Adjustment (from late Latin ad-juxtare, derived from juxta, near, but early confounded with a supposed derivation from Justus, right) means regulating, adapting or settling in a variety of contexts:
- Adjustment (law) has several meanings; many relate to insurance, contracts, or the resolution of disputes
- In engineering, mathematics, and geodesy, the optimal parameter estimation of a mathematical model so as to best fit a data set. The most important method is the least squares adjustment, found by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
- In metrology, the set of operations carried out on an instrument in order that it provides given indications corresponding to given values of the measurand.
- In psychology, the behavioural process of balancing conflicting needs, or needs against obstacles in the environment. Humans and animals regularly do this, for example, when they are stimulated by their physiological state to seek food, they eat (if possible) to reduce their hunger and thus adjust to the hunger stimulus. Adjustment disorder occurs when there is an inability to make a normal adjustment to some need or stress in the environment.
- In statistics, it is the compensation for confounding variables
Famous quotes containing the word adjust:
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)
“My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)