I'm not a statistician, but do i remember well that among all distributions with a given mean and variance, the normal distribution has the highest entropy? This is good enough for me to call it "normal"....
Gabor On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 10:10:21AM -0600, roger koenker wrote: > A nice survey of this territory is: > > http://books.google.com/books?id=TN3_d7ibo30C&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=stigler+normal+oxymoron&source=web&ots=OwGhmnDk3O&sig=J7ou_L8-_Mu4L14c3KJAhefrD4I&hl=en > > I particularly like the phrase: "[normal] is in this respect > a rare one-word oxymoron." > > url: www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger Roger Koenker > email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Economics > vox: 217-333-4558 University of Illinois > fax: 217-244-6678 Champaign, IL 61820 > > > On Mar 2, 2008, at 7:33 AM, (Ted Harding) wrote: > > > Hi Folks, > > Apologies to anyone who'd prefer not to see this query > > on this list; but I'm asking because it is probably the > > forum where I'm most likely to get a good answer! > > > > I'm interested in the provenance of the name "normal > > distribution" (for what I'd really prefer to call the > > "Gaussian" distribution). > > > > According to Wikipedia, "The name "normal distribution" > > was coined independently by Charles S. Peirce, Francis > > Galton and Wilhelm Lexis around 1875." > > > > So be it, if that was the case -- but I would like to > > know why they chose the name "normal": what did they > > intend to convey? > > > > As background: I'm reflecting a bit on the usage in > > statistics of "everyday language" as techincal terms, > > as in "significantly different". This, for instance, > > is likely to be misunderstood by the general publidc > > when they encounter statements in the media. > > > > Likewise, "normally distributed" would probably be > > interpreted as "distributed in the way one would > > normally expect" or, perhaps, "there was nothing > > unusual about the distribution." > > > > Comments welcome! > > With thanks, > > Ted. > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 > > Date: 02-Mar-08 Time: 13:04:17 > > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > > 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@r-project.org mailing list > 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. -- Csardi Gabor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> UNIL DGM ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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.