What's the difference between arbitrary and discretion?

Arbitrary


Definition:

  • (a.) Depending on will or discretion; not governed by any fixed rules; as, an arbitrary decision; an arbitrary punishment.
  • (a.) Exercised according to one's own will or caprice, and therefore conveying a notion of a tendency to abuse the possession of power.
  • (a.) Despotic; absolute in power; bound by no law; harsh and unforbearing; tyrannical; as, an arbitrary prince or government.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This developed concept of "valve only" energy loss has the potential of standardising the findings of different research groups by removing the arbitrary selection of measurement points from reported results.
  • (2) 'Vertical' sections are plane sections longitudinal to a fixed (but arbitrary) axial direction.
  • (3) In the microtitre plate assay only 45% of specific IgE was immobilized and it was necessary to express the results in arbitrary units.
  • (4) It is concluded that renin levels in hypertension are influenced by several factors and that any attempt to subdivide patients into renin subgroups is therefore arbitrary.
  • (5) In his letter Abd El Fattah highlights the arbitrary nature of many of their detentions, the torture to which thousands have probably been subjected – and the apathy towards, and often enthusiasm for, such malpractice among the public.
  • (6) Although the diagnosis of hyperlipidemia is somewhat arbitrary, in that the upper limits of normal are not universally agreed upon, it is clear that the risk of atherosclerosis increases with plasma cholesterol concentration; it may also increase in hyperglyceridemia.
  • (7) Several arbitrary definitions have been used, some related to visual estimates of coronary stenosis and others to quantitative angiographic techniques.
  • (8) More than 60% of the residents' working hours in this program exceeded the arbitrary 80-hour limit, emphasizing the challenge of complying with the imposition of maximum work hours.
  • (9) Practically, serially accumulated images with sequentially prolonged accumulation times are weighted by two arbitrary functions.
  • (10) While somewhat arbitrary, the number of drug-affected newborns, adjusted for underreporting, was about 38,000 (95% confidence interval: 30,000-45,000).
  • (11) The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979 [...] I cannot imagine a more "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary invasion" than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.
  • (12) For the chain with arbitrary values of characteristic times of individual stages the maximal possible degree of the chain stability and corresponding value of the feedback coefficient are estimated.
  • (13) The cellular total polyamine (spermidine + spermine) concentration on the slides varied between 4 and 15 nmol per mg protein (MCF-7 cells) and 5 and 26 nmol per mg protein (HeLa cells) and the corresponding microfluorometric results between 60 and 115 arbitrary units (MCF-7 cells) and 80 and 160 arbitrary units (HeLa cells).
  • (14) A general purpose computer program, PROPAGATE, has been written to allow addition, deletion, and modification of the beam line elements used in the calculation and to provide a convenient means of repeating such calculations for arbitrary beam lines.
  • (15) The current government should learn from past mistakes and not expand the programme too quickly in pursuit of arbitrary targets, and, above all else, not overclaim for free schools.
  • (16) The device consists of a motor-driven shaft which moves the record past a fixed cursor, and an electronic counter which records the movements of the shaft, thereby providing a cumulative tally of the distance of the current position of the cursor from some arbitrary origin on the record.
  • (17) Analysis of total radioligand binding was found to be a better procedure because it eliminates the use of an arbitrary concentration of unlabelled ligand and improves the accuracy of the assay.
  • (18) Water ferns (Salviniaceae) and seed ferns (Pteridospermae) are known as the arbitrary type of Lycopsida which did not reach the state of shot structure of the body.
  • (19) Methods are reviewed for estimating the transverse relaxation time T2 and the pseudodensity (PD) from spin-echo measurements acquired at an arbitrary set of echo times [TEi].
  • (20) The response of the resting (fully formed) hair follicle to irradiation was studied using an arbitrary 6 unit scale of epilation as an endpoint.

Discretion


Definition:

  • (n.) Disjunction; separation.
  • (n.) The quality of being discreet; wise conduct and management; cautious discernment, especially as to matters of propriety and self-control; prudence; circumspection; wariness.
  • (n.) Discrimination.
  • (n.) Freedom to act according to one's own judgment; unrestrained exercise of choice or will.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Therefore, neither of these two regions of the Tat protein appear to be discrete activation domains.
  • (2) Interphase death thus involves a discrete, abrupt transition from the normal state and is not merely the consequence of progressive and degenerative changes.
  • (3) One of the HEF bands can be separated from two others with beta-alanine as discrete spacer.
  • (4) In the heart, myocarditis is often discrete, and may be complicated by perivascular fibrosis and rare foci of myocytolysis; in some cases primary lymphomas may also develop.
  • (5) The p30 proteins of murine viruses also contain a second discrete set of antigenic determinants related to those in infectious primate viruses and endogenous porcine viruses, but not detected in the feline leukemia virus group.
  • (6) These transformants were found to possess discrete Hind III fragments containing human Alu family sequences which were conserved in several independent secondary transformants.
  • (7) These results demonstrate, in living human hearts, that diffuse coronary atherosclerosis is often present when coronary angiography reveals only discrete stenoses.
  • (8) The appearance of an abundant class of polyribosomes was correlated with globin synthesis by demonstrating that a discrete class of polyribosomes arises in cells treated with the inducers hexamethylene bisacetamide and hemin.
  • (9) We conclude that: 1) the effective capillary PO2 in the fetal brain can be significantly reduced by increasing the distance between non-methemoglobin-laden erythrocytes in capillaries and 2) hypoxic inhibition of fetal breathing probably arises from discrete areas of the brain having a PO2 less than 3 Torr.
  • (10) The ligands bind at discrete sites in the minor groove of DNA, and analysis on DNA sequencing gels show pronounced protection at the ligand binding sites, as well as more generalized protection.
  • (11) Stuart Forman and Keith Miller describe the physiological, biophysical and molecular biological evidence pointing to the location of a discrete allosteric site on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor at which local anesthetics act.
  • (12) The lesion presented as a discrete, palpable mass that led to orchiectomy.
  • (13) There were discrete linear relationships between muscle temperature and isometric endurance associated with cycling at 60% and 80% VO2max.
  • (14) Six discrete 'phased' nucleosomes are present upstream from the gene and are modulated by induction.
  • (15) The anterior division can be further parcellated into dorsal, lateral, and ventral areas, and each of these areas, along with the posterior division, can be thought of as containing more-or-less discrete nuclei embedded within a relatively undifferentiated region.
  • (16) Thus, SA may be controlled by a discrete number of motoneuron task groups reflecting a small number of central command signals or by a continuum of activation patterns associated with a continuum of moment arms.
  • (17) A CT scan of the brain showed numerous small discrete lesions.
  • (18) The starting dose of paroxetine was 20 mg daily and of amitriptyline 75 mg daily in divided doses; at week 3 these doses could be increased at the investigators' discretion.
  • (19) By using regression analysis on a series of subsets of Ra3 responders and nonresponders, we obtained data supporting the concept of discrete "responder" and "nonresponder" phenotypes.
  • (20) These observations suggest that the inner dynein arms in Chlamydomonas axonemes are aligned not in a single straight row, but in a staggered row or two discrete rows.