stdevp( ) appears to be mislabeled

[Wes Loewer]

(05-28-2016 07:11 AM)parisse Wrote:  stddevp = standard deviation of the population based on a sample
stddev = standard deviation
If this is too confusing, I have nothing against renaming stddevp to stddevs.

If I understand correctly, you are saying:
stddevp = standard deviation of the population based on a sample
stddev = standard deviation of the population based on the population

Since spreadsheets like Excel, Google Sheet, & OpenOffice use STDEV (from sample) and STDEVP (from population), the use of stddevp and stddev respectively is understandably confusing. (I know I had them backwards.) A few versions ago, Excel switched to STDEV.S and STDEV.P to avoid any ambiguity but kept the old names for compatibility.

Using stddevpfroms (and stddevpfromp?) seems like overkill since the "pfrom" is implied for both cases. Using stddevs and stddevp would have been nice, but as stddevp already has the reverse meaning, that's not feasible.

How about stddevsamp() and stddevpop() ? They're unambiguous and not too long.

(For what it's worth, I just checked the Nspire. It uses stDevSamp(), stDevPop().)