AW: eigenvalue: origin of term

[Werner Wittmann]

Karl, yes it is as German as your name.Value means "Wert" and eigenvalue means "Eigenwert" and I guess it goes back to Carl Friedrich Gauss who provided us with many math concepts,i.e. matrix algebra among many others. In Germany we honor him very much.His portrait is on our 10 DM bill,with the normal curve and its equation. In teaching statistics, I always use that bill to remind my students where all this stuff comes from. If we had had computers earlier, Sir Ronald Fisher would probably not have to develop ANOVA, because of the general linear model Gauss developed,but inverting the correlation matrix to get the effects was too complicated to compute by hand,so Sir Ronald developed the ANOVA shortcut. Later Jack Cohen showed in  his seminal paper " Multiple regression as a general data analytic system" that using the general linear model does the job. I'm always teasing my colleagues and students, if you spent one year learning ANOVA and one year multiple regression you've wasted almost one year of your life. Cordially yours Werner   Werner W. Wittmann; University of Mannheim; Germany; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   -----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht----- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Im Auftrag von Karl L. Wuensch Gesendet: Samstag, 20. Januar 2001 19:03 An: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Betreff: eigenvalue: origin of term     Can any of you all enlighten me regarding the origin of the term "eigenvalue."  Is it related to the German word "eigen?" +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Karl L. Wuensch, Department of Psychology, East Carolina University, Greenville NC 27858-4353 Voice: 252-328-4102 Fax: 252-328-6283 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/klw.htm