
> >     "Chi-squared distribution"
> >
> > Then it reads
> >
> > > This article is about the mathematics of the chi-squared
> > > distribution. For its uses in statistics, see chi-squared
> > > test. For the music [...]
> >
> > > In probability theory and statistics, the chi-square
> > > distribution (also chi-squared or ?2-distribution) with k
> > > degrees of freedom is the distribution of a sum of the squares
> > > of k independent standard normal random variables.
> >
> > > The chi-square distribution is a special case of the gamma
> > > distribution and is one of the most widely used probability
> > > distributions in inferential statistics, notably in hypothesis
> > > testing [........]
> > > [........]
> >
> > So, in title and 1st paragraph its "chi-squared", but then
> > everywhere(?) the text used "chi-square".
> >
> > Undoubtedly, Wilson & Hilferty (1931) has been an important
> > paper and they use "Chi-square" in the title;
> > also  Johnson, Kotz & Balakrishnan (1995)
> > see R's help page ?pchisq use  "Chi-square" in the title
of
> > chapter 18 and then, diplomatically for chapter 29,
> >  "Noncentral ??-Distributions" as title.
> >
> > So it seems, that historically and using prestigious sources,
> > "chi-square" to dominate (notably if we do not count
"??" as an
> > alternative).
> >
> > Things look a bit different when I study R's sources; on one
> > hand, I find all 4 forms (s.Subject); then in the "R source
> > history", I see
> >
> >   $ svn log -c11342
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >   r11342 | <....> | 2000-11-14 ...
> >
> >   Use `chi-squared'.
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > which changed 16 (if I counted correctly) cases of
'chi-square' to
> 'chi-squared'.
> >
> > I have not found any R-core internal (or public) reasoning about
> > that change, but had kept it in mind and often worked along that
"goal".
> >
> > As a consequence, "statistically" speaking, much of R's
own use has been
> > standardized to use "chi-squared"; but as I mentioned, I
still
> > find all  4  variants even in "R base" package help files
> > (which of course I now could quite quickly change  (using Emacs M-x
> grep, plus a script);
> > but
> >
> > ... "as it is Friday" ... I'm interested to hear what
others
> > think, notably if you are native English (or "American" ;-)
> > speaking and/or have some extra good knowledge on such
> > matters...
> >
> > Martin Maechler
> > ETH Zurich
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>


--
Dan Dalthorp, PhD
USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Forest Sciences Lab, Rm 311
3200 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331
ph: 541-750-0953
ddalthorp at usgs.gov

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