[time-nuts] Mentorship needed in learning about Allan Deviation and variation.

[jimlux]

On 10/27/20 6:16 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:
> Alberto,
> 
> Thanks for asking. The correct spelling is Allan variance or Allan 
> deviation, named after David Allan, of NBS (NIST). Yes, on rare 
> occasions it is misspelled Allen, as in the hex key wrench. Note it's 
> spelled correctly in the Subject line of this thread. I'm not aware of 
> national explanations for the misspelling; it could simply be that allen 
> is more popular a name than allan and a spell checker allows either one.
> 
> The ADEV statistic itself is spelled Allan because that's his name: Dr. 
> David W. Allan. Similarly, the hex wrench is spelled Allen because of 
> Mr. William G. Allen.
> 
> More fun: When you google word search it displays a hit count:
> 
> "allan deviation" About        84,300 results (0.46 seconds)
> "allen deviation" About         2,460 results (0.40 seconds)
> 
> "allan variance"  About        85,400 results (0.41 seconds)
> "allen variance"  About        21,300 results (0.37 seconds)
> 
> "allen wrench"    About     4,820,000 results (0.52 seconds)
> "allan"           About   213,000,000 results (0.77 seconds)
> "allen"           About 1,190,000,000 results (0.87 seconds)
> 
> You can see that the word allen is 5x more popular than allan. That 
> alone may explain the occasion misspelling of ADEV. Also, apparently, 
> Allen wrench tools are 50x more popular than Allan deviation tools ;-)
> 

I'm still agitating for alien deviation - Microsoft offers it as a 
suggestion, but not Allan, so it must be true.



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