Lost in translation (reprise)
Late last year I drew up a table of actuarial terms and their translation for statisticians. I had thought that it was a uniquely actuarial trait to use different names compared to other disciplines. It turns out that statisticians are almost as guilty. Table 1 shows some common statistical terms in mortality modelling and their description for non-statisticians.
Table 1. Some statistical terms and their definition for mathematicians and engineers.
| Statistical term | Notation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| hazard function | varies | The instantaneous failure rate. |
| observed information matrix |  |
The curvature of the log-likelihood function, i.e. the negative of the matrix of second partial derivatives. This is the same as the negative of the Hessian matrix. |
| score function |  |
The gradient of the log-likelihood function, i.e. its first partial derivative. |
Our non-statistical readers will recognise the origin of the name of this blog. If we had called it the Hessian, then things would have been very confusing indeed.
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