Beta Explained

Beta (; uppercase, lowercase, or cursive ; grc|βῆτα|bē̂ta or el|βήτα|víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /b/. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /v/ while in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /b/ in borrowed words is instead commonly transcribed as μπ.^{[1] [2]} Letters that arose from beta include the Roman letter and the Cyrillic letters and .

Name

Like the names of most other Greek letters, the name of beta was adopted from the acrophonic name of the corresponding letter in Phoenician, which was the common Semitic word Semitic languages: *bayt ('house', compare ar|بيت Arabic: bayt and he|בית Hebrew: báyit). In Greek, the name was Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: βῆτα Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: bêta, pronounced in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /bɛ̂ːta/ in Ancient Greek. It is spelled Greek, Modern (1453-);: βήτα in modern monotonic orthography and pronounced in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /ˈvita/.

History

See also: Archaic Greek alphabets. The letter beta was derived from the Phoenician letter beth .

The letter Β had the largest number of highly divergent local forms. Besides the standard form (either rounded or pointed,), there were forms as varied as (Gortyn), and (Thera), (Argos), (Melos), (Corinth), (Megara, Byzantium), and (Cyclades).^[3]

Uses

Algebraic numerals

In the system of Greek numerals, beta has a value of 2. Such use is denoted by a number mark: Β′.

Computing

See also: Alpha–beta pruning.

Finance

Beta is used in finance as a measure of investment portfolio risk. Beta in this context is calculated as the covariance of the portfolio's returns with its benchmark's returns, divided by the variance of the benchmark's returns. A beta of 1.5 means that for every 1% change in the value of the benchmark, the portfolio's value tends to change by 1.5%.

International Phonetic Alphabet

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, Greek minuscule beta denotes a voiced bilabial fricative .

A superscript version may also indicate a compressed vowel, like pronounced as /[ɯᵝ]/.

Meteorology

Beta has twice been used to name an Atlantic Basin tropical cyclone:

• Hurricane Beta, in 2005
• Tropical Storm Beta, in 2020

Mathematics and science

• Beta is often used to denote a variable in mathematics and physics, where it often has specific meanings for certain applications.
• β is sometimes used as a placeholder for an ordinal number if α is already used. For example, the two roots of a quadratic equation are typically labelled and .
• In regression analysis, symbolizes nonstandardized partial slope coefficients, whereas 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.
• In spaceflight, beta angle describes the angle between the orbit plane of a spacecraft or other body and the vector from the sun.
• In physics β is used for a beta particle (an unbound energetic electron or positron).
• β is sometimes used to mean the proton-to-electron mass ratio.
• β is also used in biology, for instance in β-Carotene, a primary source of provitamin A, or the β cells in pancreatic islets, which produce insulin.
• The uppercase letter beta is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase Latin B.

Rock climbing terminology

The term "beta" refers to advice on how to successfully complete a particular climbing route, boulder problem, or crux sequence.^[4]

Slang

See main article: Alpha and beta male.

Beta male, or simply beta, is a slang term for men derived from the designation for beta animals in ethology, along with its counterpart, alpha male.^{[5] [6]} The term has been used as a pejorative self-identifier among members of manosphere communities, particularly incels, who do not believe they are assertive or traditionally masculine, and feel overlooked by women.^{[7] [8]} It is also used to negatively describe other men who are not assertive, particularly in heterosexual relationships.

Statistics

In statistics, beta may represent type II error, or regression slope.

Typography

In some high-quality typesetting, especially in the French tradition, a typographic variant of the lowercase letter without a descender is used within a word for ancient Greek: Greek, Modern (1453-);: βίβλος is printed Greek, Modern (1453-);: βί{{not a typo|ϐ.^[9]

In typesetting technical literature, it is a commonly made mistake to use the German letter ß (a s–z or s–s ligature) as a replacement for β. The two letters resemble each other in some fonts, but they are unrelated.^[10]

Videotape formats

"Beta" can be used to refer to several consumer and professional videotape formats developed by Japan's Sony Corporation. Although similarly named, they are very different in function and obsolescence.

• Betamax was the name of a domestic videotape format developed in the 1970s and 1980s. It competed with the Video Home System (VHS) format developed by the Japanese Victor Company, to which it eventually succumbed. The Betamax format was also marketed Betacord by (Sanyo); some cassettes were simply labeled "Beta", and the logo was a lower-case beta. Betamax lost in the market and is an oft-used example of a technically superior solution that failed due to market forces.
• Betacam, including Beta SP and DigiBeta, is a family of professional videotape formats launched in 1982 that was the de facto standard for professional video, advertising, and television production through the 2000s. The formats outlasted analog NTSC television, and their scarcity today is because the industry has moved to HD formats.

Unicode

• • (in TeX)
    • • • • • (Japanese square katakana of Japanese: ベータ)

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style:

Notes and References

1. Web site: UN Romanization of Greek for Geographical Names (1987) . 2022-11-13 . www.eki.ee.
2. Web site: Pronouncing the Greek Alphabet . 2022-11-13 . ThoughtCo . en.
3. Book: Jeffery . Lilian Hamilton . The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece . 1961 . Oxford University Press . 23.
4. Web site: Rock & Ice – Climbing Terminology. Rock and Ice. 3 October 2016.
5. Hawley . P. H. . Little . Todd D. . Card . Noel A. . January 2008 . The myth of the alpha male: A new look at dominance-related beliefs and behaviors among adolescent males and females . International Journal of Behavioral Development . 32 . 1 . 76–88. 10.1177/0165025407084054 . 145156929 .
6. News: Hosie . Rachel . 9 May 2017 . The Myth of the Alpha Male . The Independent .
7. Jones . Callum . Trott . Verity . Wright . Scott . 2020 . Sluts and soyboys: MGTOW and the production of misogynistic online harassment . New Media & Society . 22 . 10 . 1903–1921 . 10.1177/1461444819887141 . 210530415 . 1461-4448 .
8. Book: Nicholas . Lucy . Agius . Christine . 2018 . The Persistence of Global Masculinism: Discourse, Gender and Neo-Colonial Re-Articulations of Violence . . . 10.1007/978-3-319-68360-7 . 978-3-319-68359-1 . 2017954971 . 2020-07-17 . 2020-08-11 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200811114131/https://books.google.com/books?id=e8I9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover . live.
9. Web site: Haralambous. Yannis. From Unicode to typography, a case study: the Greek script. 1999. 7. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110615031345/http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/boston99.pdf. 2011-06-15.
10. Aguilar Ruiz. Manuel José. "Las normas ortográficas y ortotipográficas de la nueva Ortografía de la lengua española (2010) aplicadas a las publicaciones biomédicas en español: una visión de conjunto. Panace@. 2013. 14. 37. 104.