The Greeks Had a Word For It

by PM

22 October 2013, 0829 EDT

How do you spell heteros*edasticity? Economist Alfredo R. Paloyo surveys the evidence and shows that the variant “heteroskedasticity” overtook its rival, “heteroscedasticity”, several years ago. Oddly, “homoscedastic”, “heteroscedastic”, and “homoscedasticity” continue to trump their k-variants. (Clearly, I am in the copy-editing phase of revising a paper, and this blog post must be part of the revision process, since it would be procrastination otherwise.)

Orthographic purists will insist on heteroskedastic because it is closer to the Greek root. Seizing on yet another opportunity to be sado-pedantic, I will join them. But I will go one further on Paloyo and others. I insist that his fellow oikonomists embrace a rather more radical orthographic reform.

(Template hack. There’s nothing else here.)