From help-request at octave dot org Fri Jun 24 13:49:08 2005
Subject: RE: statistics distributions function names
From: (Ted Harding) <Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk>
To: help at octave dot org
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:35:12 +0100 (BST)

On 24-Jun-05 John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 23-Jun-2005, Ben Barrowes wrote:
> 
>| Why are the names for the distribution functions in
>| /usr/local/share/octave/2.9.3/m/statistics/distributions/
>| different from their ML counterparts?
> 
> I'm not certain, but it might be that some of the Octave functions
> were written before the functions in Matlab.  Or, it might be that
> they were written at a time when there was not so much empasis on
> compatibility with Matlab.

The initial systematic provision of a suite of statistical functions,
including the distributions (with their current names), was done by
Kurt Hornik around 1995, or even earlier. I don't know when the
equivalent came in with MatLab, but I'm pretty sure that in those
days there was indeed less emphasis on MatLab compatibility, and
Kurt just chose what seemed to be good names (which they are).

Best wishes,
Ted.


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Date: 24-Jun-05                                       Time: 19:10:00
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