World: r3wp

Then would need the nce. Diverge is still an action word. Divergence 
is the noun.

Sorry, language is defined by use ... not by dictionaries

Diverge is still a verb, and divergence still a nown. The dictionaries 
came later.

deviation

That would work. And it doesn't imply going in a different direction 
like diverge(nce) does.

Unless you go back to the latin, at which point both words have the 
same root: going in a different direction.

We have had to break out the thesaurus many times when naming REBOL 
functions :)

It's my #2 search link in my browser   ;-)

DIVERGENCE is a spot-on name.

Considering that it seems to return "the point of divergence", i.e. 
the position where two series start to diverge.

Native english speakers only please :)

(Says the guy who thinks "diverge" is a noune in usage ;-)

Sorry, bad typing day.

(Now my non-native brain gets confused: noun, nown, or noune? :)

noun. I have been doing manual labor and my hands are a little off 
today.

(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=noune)

Nice :)

Maybe you accidentally offended Maxim :)

pronounced   noon

alternatives: fork, stray, deviate, digress

All verbs. Use the noun or adjectival forms.

and since we are comparing only two things .. bifurcate

so what's the difference between divergence and deviation.... I am 
straying from the question... I disgress..     ;-)

deviation has a statistical meaning

true

My latin is rusty, but I think that deviate means to go in a different 
direction, while diverge means to branch.

how about "wanda" ... that's a noune

So divergence is more accurate than deviation in this case. (I'll 
try to keep the spelling under control.)

or, 'away

And deviation is in relation to a "norm".

we can play this game all day

Deviation is relative to a norm only for statistics.

Also for law or sociodynamics.

with the statistics use of deviation brought to light ... I revert 
to divergence.  its a more unique term.

You deviate from a contract, you deviate from social rules, the right 
path, etc.

rebolers are all deviants.

On a good day :)

equal? a b

diverge? a b

I missed a lot of this conversation, but saw some mention of NAN 
and INF.  Exceptions by default seem like the natural choice.  Anything 
different could be done with refinements.  divide/symbolic 1 0 ... 
or something?

That is what I was saying about ? in REBOL before. EQUAL? is short 
for EQUIVALENT, and DIVERGE? would be short fot DIVERGENCE. It's 
nonsense in English, but English is just the base language for REBOL 
function names.

Problem with `diverge?` is that the proposed function will not return 
a boolean, unlike equal?.

Or INDEX?, LENGTH?, SUFFIX?, ...

It returns the first series at the point of divergence.

Yeah, those always have been ill-conceived names.

exactly what I was pointing out earlier.    index, length suffix 
should have their ?  dropped.

Fork, the Inf and NaN discussion has moved to CC bug#1717.

And use -of instead. But that's another discussion.

It's just that I would not repeat that mistake when introducing new 
names.

Make that point in bug#1719, where Carl can see it. He tends to let 
us play out these discussions on our own.