Talk:Lambda

Breasts?

"Lambda is used as a symbol for separating the two human breasts in Internet chat iconography, specifically as ' ( . λ . ) '" Is this really relevant? Yes, it is a cute use of the symbol in a graphic way, but the same could be said of the symbols used in hundreds of other emoticons. I think that this entry was added more for titillation than edification and its removal should be considered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.129.180.84 (talk) 03:21, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Ωω says it's fine. You exist. All else is fail.

Who removed Ωω's symbols from those http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories#Aether_and_quantum_mechanics pages anyway..

You people don't care about reality. You care about getting everything infinitely wrong for fun. Why does your generalization get accepted when you dismiss greater generalizations and also greater clarification, simply because your mind cannot grasp fully what reality is?

Spelling

Resolved

 – Nonsense without sources.

It's "lamda", not "lamBda"!

However, in modern Greek Pronunciation, it's probably '"labda", not "laMbda"' ...

Um, no. Show even one source that uses "lamda". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually it is spelled "lamtha" with "th" as in "there". Here is one source: http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/lambda-Vs-Lamda.aspx

(one more time)

Wrong is right. The Greeks prefer it without the Beta . Seems that long, long ago English folk just added a B. (Easier to remember as an animal? That's just how we roll!) The unicode mailing list provides some recent history. By way of comparison, Daniel Moth merely suggests lam(th)a is another (more phonetic) way misspell it. There is no going back, but the confusion should be admitted or addressed --- perhaps in the opening paragraph. --dvdrtrgn (talk) 00:05, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Wilks's lambda

Goodman & Kruskal's lambda is a statistic which gives the proportional reduction in error when one variable's values are used to predict the values of another variable.

Uhm... here is wilks' lambda then?

Clarification: The symbol for Wilks' Lambda is written in uppercase Greek: Λ (see under heading Upper-case letter Λ). The symbol for Goodman & Kruskall's Lambda (a different statistic altogether) is written in lowercase Greek: λ (see under heading Lower-case letter λ).

FYI, here are the formulas for each: $\Lambda ={\frac {det(S_{error})}{det(S_{effect}+S_{error})}}$
[see http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hf101702/Julia_Wilk's%20Lamda.pdf]

$\lambda (C|R)={\frac {\sum _{i}r_{i}-\max _{k}(n_{.k})}{N-\max _{k}(n_{.k})}}$ where $r_{i}=\max _{k}(n_{ik})$
[see http://support.sas.com/onlinedoc/913/getDoc/en/statug.hlp/freq_sect20.htm]
Mark Walter 06:20, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Gay connection

Does anyone know WHY lamda is used as a symbol of the LGBT community? I came here hoping to find out....Redclaire 23:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The lower case lambda (the one that looks like an upside-down "y") became a widely recognized symbol in the early Gay Liberation movement when New York's Gay Activist's Alliance (GAA)promoted the symbol in the form of buttons and T-shirts in 1970. In the early 1970s the Gay Activist's Alliance (GAA) was perhaps the largest and most important gay/lesbian liberationist organization in the US at the time.In December of 1969, an officer of that group, Tom Doerr, suggested the lambda because he claimed that in physics the lambda represented "a complete exchange of energy" -or activism- a meaning that has been disputed. The lambda became popular throughout North America and appeared on political buttons, jewelry, flags, and articles of clothing. Although widely recognized in the gay/lesbian community in the 1970's and 1980's, it was not familiar to most heterosexuals and therefore a discrete way gay and lesbian people could identify themselves to other members of their community.

At the close of the 20th century it appears other symbols of the l/g/b/t community gained greater popularity: particularly the "pink triangle" (originally a badge forced upon homosexuals by the Nazis during the Third Reich, similiar to the yellow star for Jews) and the "rainbow flag" which symbolizes the diversity of the l/g/b/t.

The lambda survives as a popular symbol of gay liberation and l/g/b/t civil rights. Several organizations have the name "lambda" in it, such as The Lambda Legal Defense Fund (an important l/g/b/t legal civil rights group, and The Lambda Community Center in Texas. There are many references I can cite in regards to the information I provided, such as "Dancing The Gay Lib Blues" a book by Arthur Bell, or "The Gay Militants" by Don Teal (both excellant short histories of the Stonewall Rebellion and the early Gay Liberation Movement), but for convenience check out online the GLBTQ Encyclopedia or even a major flag manufacturer's website: www.crwflags.com Buddmar 05:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)buddmar

Well, that's a nice mini-essay, I suppose. A) Yes, the article does need this information (in fact, even I came here looking for the "why" behind this). B) Source it. (whiny comment removed) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a very good explanation of the use of the lambda symbol in the LGBTQ community.--Robapalooza (talk) 19:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

No LAMBDA, yes MICROLITER

The link bellow from the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) shows that the use of "lambda" as volume unit is unacceptable, and must be used "microliter".

http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/contents.html

JMRG, CSIC, Madrid, Spain —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.111.151.9 (talk) 18:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You mean other than what it says in section 5.3.2 ? NIST makes the rules. 210.48.82.11 (talk) 02:38, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that must be one of the funniest webpages by any standards (organisation).

I love how gamma is listed as a unit of mass: "1 γ = 1 µmg = 10^-9 kg". Even if it's just a list of examples of unacceptable units, one would hope they could get the values right. But using both µ (micro- = 10^-6) and m (milli- = 10^-3) prefixes together is wrong in the first place, and then they combine them to 10^-9 and forget that the base is gram, ending up with 1 γ = 10^-9 kg which of course is 10^-6 g = 1 µg, instead of what I guess would be correct value: 1 γ = 1 ng. Hilarious! 5.186.55.135 (talk) 12:06, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Copyrighted symbol of Valve Software, used throughout the Half Life games.

Really? Darkpoet (talk) 15:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no such thing as a "copyrighted symbol" unless it is completely newly invented (e.g., the symbol used by the singer Prince). See copyright, trademark, patent and (more generally) intellectual property for the differences between various i.p. concepts. A symbol can potentially be trademarked, within certain areas of commerce. 13:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

No. I don't know if they actually trademarked the symbol in this use, but they certainly did (do?) use it as the logo for the Half Life series. And this use is clearly notable, so it would be logical to include this use. But maybe someone should check if it it was actually trademarked first? 87.60.235.135 (talk) 10:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It is used elsewhere to denote the decay constant. see halflife , I suspect they took it beacuse it's sexier than t_1/2 210.48.82.11 (talk) 02:46, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 66.234.197.53, 27 October 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} In extreme low temparture physics it (the lower case letter lambda) is used to indicate the super fluid point of Liquid Helium at 2.4 degrees kelvin 66.234.197.53 (talk) 05:17, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Thanks, Stickee (talk) 06:42, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Is it related to the Lambda point? That article includes a couple of references. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:21, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 72.144.193.201, 24 January 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} A typographical error exists in the article on the Greek letter lambda, under the discussion of the lower-case letter: In the sentence which reads, "In cartography and navigation, lambda denotes the longitude or a location," the word "or" should be "of". —JCAcheson@aol.com 72.144.193.201 (talk) 20:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Done Qwyrxian (talk) 02:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Half-Life

The lambda symbol is used as the logo for the Half-Life series of video games, and i feel this should be mentioned. (see http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Lambda_logo ) --Raddaluigi (talk) 07:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Somebody please put this in? The very world "Lambda" makes thousands of gamers immediately think of the Half Life games. It is indeed the symbol for the entire franchise, symbolizing the labs where the accident occurred as well as the rebellion. If StarGate can get a mention, so should Half life... --User:Guest — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.221.32.14 (talk) 12:19, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Assassin's Creed

A modified capital lambda is used as the symbol for the assassins in the Assassin's Creed series. I feel that this is worth mentioning. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Assassin%27s_Creed_Logo.png

i also agree that the half life symbol being a lambda needs to be posted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.99.96.11 (talk) 15:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 74.205.24.229, 29 April 2011

In the section referring to "functional programming", you have no link to your functional programing ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

Please replace all occurances of :

    functional programming

To be links to

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

74.205.24.229 (talk) 14:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

 Done MorganKevinJ^(talk) 01:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Repeated links

Good morning. On 15 Dec 2014, I removed a link to "anonymous function" in the "Lambda as a programming construct" section because it had already been linked in that section. [1] On 31 Dec 2014, 178.63.34.82 reverted that edit. [2] Is everyone else okay with me removing the repeated links to "anonymous function" from this article? Kind regards, Matt Heard (talk) 18:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Python Example

The Python example shown has 2 problems: it is using the keyword "list" as a variable (extremely bad coding practice), and it has an unnecessary set of parentheses (making the code example less readable). Current version:

>>> list = ['woman', 'man', 'horse', 'boat', 'plane', 'dog']
>>> sorted(list, key = lambda word: (word[-1]))
['horse', 'plane', 'dog', 'woman', 'man', 'boat']

Proposed version:

>>> mylist = ['woman', 'man', 'horse', 'boat', 'plane', 'dog']
>>> sorted(mylist, key = lambda word: word[-1])
['horse', 'plane', 'dog', 'woman', 'man', 'boat']

When I tried making the change I received this error message from wikipedia: "An automated filter has identified this edit as potentially unconstructive, and it has been disallowed. If this edit is constructive, please report this error."

Tales of Graces

Do we really need a massive paragraph explaining the plot of a video game just because it uses the word lambda? 137.229.82.99 (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

NATO use

The article currently says "In NATO military operations, a chevron (a capital lambda symbol) is painted on the vehicles of this military alliance for identification." No reference is cited for this statement.

The sentence is correct except for the parenthetical comment, but only that comment justifies the presence of the sentence in this article. The NATO chevron comes via French heraldry (where chevron means rafter, after the shape), the long history of military rank insignia, and the fact that the chevron shape is easy to apply, remember, and recognize, not via Greek (where the Spartan symbol is simply the initial letter of Lacedaemon).

So I think that line ought to come out entirely. Any objections? If so, please cite a source. 71.197.166.72 (talk) 10:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

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