[santaclaus]

Now the real tough question is how do you pronounce Cholesky? I had a Polish math prof who was mad at the American pronunciation, but Cholesky was actually French, so should we actually pronounce it in the francophone style?

[mturmon]

The sophisticated linear algebra practitioners I learned from all said "ko-LESS-key". People who ask me naive questions about the decomposition ("wait, is it upper triangular or lower triangular?") say "choe-LESS-key", or "CHOLES-key", or mutter something even farther off the mark.

Thus, I'm sticking with ko-LESS-key.

Also seeking opinions on: Weiner (as in the process), and Jensen (as in the inequality), Fourier (as in the series).

[dmichulke]

It's a Wiener (you had a typo there) process and the name refers to a sausage or an inhabitants of the Austrian capital in German. So I'd pronounce it VEEner in German. Of course, if the guy was American then idk. His parents were German and Polish though.

Jensen was Danish so it's probably pronounced similar to German (?) so it'd be YENsen.

Fourier is Foo-r(i)EH in regular French.

[mindcrime]

Fourier

I've always heard this pronounced like "for-e-ay" (or "for-e-eh" where the last part is the Canadian "eh?").

[mturmon]

I'm with you. You also hear "FOUR-e-err", and my favorite EE teacher said "FUR-ee-err", indistinguishable from the word for a fur coat-maker, which always produced a smile. (But, he's a fellow of the IEEE and I'm not, so who's laughing now?)

I say "WEE-ner" (since he was American, but, open to correction on that one) and "YEN-sen" (that's how I was taught).

[santaclaus]

> FOUR-e-err

My favorites are 'you-ler' for Euler and 'goose-e-in' for Gaussian.

[llamaz]

I've always heard Wiener pronounced wine-r, but that might just be to avoid saying ween-er

[jules]

One can avoid this problem by calling it the LL^T-decomposition.