stochastic
adjUK /stəˈkæstɪk/ · CA, US /stəˈkæstɪk/
Etymology From Ancient Greek στοχαστικός (stokhastikós), from στοχάζομαι (stokházomai, “aim at a target, guess”), from στόχος (stókhos, “an aim, a guess”).
1
Random, randomly determined.
- In the evening, while she bathed, waiting for him to enter the bathroom as she powdered her body, he crouched over the blueprints spread between the sofas in the lounge, calculating a stochastic analysis of the Pentagon car park.1970, J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition:
- Self-slaughter, as Hamlet always says, was certainly in the cards, unless one had been out here long enough to have contemplated the will of God, observed the stochastic whimsy of the day, learned when and when not to whisper “Insh'allah,” and understood how, as one perhaps might never have in England, to await, to depend upon, the ineluctable departure of what was most dear.2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Against the Day”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 760:
- Derived terms
- astochastic, bistochastic, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, magnetostochastic, nonstochastic, quasistochastic, stochastical, stochastically, stochastic calculus, stochastic differential equation, stochasticism, stochasticity, stochastic matrix, stochastic parrot, stochastic process, stochastics, stochastic terror, stochastic terrorism, stochastic terrorist, stoquastic, substochastic
- Coordinate terms
- probabilistic