From b33a31da390b6a9f8989be578e0050251fd0e6b4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Thomas Wiecki <thomas.wiecki@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:45:43 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] ENH Allow passing of greek unicode symbols to specificy
 variable names.

---
 pymc3/distributions/distribution.py   |  8 +++++
 pymc3/distributions/greek_alphabet.py | 52 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 60 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 pymc3/distributions/greek_alphabet.py

diff --git a/pymc3/distributions/distribution.py b/pymc3/distributions/distribution.py
index 0dcb6bdb48..fd45312409 100644
--- a/pymc3/distributions/distribution.py
+++ b/pymc3/distributions/distribution.py
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
     ObservedRV, MultiObservedRV, Context, InitContextMeta
 )
 from ..vartypes import string_types
+from .greek_alphabet import greek_alphabet
 
 __all__ = ['DensityDist', 'Distribution', 'Continuous', 'Discrete',
            'NoDistribution', 'TensorType', 'draw_values', 'generate_samples']
@@ -38,6 +39,13 @@ def __new__(cls, name, *args, **kwargs):
             if isinstance(data, ObservedRV) or isinstance(data, FreeRV):
                 raise TypeError("observed needs to be data but got: {}".format(type(data)))
             total_size = kwargs.pop('total_size', None)
+
+            # convert greek unicode kwargs to ascii
+            for k, v in kwargs.items():
+                if k in greek_alphabet.keys():
+                    kwargs[greek_alphabet[k]] = v
+                    kwargs.pop(k)
+
             dist = cls.dist(*args, **kwargs)
             return model.Var(name, dist, data, total_size)
         else:
diff --git a/pymc3/distributions/greek_alphabet.py b/pymc3/distributions/greek_alphabet.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..14e4a588fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pymc3/distributions/greek_alphabet.py
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+# Taken from https://gist.github.com/beniwohli/765262
+
+greek_alphabet = {
+    u'\u0391': 'Alpha',
+    u'\u0392': 'Beta',
+    u'\u0393': 'Gamma',
+    u'\u0394': 'Delta',
+    u'\u0395': 'Epsilon',
+    u'\u0396': 'Zeta',
+    u'\u0397': 'Eta',
+    u'\u0398': 'Theta',
+    u'\u0399': 'Iota',
+    u'\u039A': 'Kappa',
+    u'\u039B': 'Lamda',
+    u'\u039C': 'Mu',
+    u'\u039D': 'Nu',
+    u'\u039E': 'Xi',
+    u'\u039F': 'Omicron',
+    u'\u03A0': 'Pi',
+    u'\u03A1': 'Rho',
+    u'\u03A3': 'Sigma',
+    u'\u03A4': 'Tau',
+    u'\u03A5': 'Upsilon',
+    u'\u03A6': 'Phi',
+    u'\u03A7': 'Chi',
+    u'\u03A8': 'Psi',
+    u'\u03A9': 'Omega',
+    u'\u03B1': 'alpha',
+    u'\u03B2': 'beta',
+    u'\u03B3': 'gamma',
+    u'\u03B4': 'delta',
+    u'\u03B5': 'epsilon',
+    u'\u03B6': 'zeta',
+    u'\u03B7': 'eta',
+    u'\u03B8': 'theta',
+    u'\u03B9': 'iota',
+    u'\u03BA': 'kappa',
+    u'\u03BB': 'lamda',
+    u'\u03BC': 'mu',
+    u'\u03BD': 'nu',
+    u'\u03BE': 'xi',
+    u'\u03BF': 'omicron',
+    u'\u03C0': 'pi',
+    u'\u03C1': 'rho',
+    u'\u03C3': 'sigma',
+    u'\u03C4': 'tau',
+    u'\u03C5': 'upsilon',
+    u'\u03C6': 'phi',
+    u'\u03C7': 'chi',
+    u'\u03C8': 'psi',
+    u'\u03C9': 'omega',
+}