Beta - Definition and Overview

Beta can stand for:

• Β or β the 2nd letter of the Greek alphabet. See Beta (letter). Beta should not be confused with a similar-looking but unrelated letter in German language orthography, ß, which denotes a voiceless "s" sound.
• From its position in the Greek alphabet, beta often stands for the second in a series; e.g., β Centauri for the second brightest star in constellation Centaurus.
• The plant genus Beta, the beets, in the family Chenopodiaceae (or, in more recent classifications, Amaranthaceae).
• The Betta splendens, commonly known as the "Siamese fighting fish".
• A Russian time signal service, Beta (time signal)

When derived from the Greek letter, Beta can have any of the following meanings:

• The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for the voiced bilabial fricative
• In software development, a "beta version" of a product is one that is still in development but is published for testing purpose. See development stage.
• BETA is an object-oriented programming language.
• The Beta programming language was used with the early cryptanalytic computer Harvest.
• In video tape technology, Beta is an abbreviation for Betamax.
• In climbing, a slang term for information about the moves needed to do a specific climb: see on-sight climbing.
• Beta coefficient. In investment, beta is a measure of volatility or level of risk against a benchmark, which can be the market or industry as a whole. It is calculated over a period of months. A value greater than one indicates that the object tends to change at a greater magnitude, whatever the direction.
• In nuclear physics, beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta particle is emitted.
• The beta distribution is a probability distribution defined in terms of the beta function.
• In visual psychology, beta movement is a perceptual illusion in which a sequence of still images appears to be moving.

Additionally,

• Beta is an Indian film from 1992 starring Madhuri Dixit;
• Beta is an Italian motorcycle manufacturer.

(Note: The American pronunciation is "bA-ta" with a long "A" whereas the British pronunciation is "bE-ta" with a long "E" [1] (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=beta). See: American and British English differences)