[R] [OT] "normal" (as in "Guassian")

[Andrew Robinson]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 10:22:41PM +0100, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> Patrick Burns wrote:
> > Douglas Bates wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> >>  
> >>
> >>     
> >>> On 3/3/2008 9:10 AM, Rogers, James A [PGRD Groton] wrote:
> >>>       
> >>>> 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.
> >>>> :-)
> >>>>         
> >>> Just an example of Stigler's Law.
> >>>    
> >>>
> >>>       
> >> Taking this to a whole new level of "off topic", I wonder if Stigler's
> >> Law is self-referential?  That is, should Stigler's Law more correctly
> >> be attributed to someone else?
> >>     
> >
> > No.  If Stigler's Law were named after some prior person,
> > then it wouldn't be an example of itself.
> >   
> Only if said person actually was first to discover it, surely.

I believe that Stigler believes that he was not the first to discover
Stigler's Law.


-- 
Andrew Robinson  
Department of Mathematics and Statistics            Tel: +61-3-8344-6410
University of Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia         Fax: +61-3-8344-4599
http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~andrewpr
http://blogs.mbs.edu/fishing-in-the-bay/