stochastic

English

WOTD – 6 November 2006

Etymology

From Ancient Greek στοχαστικός (stokhastikós), from στοχάζομαι (stokházomai, “aim at a target, guess”), from στόχος (stókhos, “an aim, a guess”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (standard) /stəˈkæstɪk/
• IPA^(key): (nonstandard, Americanism) /ˈstoʊkæstɪk/, (rare) /ˈstoʊt͡ʃæstɪk/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /stəˈkæstɪk/, /ˈstoʊkæstɪk/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /stəˈkæstɪk/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /stəˈkæstɪk/, /ˈstəʉkæstɪk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (General Australian):

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  Rhymes: -æstɪk

Adjective

stochastic (comparative more stochastic, superlative most stochastic)

1. Random, randomly determined.

   Synonyms: aleatory, random, haphazard

   • 1970, J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition:

     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.

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Against the Day”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 760:

     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.

Usage notes

• The term refers to the process of determination being random, regardless of any particular outcome. Flipping a fair coin that lands heads 100 times in a row (in practice, very highly unlikely; or strong evidence that the coin is not a fair one) could still be contemplated as the outcome of a stochastic procedure.

Coordinate terms

• probabilistic

Derived terms

• astochastic
• bistochastic
• dynamic stochastic general equilibrium
• magnetostochastic
• nonstochastic
• stochastical
• stochastically
• stochastic calculus
• stochastic differential equation
• stochasticism
• stochasticity
• stochastic matrix
• stochastic parrot
• stochastic process
• stochastics
• stochastic terror
• stochastic terrorism
• stochastic terrorist
• stoquastic
• substochastic

 

Translations

random

• Arabic: عَشْوَائيّ, غَيْر مُصَمَّم (ḡayr muṣammam)
• Basque: estokastiko (eu)
• Bulgarian: случаен (bg) (slučaen), вероятностен (verojatnosten)
• Catalan: estocàstic (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 隨機／随机 (zh) (suíjī)

• Czech: stochastický
• Danish: stokastisk (da)
• Dutch: stochastiek (nl)
• Esperanto: stokasta
• Estonian: juhuslik (et)
• Finnish: stokastinen (fi), satunnainen (fi), sattumanvarainen (fi)
• French: stochastique (fr)
• German: stochastisch (de), zufallsabhängig, zufallsbedingt
• Greek: στοχαστικός (el) (stochastikós)
• Icelandic: slembi-, slembinn m, tilviljanakenndur m
• Italian: stocastico (it)
• Japanese: 推測の (ja) (suisoku no), (in math) 確率論的な (kakuritsurontekina)
• Kazakh: кездейсоқ (kezdeisoq), стохастикалық (stoxastikalyq)
• Macedonian: стоха́стичен (stohástičen)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: stokastisk

  Nynorsk: stokastisk

• Polish: stochastyczny (pl)
• Portuguese: estocástico (pt), aleatório (pt)
• Romanian: stocastic (ro)
• Russian: стохасти́ческий (ru) (stoxastíčeskij)
• Serbo-Croatian: стохастички, stohastički (sh)
• Spanish: estocástico (es)
• Swedish: stokastisk (sv)
• Thai: สุ่ม (th) (sùm)

Further reading

• stochastic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• octastichs