parameter

noun

Etymology: From French paramètre, from New Latin parametrum (“parameter”), from Ancient Greek παρα- (para-, “beside”) + μέτρον (métron, “measure”).

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

   “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.).”

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

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

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

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

9. Clipping of uniformizing parameter.
10. The ratio of the three crystallographic axes which determines the position of any plane.
11. The fundamental axial ratio for a given species.