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VARIABILITY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The quality of being subject to variation
Synonyms:
variability; variableness; variance
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("variability" is a kind of...):
changeability; changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "variability"):
variedness (characterized by variation)
variegation (variability in coloration)
personal equation (variability attributable to individual differences)
Antonym:
invariability (the quality of being resistant to variation)
Derivation:
variable ((used of a device) designed so that a property (as e.g. light) can be varied)
variable (liable to or capable of change)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of being uneven and lacking uniformity
Synonyms:
unevenness; variability
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("variability" is a kind of...):
irregularity; unregularity (not characterized by a fixed principle or rate; at irregular intervals)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "variability"):
rockiness (the quality of abounding in rocks and stones)
ruggedness (the quality of being topologically uneven)
jaggedness (something irregular like a bump or crack in a smooth surface)
patchiness (unevenness in quality or performance)
waviness (unevenness produced by waves or wrinkles)
Antonym:
invariability (a quality of uniformity and lack of variation)
Derivation:
variable (marked by diversity or difference)
Context examples:
The BCR will minimize the variability introduced by the collection, processing, and handling of tissues.
(Biospecimen Core Resource, NCI Thesaurus)
A new study has found that variability in night-to-night sleep time and reduced sleep quality adversely affect the ability of older adults to recall information about past events.
(Study ties poor sleep to reduced memory performance in older adults, National Science Foundation)
Soy bean and wheat were less at risk, with climate variability accounting for seven per cent and six per cent of year-to-year changes in yields respectively.
(El Niño linked to widespread crop failures, SciDev.Net)
Those provide more variability than daytime levels due to the stresses associated with disordered breathing occurring during sleep.
(Researchers identify genetic variations linked to oxygen drops during sleep, National Institutes of Health)
"We need to understand what the variability is between people before we can consider starting to set different requirements in diets," Lemay said.
(Humans More Unique than Expected When It Comes to Digesting Fatty Meals, U.S. Department of Agriculture)
"The variability of the arrangement of the leaf area in the canopy can be important in terms of forest productivity as well as resilience to different types of disturbances and stressors."
(Structural complexity in forests improves carbon capture, National Science Foundation)
These results confirm that NM-MRI can capture known topographical variability within this brain structure.
(Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI identified as a potential biomarker for psychosis, National Institutes of Health)
Addresses geographic variability in medical practice in the United States and the medical and nonmedical factors that create this variability.
(Patterns of Care, NCI Thesaurus)
Characterized by baseline fetal heart rate 110 to 160 beats per minute, moderate baseline variability, absent late or variable decelerations and absent or present early decelerations.
(Normal Continuous Cardiotocography Pattern, NCI Thesaurus)
The difference between the 3d and 1st quartiles is called the interquartile range and it is used as a measure of variability (dispersion).
(Interquartile Range, NCI Thesaurus)
