Stochastic vs Deterministic - What's the difference?
stochastic | deterministic |
Random, randomly determined, relating to stochastics.
* 1970 , , The Atrocity Exhibition :
* 2006 , Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 854:
* NB: This refers to the process of the determination, not necessarily the outcome. Flipping a fair coin that flipped a hundred heads in a row (unlikely to be a random result) could still be considered the product of a stochastic process.
of, or relating to determinism
(mathematics, of a Turing machine) having at most one instruction associated with any given internal state
(physics, of a system) Having exactly predictable time evolution.
(computing, of an algorithm) Having each state depend only on the immediately previous state, as opposed to having some states depend on backtracking where there may be multiple possible next actions and no way to choose between them except by trying each one and backtracking upon failure.
As adjectives the difference between stochastic and deterministic
is that stochastic is random, randomly determined, relating to stochastics while deterministic is of, or relating to determinism.stochastic
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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.
- 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.