Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Most favorable or desirable; optimum.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Best; most favorable: specifically, in experimental psychology, referring to the frequency or duration of stimuli, to the length of intervals between experiments, etc., so timed as to allow of most accurate reproduction or apprehension, or of most adequate attentive preparation: as, the optimal interval for reproduction, the optimal preparation-time, the optimal rate of recurrence, the optimal rhythm, etc.
- Of or pertaining to the optimum, as of temperature, moisture, etc. See
optimum .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Best possible; most desirable; optimum.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective The
best , mostfavourable ordesirable , especially under somerestriction .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective most desirable possible under a restriction expressed or implied
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This poses serious problems for the claim of engineers that their designs are optimal solutions, since Arrow's theorem implies that in a multi-criteria problem the notion of ˜optimal™ cannot be rigorously defined.
Philosophy of Technology Franssen, Maarten 2009
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One suspects that the term optimal came into widespread use among economists as a marketing device to promote their normative propositions based on efficiency.
NYT > Home Page 2010
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In order to achieve what I call "optimal stress," you must realize that stress is a process, not an event.
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Then, in 1951 the American mathematician John Nash (yes, the same Nash in "A Beautiful Mind"), wrote a work called “Non-Cooperative Games” in which the outcomes inevitably evolve into two kinds of equilibrium, which he characterized as optimal and suboptimal.
Some informal extensions to mathematical game theory: factoring in elites and religious fanatics. 2009
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I may define an optimal society as one that looks like it holds property "rights" but what I define as optimal and what I think is moral are two different things.
Do Progressives Believe This?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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In his teaching and practice he would force an inhale on the downstroke of a squat and then have a forced exhale on the upstroke, which he called optimal breathing.
On Yoga Steven Barnes 2007
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Well, there are certainly opportunities because as we have talked in the past, we have many markets where we have less than what we called optimal amount of share, which is 10% in market.
KeyCorp CEO Discusses Q3 2010 Results - Earnings Transcript Call -- Seeking Alpha 2010
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Plenty of others (myself included) eat a perfectly healthy diet, get enough exercise, and yet for whatever reason, cannot attain "optimal" weight.
Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings: January 2006 Archives 2006
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Plenty of others (myself included) eat a perfectly healthy diet, get enough exercise, and yet for whatever reason, cannot attain "optimal" weight.
Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings: News & Opinion Blogging, Jan 9, 2006 2006
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Conclusions about creationism are made in relation to 'optimal' life without defining the word optimal or showing how creationism does not produce optimal life and intentionally combining contradictory philosophical and scientific grounds.
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