Quick poll: gmean or geometric_mean

[Michael Selik]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016, 4:56 AM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Jul 2016 05:28 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:
>
> > From fuzzy memory of sitting in statistics classes decades ago
> > filled with μ-σ etc I'd suggest μ gμ hμ
>
> In all the stats books and references I've seen, μ is always the population
> mean (implicitly the arithmetic mean). When discussing the different kinds
> of mean, A, G and H are used for arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means.
> (Other means are rarely discussed.)
>
> I don't think I've ever seen gµ or hµ. They're sort of backwards... I'd
> expect µ subscript-g or subscript-h, not the other way.
>

I'm glad you brought up textbooks as it reminded me to say that most
scientific software is still struggling to shake off the legacy of
abbreviation.

Now even the basic IPython shell has autocomplete :-)

>