MDM Reference • Editorial policy

Editorial Policy

This policy records how the essays of the Matrix Distribution Math Reference are prepared and kept. It is written so that a reader may judge how much weight to place on any page.

Purpose of the desk

The desk exists to gather, arrange and check a body of expository writing on mathematical statistics and wave form modelling. Its aim is accuracy and clarity, and its work is academic in kind. It takes no brief from any outside interest, and it accepts none.

Sourcing

Each essay is built on the primary literature of its theme, together with the standard textbooks of the field. Where an essay simplifies a result, the simplification is named rather than hidden. A claim that rests on a named source is preferred to a claim that rests on recollection, and the desk keeps a record of the sources behind each cell.

Figure — the Gaussian density, with the centre and the inflection marked.

Review before publication

Before an essay is published it is read twice: once for the correctness of its stated conditions and once for the consistency of its notation with the rest of the reference. A second reader who did not draft the essay checks the arithmetic and the derivations. An essay that fails either reading is returned rather than published.

Independence

The desk is independent. It carries no advertisement, it names no outside body, and it holds no tie that could bend what it writes. This independence is the ground on which a reader may trust that an essay says what the evidence supports and no more.

Corrections

A reader may report a suspected error by way of the contact page.
The desk checks the report against the primary literature.
An accepted correction is folded into the essay without ceremony.
A material correction is noted in the editorial record of the cell.

The desk is grateful for reports of this kind, and it treats them as part of the ordinary work of keeping the reference sound.

Authorship

The essays are prepared collectively at the desk, and no single name is attached to any page. This is a deliberate choice: the work is offered as a compendium rather than as the expression of one author, and it is to be judged by its content rather than by a name.

Revision and continuity

The reference is revised as the field and the desk's own reading advance. A revision aims to improve the text without disturbing the notation a reader has come to rely upon. Where a symbol must change, the glossary is amended at the same time, so that the two never fall apart.

The record behind each cell

Each cell is backed by a short record, kept at the desk, that names the sources used and the reader or editor who last checked the essay. The record is not published, but it is kept so that a later correction may be traced to its origin and so that a disputed point may be reviewed against the sources that produced it. A record that cannot be produced is treated as though the check had not been made.

On tone

The desk writes in a plain register, with the reader's patience in mind. It avoids flourish, it names its conditions, and it states the limits of what it offers without apology. This tone is a rule rather than a preference: a reference that overstates its reach cannot be trusted where it stays within it.