perturbation

1 an unhappy and worried mental state; "there was too much anger and disturbance"; "she didn't realize the upset she caused me" [syn: disturbance, upset]

2 (physics) a secondary influence on a system that causes it to deviate slightly

3 activity that is an intrusion or interruption; "he looked around for the source of the disturbance"; "there was a disturbance of neural function" [syn: disturbance]

4 a disposition that is confused or nervous and upset [syn: fluster]

5 the act of causing disorder [syn: disruption]

English

Etymology

perturb + -ation

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -eɪʃǝn

Noun

1. Agitation; the state of being perturbed
2. A small change in a physical system, or more broadly any definable system (such as a biological or economic system)
3. , (astronomy) Variation in an orbit due to the influence of external bodies

Translations

• Italian: perturbazione (all)

French

Etymology

From perturbatio.

Noun

fr-noun f

1. disturbance
2. derangement

Perturbation or perturb may refer to any of numerous concepts in several fields:

• Perturbation theory, mathematical methods that give approximate solutions to problems that cannot be solved exactly
• Perturbation (geology), changes in the nature of alluvial deposits over time
• Perturbation (astronomy), alterations to an object's orbit caused by gravitational interactions with other bodies
• Perturbation theory (quantum mechanics), a set of approximation schemes directly related to mathematical perturbation for describing a complicated quantum system in terms of a simpler one
• Perturbation (biology), an alteration of the function of a biological system, induced by external or internal mechanisms
• Perturbation (economic), an alteration of the function of an economic system, induced by external or internal mechanisms
• Perturbation (machine learning), making changes in the dataset to (re)learn a classifier (used in bagging and boosting).

See also

• Annoy, Annoyance
• Disturb, Disturbance

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