Quick poll: gmean or geometric_mean

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2016 07:24 pm, Michael Selik wrote:

> 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 :-)

Not all shells or editors are IPython, and not all abbreviations are bad.
Would you rather print, or
write_values_as_strings_to_the_predefined_standard_output_file?

:-)


-- 
Steven
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.