"Abelian" is at least a fresh new concept to hang your own associations off of, with no previous interference, and without interference from the similarly-named "Adelian" groups or something equally stupid.
The problem isn't just that the term is something you've never heard before, but that "I" and "II" is not a very good concept to try to hang them off of. This is relevant to software engineering naming too: In general, you should not use naming schemes that imply properties that don't actually exist in your values. I and II have all sorts of properties that don't apply to the terms in question, most noticeably, they have an order. But, which is "first", false positives or false negatives? They don't have a natural order. Using numbers to name them just gets in the way.
(Especially when there are perfectly serviceable words.)
Math jargon isn't perfect by any means. But it does at least avoid naming things by sheer numbers most of the time, unless there isn't really a choice because it needs a few hundred names right now.
(Similarly, pop quiz: In Kahneman's classification scheme, is System 1 the fast or the slow system? Odds are, even if you get that right, it's because the book title "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is something that stuck and it happen to be in order. It probably wasn't because you remember them by number.)
> Imagine mathematicians calling commutative groups abelian? How do you remember if xy=yx there?
Actually, even if you ignore jerf's response, this is different in an important way from the "Type I" / "Type II" terminology.
Group in which the group operation is commutative: "Abelian group".
Group with no guarantees except the group axioms: "group".
The special one is marked and the non-special one is unmarked. In contrast, the designations "Type I" and "Type II" are parallel; it's not at all obvious which one is the default and which one deviates from the default.
jerf|5 years ago
The problem isn't just that the term is something you've never heard before, but that "I" and "II" is not a very good concept to try to hang them off of. This is relevant to software engineering naming too: In general, you should not use naming schemes that imply properties that don't actually exist in your values. I and II have all sorts of properties that don't apply to the terms in question, most noticeably, they have an order. But, which is "first", false positives or false negatives? They don't have a natural order. Using numbers to name them just gets in the way.
(Especially when there are perfectly serviceable words.)
Math jargon isn't perfect by any means. But it does at least avoid naming things by sheer numbers most of the time, unless there isn't really a choice because it needs a few hundred names right now.
(Similarly, pop quiz: In Kahneman's classification scheme, is System 1 the fast or the slow system? Odds are, even if you get that right, it's because the book title "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is something that stuck and it happen to be in order. It probably wasn't because you remember them by number.)
thaumasiotes|5 years ago
Actually, even if you ignore jerf's response, this is different in an important way from the "Type I" / "Type II" terminology.
Group in which the group operation is commutative: "Abelian group".
Group with no guarantees except the group axioms: "group".
The special one is marked and the non-special one is unmarked. In contrast, the designations "Type I" and "Type II" are parallel; it's not at all obvious which one is the default and which one deviates from the default.