different between stochastic vs sporadic

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /st??kæst?k/

• Rhymes: -æst?k

Adjective

stochastic (comparative more stochastic, superlative most stochastic)

1. Random, randomly determined.
   • 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, Vintage 2007, p. 854:

     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, impossibly unlikely, or proof that the coin is not a fair one) could still be contemplated as the outcome of a stochastic procedure.

Coordinate terms

• probabilistic

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• stochastic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• octastichs

English

Etymology

From Medieval Latin sporadicus (whence also French sporadique, Italian sporadico, Spanish esporádico), from Ancient Greek ?????????? (sporadikós), from ?????? (sporás, “scattered, dispersed”), from ????? (sporá), ?????? (spóros, “a sowing [of seed]”).

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /sp???æ??k/, /sp???æ??k/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /sp???æd?k/, /sp???æd?k/
• Rhymes: -æd?k

Adjective

sporadic (comparative more sporadic, superlative most sporadic)

1. (archaic) (of diseases) occurring in isolated instances; not epidemic.
2. Rare and scattered in occurrence.
3. Exhibiting random behavior; patternless.

Derived terms

• sporadic E layer

Related terms

• sporadical
• sporadically
• sporadicalness

Translations

References

Anagrams

• caproids, carpoids, picadors

Romanian

Etymology

From French sporadique

Adjective

sporadic m or n (feminine singular sporadic?, masculine plural sporadici, feminine and neuter plural sporadice)

1. sporadic

Declension

Related terms

• sporadicitate