Vita (letter)
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Revision as of 14:43, 31 January 2011
Beta (uppercase Β, lowercase β, internal ϐ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In high-quality print, the variant of the lowercase letter without a descender is used within a word: βίβλος is printed |βίϐλος. The form ‹ϐ› is very common in handwriting.
The name of the letter is pronounced /ˈbeɪtə/ (US) or /ˈbiːtə/ (UK)), and in Greek βήτα ˈvita.
In the system of Greek numerals Beta has a value of 2.
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History
The letter Beta was derived from the Phoenician letter Beth Image:Phoenician beth.svg. Letters that arose from Beta include the Roman letter ‹B› and the Cyrillic letters ‹Б› and ‹В›.
Uses
Ancient Greek
In Ancient Greek, Beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive /b/. The name of the letter, βῆτα bêta, was pronounced bɛ̂ːta.
Modern Greek
In Modern Greek, Beta represents the voiced labiodental fricative v/. The name of the letter is spelled βήτα in the modern monotonic orthography, and pronounced ˈvita.
Math and science
Beta is often used to denote a variable in mathematics and physics, where it often has specific meanings for certain applications, such as representing beta radiation. In regression analysis, ‹B› symbolizes non-standardized partial slope coefficients, whereas ‹β› represents standardized (standard deviation-score form) coefficients; in both cases, the coefficients reflect the change in the criterion Y per one-unit change in the value of the associated predictor X.
Finance
Beta is used in finance as a measure of investment portfolio risk.
International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, Greek minuscule beta denotes a voiced bilabial fricative [β].
Technical notes
| description | character | Unicode | HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
| GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA | Β | U+0392 | Β Β |
| GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA | β | U+03B2 | β β |
| GREEK BETA SYMBOL | ϐ | U+03D0 | ϐ |
| MODIFIER LETTER SMALL BETA | ◌ᵝ | U+1D5D | ᵝ |
| GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER BETA | ◌ᵦ | U+1D66 | ᵦ |
In typesetting technical literature, it is a commonly made mistake to use the German letter ß as a replacement for β. The two letters resemble each other superficially, but they are unrelated.
