Parameter Quotes

As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer. (Larry Wall)

Political commitment isn't a perimeter, Sam; it's a parameter. Don't you ever wonder? Don't you ever doubt?

Samuel R. Delany

To put it crudely, theorists can be tempted to think along the lines "If people as clever as us haven't explained it, that's because it can't be explained – it's just an accident.” I believe there are at least two important regularities among standard model parameters that do have deeper explanations, namely the unification of couplings and the smallness of the QCD θ parameter. There may well be others.

Frank Wilczek

If the discount parameter, w, is sufficiently high, there is no best strategy independent of the strategy used by the other player.

Robert Axelrod

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

Nathaniel Borenstein

I suggest that the psychophysical function that maps physical parameter space into a species' psychological space has been shaped over evolutionary history so that consequential regions for that species, although variously shaped, are not consistently elongated or flattened in particular directions.

Roger Shepard

Calculation establishes that a quantum positive energy theorem may be possible using a representation based on the Ashtekar connection. Left open is a key question of whether this use of the Ashtekar connection is necessary or whether a positive quantum energy result can be achieved for representations based on other connections, i. e., for [other] values of the Immirzi parameter.

Lee Smolin

I think everyone must settle for what is in the parameter of their own rights. No one must have an evil intention toward the territorial benefit or integrity of other nations.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

If a model itself is "a poor representation of reality,” they write, "determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit.”.

Orrin H. Pilkey

Lastly, we have also added the proviso in Section 3 on the Use and Release of Funds, that a uniform formula or parameter be developed for the fair and equitable distribution of Emergency Shelter Assistance funds across typhoon-affected barangays, municipalities, or provinces nationwide.

Francis Escudero

The way evolution is treated in general relativity, is... subtle... Change is not described as evolution of physical variables as a function of a preferred independent observable time variable. Instead, it is described in terms of a functional relation among equal footing variables... as... (T1,T2)... In general relativity, there isn't a preferred and observable quantity that plays the role of independent parameter of the evolution... General relativity describes the relative evolution of observable quantities, not the evolution of quantities as functions of a preferred one. ...[w]ith general relativity we have understood that the Newtonian "big clock" ticking away the "true universal time" is not there. (Carlo Rovelli)