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Math Forum » Discussions » Inactive » Historia-Matematica

Topic: [HM] question about term "normal"
Replies: 1   Last Post: Oct 24, 2006 2:31 PM

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Judy Grabiner

Posts: 22
Registered: 12/3/04
[HM] question about term "normal"
Posted: Oct 16, 2006 12:24 PM
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Dear Listmembers:

A colleague has asked me the following:

Someone said that some digits
were "normally" distributed when he clearly meant
"uniform." And when I say that, I mean that he used the two terms
incorrectly according to my "statistician's"
vocabulary. However, he has pointed out
to me (see below) that Number Theorists actually do use "normally
distributed" to mean "uniform":
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NormalNumber.html
The term "normal" is clearly inappropriate in this
situation (i.e. the number theorists are really talking about uniform
distributions).
Does anyone know the history about why, or
who came first?

Thanks,
Judith Grabiner

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