# Are notation questions off-topic?

I was wondering if the Stats.SE community would know of a more compact way of writing $$(X_1, X_2, \dots, X_n) \sim F$$ since I use it so often, but there's nothing inherently difficult about the question that would require statistical knowledge.
For that reason, I'm unsure whether it is considered relevant here. Are questions regarding "good notation" fair game for Stats.SE?

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Are you simply asking about $\LaTeX$ shortcuts? If so, this question may help: latex-macros-for-expectation-variance-and-covariance, also there is an SE site for $\TeX$. – gung Oct 28 '12 at 2:26

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I meant in general, like writing. I want to know about a concise way of writing it. – Christopher Aden Oct 28 '12 at 2:47
– gung Oct 28 '12 at 2:53
Yes, I do mean writing fewer characters in the line, but still retaining the clarity. I'm hesitant to use $\mathbf{X_n} \sim^{iid} F$, as it might be interpreted as a multivariate distribution on the vector. – Christopher Aden Oct 28 '12 at 3:44

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The expression in the question is already ambiguous: literally, it says the vector $(X_i)$ has the multivariate distribution $F$. If you mean that you have a set of iid variables, it would be more correct and less ambiguous to write something like $\left\{ X_i \right\}\stackrel{iid}{\sim}F$. But in general, it's clearer to state what you mean (in English) the first time: then more readers are likely to understand your words correctly. – whuber♦ Oct 28 '12 at 15:57

## 2 Answers

I think they should be on-topic here. Notation can greatly assist clarity (or, in some cases, retard it). One good bit of advice I got on reading about models is to follow the subscripts. But that, of course, necessitates that the subscripts are correctly written in the first place.

As an aside, the professor who taught ANOVA to me (and many others) was not aided in his exposition by the fact that, on the board, his i's and j's (and sometimes his k's) all looked identical.

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They seem to be on topic, as attested by 17 questions already bearing the notation tag.

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To clarify, you mean that they seem to be on-topic? – Russell S. Pierce Jan 20 at 15:59
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