I've been seeing this term "stochastic" used quite often here lately

[panader0]

So I looked it up and got this: " adj, Statistics. of or pertaining to a process involving a randomly determined sequence of observations each of which is considered as a sample of one element from a probability distribution."
I read it and still need a definition. Can someone here explain it any simpler?

[Liberal Veteran]

1. I can't, but it seems to be a perfectly cromulent word.

Hopefully, someone can embiggen our knowledge on the word "stochastic".

[panader0]

3. Okay, you got me on "cromulent"

My dictionary is about as embiggened as they get at 2500 pages, but no "cromulent". LOL

[Romulox]

8. If you never find the definition of "cromulent", you've embiggened yourself with the very noble act

of the search!

[Fawke Em]

13. Pssstt... it's a sentence from the Simpsons!

Embiggen and cromulent are intended to sound like real words but play on the fact that they are completely fabricated.

[davekriss]

9. Reminds me of playing scrabble with the OED

You could make up almost any word and, if challenge, turn to our two volume Oxford English Dictionary, with it's microscopic font and seriously thick magnifying glass, and chances are we'd find the word.

My devious ex-wife and I were nearly impossible to beat in scrabble!

[pansypoo53219]

16. does it have poontang?

the one word most dictionaries refuse to include. i am still searching for 1. i DID find one, but i didn't have the $ to get it.

[Posteritatis]

21. "You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js." (nt)

[Liberal Veteran]

23. Quezjjx is a real word! Trust me.

It's Icelandic!

[pinboy3niner]

2. This may help:

Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/10/934890/-Stochastic-Terrorism-160-Triggering-the-shooters

[coalition_unwilling]

10. I actually don't think Osama bin Laden is\was a 'stochastic terrorist' except

perhaps inadvertently. I see OBL more as the spiritual (but not military) leader of a body of 'irregulars,' a force mid-way between the stochastic terrorist's 'lone wolf' agent and a state-sanctioned military force. To use your experience, one could argue that the NVA was an official military force, while the NLF were 'irregulars' (assuming that South Vietnam had any political legitimacy whatsoever). That did not stop the U.S. military from repeatedly referring to the NLF as 'terrorists,' thereby debasing the English language in ways even Orwell himself never could have imagined.

Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, et. al., on the other hand, are "stochastic terrorists," since their words incite acts of anti-personnel violence that are statistically predictable, even if the individual actors most often are not, save arguably in hindsight.

Myself, I don't like the word 'terrorist' - that linguistic currency is so debased now as to have lost almost all value. I prefer 'killer' or 'inciter' (see above) as more specific and less prone to ideological debasement.

[Enrique]

4. I see it as the opposite of deterministic

I took a single course in Stochastic Processes, and that is what I came away with. It is appliied to systems that are too complex to look at in the normal deterministic way. Such as climate, where you kind of know what the state of the various currents, etc. is, but not enough so that it doesn't constantly surprise you.

[mike_c]

5. in usual usage it means truly random...

...as opposed to deteministic processes that can appear random, but only because we don't know all the parameters necessary to predict them. Stochasitic processes produce truly random outcomes, i.e. one cannot know enough about them to accurately predict their outcomes other than as probabilities.

[Posteritatis]

12. I find it interesting how often it's used here to mean "anything but random." (nt)

[mike_c]

17. yeah, that would be about as incorrect as one can get....

Fail.

[lapislzi]

20. What is random/what is not random

People speak. Public figures make pronouncements, statements of ideology, thinly veiled "suggestions" that persons not sharing their ideology should be eliminated, perhaps by violent means.

Examples: the "targets" over prominent Democratic legislators' faces. The not-so-thinly veiled commentary by people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh that liberals and progressives should be killed.

The ideas and the commentary go out into the ether quite randomly. It falls on all ears, but not randomly.

All it takes is one single individual--at random--to take these words very literally, very seriously, to heart and to formulate a plan.

The ideologues and demagogues will (and do) disingenuously claim plausible deniability that their utterances were ever intended to be interpreted literally, by anyone.

Perhaps a more accurate term for stochastic terrorism would be "terrorism by proxy."

I believe it exists, and I believe both sides know it. One side chooses to employ it more often than the other, with catastrophically predictable results.

[cthulu2016]

22. I don't think stochastic is random

It is impossible to determine the future path of every helium molecule in a balloon but given the average temperature and the number of molecules we can know with some precision what the gas pressure is.

The pressure is an emergent property that is called stochastic precisely because it is non-deterministic but is not random.

When people talk about stochastic terrorism (a phrase I'm not crazy about) it is, again, not random. If Glen Becks gets everyone agitated then more Muslims get shot. It is impossible to determine which people will become shooters and which Muslims will get shot, but the rise in the number of shootings would be a non-random effect, even though there's no way to predict the particulars.

[mike_c]

24. I'm not talking about terms like "stochastic terrorism...."

The classic example in my field is the difference between stochastic processes and deterministic chaos. Chaos APPEARS random, but is completely predictable if the parameters and starting conditions are known (for example in the Verhulst-Pearl population model at high growth rates or with time lags). Any process that produces apparently random results but which can be accurately predicted when it's inputs are known is similarly deterministic. I would argue that the paths of helium atoms you cited are deterministic-- just difficult.

On the other hand, some processes are at least theoretically stochastic, for example the radioactive decay of a single atom. Coin tosses are effectively stochastic. The outcomes from those sorts of processes can only be predicted as probabilities.

The Glen Beck example you cite seems to have both deterministic and stochastic components to me. The stochastic part is similar to the atomic decay model-- while we might know that every time Beck opens his pie hole 2.6 domestic terrorists will be generated (obviously a contrived example), there is no way of predicting exactly WHICH 2.6 folks from his millions of listeners will shed their neutron of social restraint and begin emptying assault rifle magazines in front of mosques. THAT'S stochastic.

[cthulu2016]

33. I get what you're saying, but would quibble on a (literally) tiny point

I don't think the movements of gas molecules are deterministic, or at least not individually predictable (to avoid having to define deterministic too closely), even given a hypothetically perfect picture of their starting state. Quantum effects mean that the collision results can only be described as probabilities, and at molecular scale the distinction is more than hair-splitting. A few collisions down the road and you might as well be flipping a coin.


In looking the word up, it does seem to have as many meanings as there are specialties. Hence the "blind men and the elephant" character of the replies here.

[mike_c]

35. good point....

I was thinking Newtonian-ly, not quantum-ly. But yes, you're certainly right about that.

[NV Whino]

6. Here's another version

It applies to the printing process as well. It was a precursor to the present day inkjet printing. Prior to that things were printed using cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots in a specific pattern. Stochastic printing took CMYK dots and arraigned them in a seemingly random pattern, which effectively fooled the eye into thinking the image was a continuous tone image (AKA non digital photograph). Current ink jet printing has taken the stochastic pattern and progressed it to the point where dots almost can't be decerned at all.

[randome]

7. It's a new word someone learned and posted on DU. That's all. Like 'kerfuffle'.

But 'kerfuffle' actually has a life away from DU. 'Stochastic', not so much.

[ananda]

11. It has to do with terrorism incited by media and politicians..

.. scattering the idea of violence and killing out among vulnerable
members of the population.

Think of Henry II and the murder of Thomas a Becket.

Henry said to his men: I wish someone would get that gnat out
of my hair.. and somebody did..

.. the same way "somebody" killed Dr. Tiller, shot Gabrielle Giffords,
and so on.

[rrneck]

14. It's a fancy way to create

correlation without having to bother with causation.

When they figure out how to empirically measure hyperbole and its impact on empirically measured unstable minds, then apply those measurements to a statistical analysis, then the word will mean something.

Right now it means, "Some asshat said a bunch of stupid bullshit, and some other asshat did something stupid". The word seems to be a variation on the "violent/pornographic/mysogynist/hate media causes people to do bad things" meme.

[nanabugg]

15. Try: anecdotal statistics. nt

[progressivebydesign]

18. it's a word people use to make themselves look smarter than everyone else.

If the majority of readers have to look it up, and still wonder what it means... it's served its purpose.

There are other ways to say the same thing... but doesn't look as educated.

[HereSince1628]

19. a stochastic process generates variability, a deterministic process does not

Without getting into more precise definitions, when used as above you can interpret the word stochastic as implying a property of statistical variability.

[backscatter712]

25. Since "stochastic" seems to be used in the phrase "stochastic terrorism", let me use an analogy.

Last edited Tue Aug 14, 2012, 03:25 PM - Edit history (1)

pinboy3niner posted the link to the Daily Kos article that explains stochastic terrorism.

Since most of the right-wingers who engage in the process are too chickenshit to do anything that gets their hands dirty, they use stochastic terrorism techniques to terrorize without those annoying consequences. When Bill O'Reilly was calling George Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer" dozens of times on his show, until Scott Roeder came out of the woodwork and shot him in the face, that's stochastic terrorism.

Why the word "stochastic"? Because there's a big random element, that could described statistically.

My analogy is Russian Roulette. The right-wingers take their revolver, put one bullet in the cylinder spin the cylinder to randomize, point the gun AT YOU, rather than themselves, and pull the trigger. So that's a 1/6 chance that the gun fires. Then he does it again. Spin, point, pull the trigger. Another 1/6 chance that the gun fires. Keep doing this over and over, and the probability that the gun will fire sooner or later approaches 100%.

So, Ann Coulter suggests "My only regret with Tim McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building" - spin, point, click.

Rush Limbaugh says "Americans who work against our military once the [Iraq] war is underway will be considered Enemies of the State by me. Just fair warning to you, Barbara Streisand, and others who see the world as you do. I don't want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well, let's just say you will be spotlighted." - spin, point, click.

Michele Bachmann rants about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the State Department... spin, point, BANG!!! The bullet's name is Wade Michael Page.

Wade Page kills a bunch of people in a Sikh temple. And that example demonstrates the random, or stochastic nature of stochastic terrorism - Wade Page was so much of a dumbass that he conflated Sikhs with Muslims.

[Nostradammit]

26. Well done!

Thank you.

[Initech]

29. Let's also not forget that Wade Page was a true domestic terrorist.

This guy wore his hate on his sleeve - quite literally. He was being watched by the SPLC for more than a decade. His military comrades were afraid of him. Add that and constant right wing hate radio talk and you've got a ticking time bomb waiting to happen. It's getting really scary out there and if you think Wade Page was just the beginning, well its bound to get far worse.

[MineralMan]

27. For some reason, some people confuse the word

with "predictive." It's been misused that way for as long as I can remember. I've heard politicians use it with that meaning, as well as people who should know better.

Someone's misusing it again, I think.

Stochastic does have a secondary meaning as an adjective of "by conjecture," but that's rarely, rarely used. It essentially means, in that definition, "guesswork." It's a valid definition of the word, but little known.

Further confusing the issue is its use in conjunction with "accounting." "Stochastic Accounting" is much misused and misunderstood, as well.

[patrice]

28. It's about calculating the probabilities of emergent properties in complex systems well enough to be

able to evoke them.

People do this sort of thing naturally all of the time. It's what brains do. With the development of the internet and the all pervasive dominance and power of media, it's becoming an engineering specialty now.

Background reading on this could include research in Behaviorism in general, which is basically a neurophysiological perspective and more recent uses of focus-grouping, especially as that was introduced by Reagan's "Morning in America" projects, but also as it is derived from polling in general, which is about as old as politics in America is.

[Skidmore]

30. It's a $100 word which will never come to common use.

While it is nice to indulge in discussions using the lingo of the trade, proposing that it be introduced into the common vernacular in a short period of time when it must be extensively defined, is foolhardy. We have a millions of people have the foggiest notion about statistics let alone the precise application of this term.

Find a simpler word or phrase to convey the message is the optimum alternative.

[rbixby]

31. It reminds me of this video....

[link:

|

[trackfan]

32. Sounds like a word one inserts in a graduate-school level paper

in order to obscure lack of content, and to sound smart.

[yawnmaster]

34. I see that you have received a stochastic response to your OP. eom