What does every great statistician need the ability to do? If you answered easily explain complicated theorems or derive complex formulae by hand, you are incorrect. The true answer is that every stats person needs to be able to draw Greek letters on a whiteboard without them looking like scribbly blobs.
This is something I am unsurprisingly bad at. To help myself (and hopefully share this knowledge with others), I’ve compiled a list of Greek letters and how to draw them. With the hefty assistance of some LLMs, I created a rainbow sketchpad that shows the direction of a line through its color (red $\rightarrow$ purple). So, as you browse through the list of letters, you can tell in which direction the pen stroke should start when handwriting. You can also have fun experimenting with the sketchpad below:
The Greek Alphabet
If we get the term alphabet from the Greek system, do we really need to clarify that we’re using the Greek alphabet? Technically, we should be calling our system the “English Alphabet.”
Here’s a list of all the letters and how I write them (starting on red). As a disclaimer, these depictions are gotten from use in mathematics or statistics, not everyday handwriting. So, some of them might be needlessly complex or not follow convention.
| Uppercase | Lowercase |
|---|---|
Alpha | Alpha I used to draw it starting from the bottom, but starting from the top seems to give it a more full circle. |
Beta | Beta The slant is important. |
Gamma | Gamma |
Delta | Delta |
Epsilon | Epsilon |
Zeta | Zeta I have no clue how to write this one, really. I don’t think I’ve ever used it. |
Eta I think the slant makes it look more “Greek.” | Eta |
Theta | Theta |
Iota Tough one. | Iota |
Kappa | Kappa I like to put a little tail at the top of the main stroke to distinguish it from a “k.” |
Lambda | Lambda Half-Life reference. |
Mu | Mu |
Nu | Nu Again, the slight curve distinguishes it from a “v.” |
Xi What in the world is this thing? | Xi The most feared of them all. Known far and wide by matrix algebraists. Not too bad if you think of it as a lowercase zeta with an extra loop. |
Omicron Yippee! Easy. | Omicron |
Pi Looks like a Torii. | Pi |
Rho | Rho |
Sigma | Sigma |
Tau | Tau Another little curve to make it look more Greek than a “t.” |
Upsilon | Upsilon |
Phi Sometimes serifs are used at the top and bottom to distinguish it from the lowercase phi. | Phi |
Chi | Chi |
Psi The serif on the right side (and size of the symbol) differentiate it from the lowercase version. | Psi |
Omega | Omega |
And there you have it. Realistically, most of these aren’t very common in stats, but I figured it was a good idea to list them all anyway. It was definitely an adventure to try and write them all with my computer mouse instead of actually being able to draw them on paper, but I thought the rainbow line was too fun to pass up. Hopefully, some of these depictions will be a little useful to those of us who are still stats novices.
P.S. If you make any cool drawings with the sketchpad, send them to me!