deterministic

[ dih-tur-muh-nis-tik ]

adjective

1. following or relating to the philosophical doctrine of determinism, which holds that all facts and events are determined by external causes and follow natural laws, and that there is no free will:

   Rather than hewing to a deterministic model that robs the individual of agency, she believes art emerges from the interplay among individuals within a given sociocultural system.

2. Statistics. of or relating to a process or model in which the output is determined solely by the input and initial conditions, thereby always returning the same results ( stochastic ):

   The algorithms are simple and deterministic, so the results are predictable and reproducible.

   In contrast, this analysis of nanoscale phenomena depends on the elements of chance rather than the deterministic classical equations of motion.

Other Words From

• de·ter·min·is·ti·cal·ly adverb
• non·de·ter·min·is·tic adjective
• sem·i·de·ter·min·is·tic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of deterministic¹

determin(e) + -ist + -ic

Example Sentences

There are deterministic relationships in which certain genes go well or badly with other particular genes, and so similar patterns of genes reoccur.

From Salon

"The answer isn't 'completely random' or 'completely deterministic and predictable.' And yet, examining short time scales, we can find predictable, repeatable evolutionary patterns."

From Science Daily

To bridge this gap, TopicVelo puts aside deterministic models, embracing -- and gleaning insights from -- a far more difficult stochastic model that reflects biology's inescapable randomness.

From Science Daily

As quantum measurements are not deterministic, the quantum circuit executions must be repeated multiple times to estimate probability distributions describing the states, a process known as sampling.

From Science Daily

However, the first simulations that contained only deterministic elements generated decaying "neural" activity.

From Science Daily