[seqfan] Re: New name needed for a certain type of matrix I discovered.

Peter Luschny peter.luschny at googlemail.com
Sat Nov 12 17:04:32 CET 2011


EJ> I'm sure that mathematics authors don't make a habit of
EJ> naming objects after themselves.

Yes. However, this is very risky. Look at this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misnamed_theorems

When my children were born I was not ready to run such a risk
and named them shortly afterwards after myself.

I think it may vary across cultures and I personally would not
mind you calling your tilings Jeffery tilings. However, I would
not use this name until I see that experts in this field do so also.

Now these experts have, by Stigler's law, the tendency to honor
people other than their respective originators. See this discussion:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24132/what-are-examples-of-mathematical-concepts-named-after-the-wrong-people-stigler

There are certainly such cases also in the OEIS database. For example
the numbers A000587 were first studied by R. E. Beard (1950) and Alfréd
Rényi (1966). On OEIS they are called 'Rao Uppuluri-Carpenter' numbers.

Peter



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