Bruce, I think the distribution of the different versions of his name warrants a formula of its own. I found 9!!
"Chebyshev or Tchebycheff
Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev was a notable Russian mathematician, who was born on 16 May 1821 and died on 8 December 1894. He wrote on number theory, analysis, probability, mechanics and maps.
Being Russian, his name was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, causing problems of translitteration. Stijn van Dongen has compiled a list of 33 western European verions of his surname, of which Chebyshev seems to be the most popular in English, Tchebycheff in French, Cebysev in Spanish, and Tchebyscheff in German. Despited this variety, the final vowel always seems to be transcribed as "e" in that list when it is in fact pronounced "yo" in Russian. Even his given name and his patronimic have varying versions in roman script."
from
http://www.btinternet.com/~se16/hgb/cheb.htm
I didn't think an explanation of the use for Chebyshev's inequality would be necessary Mr Subliminal, but if you happen, by chance, to run into Swing Zones you might pass along this bit of information:
Let's say Swing has a series of trades numbering in the hundreds and knows what his average return per trade is and also knows the variance of the returns around that average. Using Chebyshev's Inequality he can then calculate a simple estimate of the chances that a return of at least + or -
x will occur.
So Mr. Zones swings an average $300 trade. His variance is equal to $36. What is the probability that any one of his trades will deviate from $300 by more than $30 in either direction?
Remember
x = $30; M(ean) = $300; and V(ariance) = $36.
Chebyshev wrote the probability that the absolute value of the difference (x-M) is greater than or equal to an arbitrary number
x>0 is less than or equal to the variance divided by
x squared. Which is how a person would say the formula in English. It looks like this:
P{|x-M|>=
x}=< V/
x squared
or using Swing's hundreds of trades example
P(|x-300|>=30)=<36/900 = 0.04: that is, the probability that Swing will have a deviation of greater than $30 in either direction from his average $300 trade is no more than 4%.
So if Swing is curious about the frequency of a certain drawdown or exceptionally good trade occuring, this formula will give him a simple estimate.
Bruce
