On 12 Mar 2003 at 10:06, Mike Procter wrote:
> My first reaction was not to give you the answer but to tell you how to
> find out (as in give a man a fish ...). But I tried putting FTSE into
> Google and never got an expansion of the acronym. Anyway, it stands for
> Financial Times Stock Exchange (index, or 100). The FT is a financial
> newspaper published in London which defines inexes based on the London
> bourse. I think FTSE is now an independent company.
My first reaction on reading the original request for an explanation
of the FTSE was, fancy asking Allstat something so trivial/wellknown!
On reflection, firstly, we shouldn't take for granted that an acronym
familiar to virtually all adults in the UK will be similarly well-
known in other countries. More profoundly, there is an epiphenomenon
here. In our information age, we often don't succeed in closing the
circle. (1) A very familiar acronym gets referred to so often that
there is little chance of finding the full version from a web search
that produces "about 688,000" hits. (2) Sometimes one wonders what
was the final outcome of a news "thread" (or indeed an Allstat one)
that has gone dead. (3) In statistical conferences, often those
presenting their work presuppose that all their audience are at
exactly the same cutting edge position in the development of their
specialised area as they are - the same can apply to papers for
publication also - a phenomenon that gets more severe as technical
complexity and degree of specialisation of statistical research
deepen. We, the statistical profession, probably can't do much about
the first example, but we should be aware of the third one, and
strive to make our communications less dependent on others having all
the prior knowledge that we have.
..........................................
Robert G. Newcombe, PhD, CStat, Hon MFPHM
Reader in Medical Statistics
University of Wales College of Medicine
Heath Park
Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK.
Phone 029 2074 2329 or 2311
Fax 029 2074 3664
Email [log in to unmask]
Web:
http://www.uwcm.ac.uk/epidemiology_statistics/research/statistics/newc
ombe.h
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