On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 12:00:33AM +0200, Levente Uzonyi wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Ken G. Brown wrote:
> 
> >On 2011-04-21, at 15:16, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>On 21.04.2011, at 23:01, Levente Uzonyi wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Frank Shearar wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>On 2011/04/21 21:18, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> >>>>>On 21.04.2011, at 21:24, Nicolas Cellier wrote:
> >>>>>>Just a question of language: how to name them in English ?
> >>>>>>Using asinh acosh atanh like any other programming language do would
> >>>>>>be that simple...
> >>>>>>But Smalltalk did not follow that path and didn't implement asin acos 
> >>>>>>atan...
> >>>>>>In French, inverse hyperbolic functions are named like this
> >>>>>>argument sinus hyperbolique (argsh ou argsinh)
> >>>>>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonction_hyperbolique#Argument_tangente_hyperbolique
> >>>>>>So I decided to use argSinh argCosh argTanh quite naturally (like we
> >>>>>>have arcSin arcCos arcTan).
> >>>>>>However I'm not sure English has same conventions. Can someone 
> >>>>>>enlighten me?
> >>>>>>Nicolas
> >>>>>How about hypSin, hypArcSin, etc.? Alternatively, sinHyp, arcSinHyp.
> >>>>>This would fit the existing theme better, since we use arcSin where 
> >>>>>others use asin, etc. Just appending an "h" looks odd.
> >>>>
> >>>>Heh, I think appending an "h" looks exactly right :)
> >>>>
> >>>>http://mathworld.wolfram.com/InverseHyperbolicCosine.html for instance 
> >>>>uses "arccosh".
> >>>
> >>>+1 :)
> >>>
> >>>Actually searching my image with the message names browser for 
> >>>'arcSinH', I found the following:
> >>>arcSinH
> >>>testArcSinH
> >>>testArcSinHStd
> >>
> >>"H" is much better than "h".
> >>
> >>- Bert -
> >>
> >
> >-1
> >Not according to Wolfram. They suggest lower case 'h'.
> 
> Since arccosh is an abbreviation of arcus cosinus hyperbolicus, the 
> camelcase version should be arcCosH.

Just as a data point:

As a native speaker of American English with a typically weak
education in mathematics, "arcCosH" seems good to me. If I were
to look for this in a method finder, I would probably be looking
for "cos" and "arccos" (not acos). I would not know or remember
the actual meaning of the function, and I definitely would not
be aware of the origins of the name. But I would be very pleased
if I were able to find it in a method finder and then see a
method comment that explained the "arcus cosinus hyperbolicus"
derivation along with a brief description of the function.

Wolfram as a reference makes sense to me, although I do like
the upper case "H" to indicate that the name is derived from
three words.

Before writing this reply, I did a "man arccos" on my unix
box, expecting to see a man page. Actually it is "acos", but
I did not know that. So for whatever reason, my intuitive
expectation was that I would find a function named "arccos"
and this is probably the same thing I would have searched for
in a Squeak method finder.

I am not advocating anything (I would prefer to have it named
by someone with a real mathematical background, not me), so this
is just feedback as to what "sounds good" to one American
English speaker.

Dave