Appendix B — The Snazzalicious Greek Alphabet

Fun fact!

Snazzalicious! Food that’s dressed up, fancy, and begging for a photo.

Statistical notation can be pretty particular and different from usual mathematical notation. One of these particularities is the constant use of Greek letters to denote unknown population parameters in modelling setup, estimation, and statistical inference. In that spirit, throughout this book, we use diverse Greek letters to denote our regression parameters across each of the outlined models in every chapter.

Image by meineresterampe via Pixabay.

During early learning stages of regression modelling, we may feel overwhelmed by these new letters, which could be unfamiliar. Therefore, whenever confusion arises in any of the main chapters in this book regarding the names of these letters, we recommend checking out the Greek alphabet from Table B.1. Note that frequentist statistical inference mostly uses lowercase letters. With practice over time, you would likely end up memorizing most of this alphabet.

Table B.1: Greek alphabet composed of 24 letters, from left to right you can find the name of letter along with its corresponding uppercase and lowercase forms.

Name	Uppercase	Lowercase
Alpha	\(\text{A}\)	\(\alpha\)
Beta	\(\text{B}\)	\(\beta\)
Gamma	\(\Gamma\)	\(\gamma\)
Delta	\(\Delta\)	\(\delta\)
Epsilon	\(\text{E}\)	\(\epsilon\)
Zeta	\(\text{Z}\)	\(\zeta\)
Eta	\(\text{H}\)	\(\eta\)
Theta	\(\Theta\)	\(\theta\)
Iota	\(\text{I}\)	\(\iota\)
Kappa	\(\text{K}\)	\(\kappa\)
Lambda	\(\Lambda\)	\(\lambda\)
Mu	\(\text{M}\)	\(\mu\)
Nu	\(\text{N}\)	\(\nu\)
Xi	\(\Xi\)	\(\xi\)
O	\(\text{O}\)	\(\text{o}\)
Pi	\(\Pi\)	\(\pi\)
Rho	\(\text{P}\)	\(\rho\)
Sigma	\(\Sigma\)	\(\sigma\)
Tau	\(\text{T}\)	\(\tau\)
Upsilon	\(\Upsilon\)	\(\upsilon\)
Phi	\(\Phi\)	\(\phi\)
Chi	\(\text{X}\)	\(\chi\)
Psi	\(\Psi\)	\(\psi\)
Omega	\(\Omega\)	\(\omega\)