Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The quality, state, or degree of being variable or changeable.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The quality or state of being variable; variableness.
- noun In biology, ability to vary; capability of variation; susceptibility to modification under conditions of environment, whether inherited or acquired; that plasticity or modifiability of any organism in virtue of which an animal or a plant may change in form, structure, function, size, color, or other character, lose some character or acquire another, and thus deviate from its parent-form; also, the kind or rate of variation in a given instance; the fact or act of varying. See
variation , 8, variety, 6. - noun In astronomy, the fact that a star or nebula changes its brightness in a more or less periodic manner.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality or state of being variable; variableness.
- noun (Biol.) The power possessed by living organisms, both animal and vegetable, of adapting themselves to modifications or changes in their environment, thus possibly giving rise to ultimate variation of structure or function.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun the
state orcharacteristic of beingvariable - noun the
degree to which a thing is variable. Indata orstatistics this is often a measurement of distance from themean or a description of data range.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being subject to variation
- noun the quality of being uneven and lacking uniformity
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It is well known that the term variability is commonly employed in the broadest possible sense.
Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation Hugo de Vries 1891
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Certainly some errors are predictable based on transference from the L1, but in my experience variability is common and often unpredictable even with groups of learners from the same L1 background with pretty much the same level of exposure to the L2, and this variability often appears to have nothing to do with negative (or even positive, for that matter) transfer.
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I can't top Mark, but the notion of primitive societies being zero-sum is silly when so much of the bounty or scarcity originate in variability of nature.
Evolutionary Psychology and Economic Bias, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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John Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said natural long-term variability in climate, rather than greenhouse-gas emissions, could play a greater role in warming.
Last Year Tied 2005 for Hottest on Record Gautam Naik 2011
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If you read the entire Scafetta and West paper, you'll see that they also note that the temperature-sun connection breaks down over a good part of the 20th century, and that solar variability is insufficient to explain the exhibited warming, especially over the last 30 years or so.
The Sun and Global Warming, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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The authors used statistical methods rather than modeling to tease out the impacts from factors that contribute to shorter-term variability for five of the most-used temperature records.
Bill Chameides: Global Warming: What Happens When You Factor Out the Other Factors Bill Chameides 2011
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Meanwhile, the short-term variability in U.S. surface temperatures has been decreasing since 1800, suggesting a more stable climate.
The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism Richard A. Muller 2011
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Using $5/mmbtu natural gas, the costs of meeting wind variability is around $45-50/MWH which is expensive relative to coal but is very competitive relative to the market in California.
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The authors used statistical methods rather than modeling to tease out the impacts from factors that contribute to shorter-term variability for five of the most-used temperature records.
Bill Chameides: Global Warming: What Happens When You Factor Out the Other Factors Bill Chameides 2011
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I can't top Mark, but the notion of primitive societies being zero-sum is silly when so much of the bounty or scarcity originate in variability of nature.
Evolutionary Psychology and Economic Bias, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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