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by mturmon 3196 days ago
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).

3 comments

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.

Fourier

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

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).

> FOUR-e-err

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

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