Denaming Science

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snoozeofreason
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Denaming Science

Post by snoozeofreason » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:01 pm

UCL has recently denamed some of its buildings, including the Pearson Building and Pearson Lecture Theatre (named after statistician and eugenicist Karl Pearson), which set me thinking about names in science. I doubt that many people outside UCL are aware that it has a Pearson Building (I didn't, and I worked at UCL for a while), but most mathematically inclined schoolboys of a certain age will remember the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. I had a quick look at younger son's A-Level Maths text books and discovered that this seems to have been quietly denamed as well. It's now just the Product-Moment Coefficient (at least as far as Edexcel is concerned, I'm not sure about other boards). I imagine that there are other coefficients, theorems, numbers, equations, and effects that are ripe for the same treatment - anything named after William Shockley for example. How much of this has already quietly happened, as with Pearson, and how much should happen?
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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snoozeofreason
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Re: Denaming Science

Post by snoozeofreason » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:19 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:01 pm
most mathematically inclined schoolboys of a certain age will remember the Pearson Correlation Coefficient
And schoolgirls of course. I went to an all boys school in the late Cretaceous period, but I think there were schoolgirls.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Gfamily
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Re: Denaming Science

Post by Gfamily » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:26 pm

I didn't know about the Pearson Correlation Coefficient until I had to help our daughter with her AS Level maths stats homework.

Mind you, my own A level syllabus really didn't do any stats.
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bob sterman
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Re: Denaming Science

Post by bob sterman » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:49 pm

As I just wrote in another thread - maybe it's time to rename the correlation coefficient as Bravais' r ???

https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/bravais.htm

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Little waster
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Re: Denaming Science

Post by Little waster » Sat Jun 20, 2020 7:13 pm

I did my PhD at UCL. Recall the Galton lecture hall dont recall the Pearson building but then again I was drinking heavily at the time.

I worked with a Professor Pearson whose biggest contribution to science was making beer out of algae*.

I reckon we should just shift the honour to him.



*I imagine he did some other stuff too.
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Re: Denaming Science

Post by Bewildered » Sun Jun 21, 2020 5:02 am

In general I would prefer to see more things given descriptive names, rather than being named after people anyway. I think it just makes communication and pedagogy easier, avoiding the need to associate a bunch of arbitrary names with the concept. So yes please do get rid of names of people who actively did bad sh.t.

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