(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.
Discretionary
Definition:
() Left to discretion; unrestrained except by discretion or judgment; as, an ambassador with discretionary powers.
Example Sentences:
(1) There is no evidence that health-maintenance organizations reduce admissions in discretionary or "unnecessary" categories; instead, the data suggest lower admission rates across the board.
(2) A way must be found to experiment with various discretionary approaches that would strike a realistic balance among competing interests.
(3) "It was always our intention that foster carers and armed forces personnel would be covered by discretionary housing payments (DHPs) and therefore not affected.
(4) A mistake was introduced in the editing process to suggest Lall had applied for for a discretionary payment from Westminster council but had been turned down.
(5) Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight said: "While the further pick-up in UK car sales in October was clearly driven primarily by the scrappage scheme and a desire to beat January's VAT hike, it may also be a sign that a significant number of consumers have greater scope and willingness to step up their discretionary spending.
(6) This study examines the contextual and ideological dimensions of attitudes toward discretionary abortion using two national surveys.
(7) Many of these will in fact be dealt with via a discretionary fund.
(8) Recent research has found that the multiplier for discretionary fiscal policy – the change in output caused by a change in discretionary government spending – is larger when nominal interest rates are low and there is a significant amount of under-utilised resources.
(9) But the employers can achieve the basic legal minimum wage for the state only by including in the calculation statutory benefits such as maternity pay and sickness benefit, and discretionary items such as free tea.
(10) Councils can make discretionary housing payments (DHPs) to those tenants who are at risk of falling behind in rent and getting into debt as a result of the change.
(11) Oversight staff in 23 of the 30 states with legislation regulating continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) completed a questionnaire surveying features of implementation experience such as problems encountered with the scope of regulation, the appropriateness of oversight placement, the adequacy of staff and financial resources, the use of discretionary agency authority, and attitudes toward various changes in applicable state law.
(12) Every time I thought about my own gold-plated life as a journalist - the taxis, the Guardian's car, my mobile phone, eating out, or the gifts for my family and what's called "discretionary spending" on pleasing non-necessities - it seemed undoable.
(13) It found a typical family was left with £171 a week of discretionary income once taxes and essentials bills had been paid, up from £167 last year.
(14) Since most hospital programs are not discretionary, they cannot be successfully evaluated by the "decision package" methodology of ZBPD.
(15) Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
(16) "The Department for Work and Pensions' continued claim that discretionary housing payments [DHP] will protect all of the most vulnerable is simply not true.
(17) A variety of exemptions, discretionary funds and variable rates are being debated , but at the core of the debate is whether or not the principles behind the policy are the right ones for a modern democracy.
(18) Alternatively, might it not suggest that quite apart from banal, administrative, bureaucratic "filtering" – routine chucking out cases sent by applicants many years after a final domestic disposal, or without any domestic proceedings having been undertaken – the court is already making extensive use of highly discretionary concepts such as "manifestly ill-founded" to pre-judge the interest of its caseload, and is already selecting cases which it regards as "serious" or "important"?
(19) Although ministers have introduced a £165m discretionary housing fund for London councils in 2013-14 to help families who can make a special case for staying, the CPAG report says this is inadequate and amounts to less than 10% of the shortfall in benefit income caused by changes.
(20) Successive governments have multiplied the number of acts that can be deemed criminal or misdemeanours, constructing a regime of unaccountable discretionary decisions that blight people’s lives.