Scrutable

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.