[Rd] qpois Help problems (PR#14200)

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Mon Feb 1 17:45:32 CET 2010


On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch wrote:

>>>>>> "JL" == Jerry Lewis <Jerry.Lewis at biogenidec.com>
>>>>>>     on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:50:12 +0100 (CET) writes:
>
>    JL> Full_Name: Jerry W. Lewis
>    JL> Version: 2.10.1
>    JL> OS: Windows XP Professional
>    JL> Submission from: (NULL) (198.180.131.21)
>
>
>    JL> In the line
>
>    JL> "The quantile is right continuous: qpois(q, lambda) is the smallest integer x
>    JL> such that P(X <= x) >= q."
>
>    JL> "q" is used as a probability when the Arguments section defines it to be a
>    JL> quantile.
>
> Yes.  I agree this can be slightly confusing.
> Thank you for the note.
>
> Note however that *mathematically* the above is entirely
> correct.  It just uses  'q' instead of 'p', but as you know, in
> math you are allowed to use whatever letters you want.....
> as long as they are used consistently within one context.
> As the 'Usage:' and 'Arguments:' parts are "R-codish", using R
> object names, rather than mathematical notation, they are
> "out of context" from the math formula point of view  ;-)
> ..
> I have changed that part to use 'p' now, ...
> but for R-devel only, as indeed, it's *not* a bug fix.
>
>    JL> Also there are some representation problems where the escape character is
>    JL> printed instead of interpreted, such as "\ldots" and "\lambda" in the preceding
>    JL> lines.
>
> "printed" meaning what?
> How exactly are you looking at that help page?
> Is it the HTML version or the text version?
>
> In any case, I'd guess that this is problem specific to your
> platform, but maybe reproducible by others,
> if you'd give the details...

HTML in R 2.10.1, I believe, see the NEWS item for 2.10.1 patched:

     o	Although \eqn{} in Rd files is defined as a 'verbatim' macro,
 	many packages expected \dots and \ldots to be interpreted
 	there (as was the case in R < 2.10.0), so this is now done
 	(using an ellipsis in HTML rendering).

(and another change fixes up misuse of \lambda).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



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