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 adjustment:
“You have many choices. You can choose forgiveness over revenge, joy over despair. You can choose action over apathy.... You hold the key to how well you make the emotional adjustment to your divorce and consequently how well your children will adapt.”
—Stephanie Marston (20th century)
“The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)