the.com/stochastic
random, but with rules — chaos that still shows up for a probability distribution.
means describes a process whose outcome involves genuine randomness, so you can model its odds but never predict the exact result.
from from greek stokhastikos, 'able to hit the target' or 'aiming well' — from stokhos, a target or guess; the word once meant skillful guessing before it meant randomness.
vs randomrandom is the noun, stochastic describes the whole process
oppositedeterministic — same input always gives same output
greek rootsoriginally meant skill at aiming, not chance
math homecore word in probability theory since the 1930s
for instance
stock market models — black-scholes treats prices as stochastic processes, 1973
stochastic gradient descent — trains most modern neural networks, one random batch at a time
brownian motion — einstein modeled pollen jitter as stochastic in 1905
weather forecasting — ensemble forecasts run dozens of random simulations per model