As someone of partly French heritage, I would also ask how this distribution came to be called "Gaussian". It seems very unfair to de Moivre, who discovered the distribution at least half a century earlier. :-)
--Jim Rogers 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. > ______________________________________________ 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.
