Re: [tips] Is fat fatal? [but stout is vital]

[Christopher D. Green]

Stuart McKelvie wrote: I think I read it somewhere but I have forgotten... Chris, why did Student call it "t"? Apparently it was arbitrary. It seem that Gosset used z, and Fisher changed it to t. According to the entry under "Student's T Distribution" at: http://members.aol.com/jeff570/s.html : "In his 1908 paper, "The Probable Error of a Mean", Biometrika, 6, 1-25 Gosset introduced the statistic, z, for testing hypotheses on the mean of the normal distribution. Gosset used the divisor n, not the modern (n - 1), when he estimated and his z is proportional to the modern t with t = z sqrt (n - 1). Fisher introduced the t form because it fitted in with his theory of degrees of freedom (q.v.). Fisher used the t symbol and described Student's distribution (and others based on the normal distribution) and the role of degrees of freedom in "On a Distribution Yielding the Error Functions of Several well Known Statistics", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematics, Toronto, 2, 805-813. Although the paper was presented in 1924, it was not published until 1928 (Tankard, page 103; David, 1995). According to the OED2, the letter t was chosen arbitrarily. A new symbol suited Fisher for he was already using z for a statistic of his own (see entry for F)." ================ Chris Green York U. Toronto, Canada --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])