Rho (; uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; or ) is the seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from the Phoenician letter resh . Its uppercase form uses the same glyph, Ρ, as the distinct Latin alphabet letter P; the two letters have different Unicode encodings.
Uses
Greek
Rho is classed as a
liquid consonant (together with Lambda and sometimes the nasals Mu and Nu), which has important implications for morphology. In both
Ancient Greek and
Modern Greek, it represents an
alveolar trill ,
alveolar tap , or alveolar approximant .
In polytonic orthography, a rho at the beginning of a word is almost always written ⟨ῥ⟩ ( rh) with a rough breathing mark, indicating that it is voiceless. Very rarely, it is written ⟨ῤ⟩ ( r) with a smooth breathing mark, indicating that it is voiced consonant, instead. Rho is not written with breathing marks at any other place in a word, where it is always voiced, with the exception of double rho, which was traditionally written ⟨ῤῥ⟩ ( rrh), with a smooth breathing mark over the first rho, and a rough breathing mark over the second, representing a gemination voiceless consonant. However, this practice fell out of use over the 19th century in favour of ⟨ρρ⟩, since double rho cannot take any other combination of breathing marks. Various Greek-derived English words containing rh and rrh derive from words containing ⟨ῤ⟩ and ⟨ρρ⟩.
The name of the letter is written in Greek as ῥῶ (polytonic) or ρω/ (monotonic).
Other alphabets
Letters that arose from rho include Roman R and Cyrillic Er (Р).
Mathematics and science
The characters
ρ and
are also conventionally used outside the Greek alphabetical context in
science and
mathematics.
-
In the physical sciences to represent:
-
In mathematics to represent:
-
A length coordinate in polar, cylindrical, spherical, and toroidal coordinate systems, and toroidal and poloidal coordinates of the Earth's magnetic field.
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The correlation coefficient of a population parameter
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The spectral radius of a matrix denoted as
-
The plastic ratio
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The prime constant
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The sensitivity to interest rates of a pricing function
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The expected return of a given policy () in reinforcement learning, denoted
-
The rename operation in relational algebra
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In economics to represent the discount rate of future cash flows
-
In molecular biology to represent the Rho factor responsible for termination of RNA synthesis. In such occasions, it is often represented as , to avoid confusion with the Latin letter p
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In molecular biology to represent the Rho family of GTPases, important for cytoskeletal dynamic regulation.
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In ecology to represent the population damping ratio where ρ = λ1 / |λ2|.
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In computer programming
-
The lower-case rho "⍴" means reshape in the APL programming language, and by extension also queries shape
-
The lower-case rho "ρ" is used for the unary rename operation in relational algebra
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In statistics to represent Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, commonly known as Spearman's rho
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In options theory to represent the rate of change of a portfolio with respect to interest rates
Chi Rho (☧)
The letter rho overlaid with chi forms the
Chi Rho symbol, used to represent
Jesus Christ. It was first used by Emperor Constantine the Great. An example of this can be seen on his standard known as the
Labarum.
Rho with stroke (ϼ)
The rho with a stroke through its tail is used for abbreviations involving rho, most notably in γϼ for γράμμα as a unit of measurement.
[Paul of Aegina explains conventional usage in the last chapter of Book VII on weights and measures and uses it throughout his work.]
Unicode
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:
See also
-
Р, р - Er (Cyrillic)
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R, r - Latin
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P, p - Latin
