parameter

1. (sciences) A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof.Examples: "Cohesion parameters (solubility parameters) can be used with full theoretical justification to characterize many surfaces ..."; "To this end, we derive an a posteriori error estimator for the error with respect to the unknown parameter."

2. (sciences) A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof.

3. (sciences) A variable that describes a property or characteristic of some system (material, object, event, etc.) or some aspect thereof.Examples: "The parameter estimation problem considered in this chapter consists of estimating the unknown parameter, ū [a barred v, actually], given N samples of the observation process."; "Fundamental is the regulation of a for-profit OpenAI. The company initially delayed the launch of its earlier GPT-2, with a mere 1.5bn parameters, because the company fretted over its implications."

4. (programming) An input variable of a function definition, that gets an actual value (argument) at execution time.Synonyms: formal parameter

5. (programming, loosely) An actual value given to such a formal parameter.Synonyms: argument, actual parameterbroadly

6. (geometry) In the ellipse and hyperbola, a third proportional to any diameter and its conjugate, or in the parabola, to any abscissa and the corresponding ordinate.Examples: "The parameter of the principal axis of a conic section is called the latus rectum."