I'd also wondered why r is the correlation coefficient but it turns out it's the "regression" coefficient, as in how strong the regression to the mean is.
A lot of these conventions just develop according to what notation sticks, like how π caught on almost 3 millennia after the ratio was treated as a constant.
And not all of them are even as universal as one might think. mx+c is not.
Charles Hutton used y = ax + b for the equation of a "right line" in xyr 1811 A Course of Mathematics, for example.
I definitely though of the programming language at first. Although the speed of light is a bit presumptuous to qualify the speed of C, I now wonder why every benchmark is against C, and not some other language.
Partly because it is fairly fast, partly because, whatever you’re running your language on, chances are better that you can run a C compiler on it than that you can run most other languages.
My immediate guess based on no specific knowledge was “arbitrary constant while they were figuring things out” and it sounds like that’s not far from the truth. The process of discovery is often far more protracted than it seems when one is reading about it decades after the fact.
"As for c, that is the speed of light in vacuum, and if you ask why c, the answer is that it is the initial letter of celeritas, the Latin word meaning speed."
I was always taught that it stood for "constant", which is what the speed of light is in every frame of reference and I've never stopped to question it because it made sense. But it seems that usage actually predates Einstein according to the above article. It's interesting how a good story can be used to sell something that's not entirely true and I never stopped to question it.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadI'd also wondered why r is the correlation coefficient but it turns out it's the "regression" coefficient, as in how strong the regression to the mean is.
And not all of them are even as universal as one might think. mx+c is not.
Charles Hutton used y = ax + b for the equation of a "right line" in xyr 1811 A Course of Mathematics, for example.
the great divide between US and Europe :D should be a - a, b, c, d... why m though, indeed?
A small but loud group of scientists are working to replace c with a crab emoji in most literature going forward.
Just llike the Electron.
Off-topic but their botanical gardens and Cactus/Desert garden is a really enjoyable afternoon.
A, no idea.
Also might I add the speed of light is (lower-case) c, not C
Isaac Asimov in "C for Celeritas (1959)"
'https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLig...
Because C++ and Rust wasn’t invented when they formalized it! … I’ll see myself out