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Citing Conventions

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Joram Soch edited this page Jan 17, 2025 · 7 revisions

When adding a proof or definition to "The Book of Statistical Proofs", please try to conform with the following examples for referencing sources of your submission.

Citing journal articles

Journal articles may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Penny et al."
    year: 2007
    title: "Bayesian Comparison of Spatially Regularised General Linear Models"
    in: "Human Brain Mapping"
    pages: "vol. 28, pp. 275–293"
    url: "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.20327"
    doi: "10.1002/hbm.20327"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing book chapters

Book chapters may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Claeskens G, Hjort NL"
    year: 2008
    title: "The Bayesian information criterion"
    in: "Model Selection and Model Averaging"
    pages: "ch. 3.2, pp. 78-81"
    url: "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/model-selection-and-model-averaging/E6F1EC77279D1223423BB64FC3A12C37"
    doi: "10.1017/CBO9780511790485"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing web pages

Web pages may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Taboga, Marco"
    year: 2010
    title: "Linear combinations of normal random variables"
    in: "Lectures on probability and statistics"
    pages: "retrieved on 2019-08-27"
    url: "https://www.statlect.com/probability-distributions/normal-distribution-linear-combinations"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing Wikipedia

Wikipedia articles may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Wikipedia"
    year: 2020
    title: "Normal distribution"
    in: "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
    pages: "retrieved on 2020-03-20"
    url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Cumulative_distribution_function"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing ProofWiki

ProofWiki entries may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "ProofWiki"
    year: 2020
    title: "Moment Generating Function of Gaussian Distribution"
    in: "ProofWiki"
    pages: "retrieved on 2020-03-03"
    url: "https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Moment_Generating_Function_of_Gaussian_Distribution"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing StackExchange

StackExchange answers may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "whuber"
    year: 2018
    title: "What is the expected value of the logarithm of Gamma distribution?"
    in: "StackExchange CrossValidated"
    pages: "retrieved on 2020-05-25"
    url: "https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/370880/what-is-the-expected-value-of-the-logarithm-of-gamma-distribution"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing YouTube

YouTube videos may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Turlapaty, Anish"
    year: 2013
    title: "Gamma random variable: mean & variance"
    in: "YouTube"
    pages: "retrieved on 2020-05-19"
    url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy4wP-Y2dmA"

which gives rise to the following output:

Citing Twitter/X

Twitter/X posts may be cited as follows

sources:
  - authors: "Probability Fact"
    year: 2021
    title: "If X and Y are independent, the moment generating function (MGF)"
    in: "X"
    pages: "retrieved on 2024-11-08"
    url: "https://x.com/ProbFact/status/1468264616706859016"

which gives rise to the following output:

Not citing a source

The source metadata field can be left empty

sources:

which gives rise to the following output:

Frequently asked questions

Is it required that my proof or definition file contains a source?

No, a submission file does not have to reference a source. If the proof or definition is mathematically sound and statistically correct – which is, of course, decided by the community editing the archive –, the file may still be added to the archive. Also see: What does "original work" mean?

What must be fulfilled for adding a source to a proof or definition?

If it is added to a definition file,

If it is added to a proof file,

Is there something else I need to take care of?

Please make sure that the title of your reference does not contain:

  • greek letters such as α, β, γ;
  • the power symbol, i.e. ^;
  • backslashes, i.e. \ or \\.

While those characters are unproblematic for display online, they will cause problems when writing StatProofBook content into a LaTeX/PDF document.

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