parameter — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A value kept constant during an experiment, equation, calculation, or similar, but varied over other versions of the experiment, equation, calculation, etc.

   Examples

   More examples (3)

   As molecular surface-to-surface contacts control both solution phenomena and surface phenomena, it is not surprising that various correlations of cohesion parameters and surface phenomena can be found.

   The independent parameters of a system or network over F(z) reflect its structure and determine its structural properties (such as the reducibility of coefficient matrix A and its characteristic polynomial det(λI −A), controllability and observability over F(z), etc.).

   On the other hand, if we have suitable data, we may be able to develop some direct computational methods for the essentially nonlinear parameter identification problems, in which fewer or even no nonlinear processes are involved.

2. A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof.

   Examples

   Cohesion parameters (solubility parameters) can be used with full theoretical justification to characterize many surfaces ...

   To this end, we derive an a posteriori error estimator for the error with respect to the unknown parameter.

3. A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof. Any measured quantity of a statistical population that summarises or describes an aspect of the population.

4. A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof. A variable of a model that is trained by a machine learning algorithm.

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   The parameter estimation problem considered in this chapter consists of estimating the unknown parameter, ū [a barred v, actually], given N samples of the observation process.

   Fundamental is the regulation of a for-profit OpenAI. The company initially delayed the launch of its earlier GPT-2, with a mere 1.5bn parameters, because the company fretted over its implications.

5. An input variable of a function definition, that gets an actual value (argument) at execution time.

   Synonyms

   formal parameter

6. An actual value given to such a formal parameter.

   Usage

   • broadly

   Synonyms

   argumentactual parameter

7. A characteristic or feature that distinguishes something from others.

8. In the ellipse and hyperbola, a third proportional to any diameter and its conjugate, or in the parabola, to any abscissa and the corresponding ordinate.

   Examples

   The parameter of the principal axis of a conic section is called the latus rectum.

9. The ratio of the three crystallographic axes which determines the position of any plane.

10. The fundamental axial ratio for a given species.

Noun

1. a constant in the equation of a curve that can be varied to yield a family of similar curves

   Synonyms

   parametric quantity

   Broader terms

   constantconstant quantityinvariable

2. any factor that defines a system and determines (or limits) its performance

   Broader terms

   factor

3. (computer science) a reference or value that is passed to a function, procedure, subroutine, command, or program

   Synonyms

   argument

   Broader terms

   addresscomputer addressreferencevalue

4. a quantity (such as the mean or variance) that characterizes a statistical population and that can be estimated by calculations from sample data

   Broader terms

   quantity