El jue, 28-01-2010 a las 10:20 +0200, Talha Yalta escribió:
Hi all:
I would like to pick your brain on the usage of "," and ";" in
statistical notation in other European countries. In Turkey ve use
comma as the decimal seperator and I intend to follow this in my
econometrics lecture notes. I prepare my notes using LaTeX and I want
them to be perfect not only in content but also in grammar and
punctuation.
Using for example N(9,6, 1,34) looks confusing. Also, within text
using for example "the four variances respectively are 0,2, 0,4, 0,6
and 0,8..." is problematic. I can solve the problem using N(9,6; 1,34)
for the first example and using "the four variances respectively are
0,2 and 0,4 and 0,6 and 0,8..." for the second example.
In Spanish we use "," as decimal separator as well. The RAE (Real
Academia Española), which regulates the use of the language, allows the
use of the decimal point (as an "international" rule) but all printed
material (newspapers, etc) use the comma. So all econometrics books in
Spanish use the comma as decimal separator as well.
Having a quick look at some econometrics books I see in general in
symbolic language they tend to use the same convention as in English,
for example N(B, Sigma), but in the case of an empirical application
they solve the problem as you: N(9,6; 1,34)
Now, the other option is to employ the US standard notation of using
dots as the decimal seperator but being the perfectionist that I am, I
would be uncomfortable seeing commas in the various gretl screenshots
(from Turkish translation) used in my lecture notes while I am using
dots in the text myself.
So my question is: How common is the use of comma as the decimal
seperator in econometric texts in other European countries? I am
guessing that some authors say in Germany, Italy or France would use
"," while some prefer using "," but can you say one is more accepted
than the other?
All the books I have seen in Spanish use ","
Are students used to seeing and dealing with both
types of notation that they see in different sources?
Yes. They know the decimal point is used in some other countries.
--
Ignacio Diaz-Emparanza
DEPARTAMENTO DE ECONOMÍA APLICADA III (ECONOMETRÍA Y ESTADÍSTICA)
UPV/EHU
Avda. Lehendakari Aguirre, 83 | 48015 BILBAO
T.: +34 946013732 | F.: +34 946013754
www.ea3.ehu.es