What's the difference between arbitrary and incidental?

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.

Incidental


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Weddellite calcification was associated with benign lesions in 16 cases, but incidental atypical lobular hyperplasia and lobular carcinoma in situ were present, each in one case.
  • (2) The remaining case had a calibre persistent submucosal artery within the caecum that was found incidentally in a resection specimen.
  • (3) No increased incidence of pancreas divisum was found in any of four groups: an incidental group, a group with alcoholic pancreatitis, a group with unexplained upper abdominal pain, and an idiopathic pancreatitis group.
  • (4) (Incidentally, Australia had just revoked Blanc’s visa).
  • (5) We concluded that this case was incidentally successful with good regeneration of urethral mucosa of the anterior urethra by grafting a polytetrafluoroethylene tube.
  • (6) Whether the incidentally reported increase in multiword responses in some normal elderly forecasts an approaching dementia needs further research.
  • (7) As predicted, the blocking effect was found to be smaller in subjects who displayed a high degree of incidental learning in either of two tasks in which intentional vs. incidental learning corresponded to (1) words vs. word position, or (2) a target initial word letter vs. non-target initial letters.
  • (8) Unresolved etiological issues requiring clarification in the near future include the following: (1) Are stressful events important in the development of panic, or are they more incidentally related?
  • (9) We report on a 47-year-old man with a granular cell tumour of the appendix, discovered incidentally during surgery for a rectal adenocarcinoma that had been irradiated preoperatively.
  • (10) Incidental teaching and traditional discrete-trial procedures were used to teach two children with autism the expressive use of two color adjectives to describe preferred toys and food items.
  • (11) Ninety patients with a visually normal opposite ovary had no identifiable tumor in that ovary by investigative incision or incidental excision.
  • (12) It was intended, however, as a response to more radical reforms proposed by congressman Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan, and is likely to have relatively limited impact on the NSA's ability to collect data on US citizens through incidental means, the so-called backdoor provisions , which was seen as a bigger threat as Snowden's revelations continued.
  • (13) The markedly dilated main pancreatic duct was noticed at the time of an incidental ultrasonogram during hospitalization for diabetes mellitus.
  • (14) Our data suggest that the risk for development of a wound infection after a staging laparotomy for Hodgkin's disease is increased by performing an incidental appendectomy as part of the procedure.
  • (15) 10.21am GMT Incidentally, we've just learned that September was a less cheery month for the eurozone.
  • (16) Ductal carcinoma in situ as an incidental finding may be treated by excision alone; papillary and micropapillary DCIS are best treated by therapy aimed at the entire breast, although axillary dissection may not be required.
  • (17) Nonfatal complications specifically related to splenectomy occurred in 15 per cent of patients with multi-organ injury and in 18 per cent of patients with incidental-accidental splenic removal.
  • (18) The use of other techniques, such as a gated blood pool scanning or computerized tomography, affects primarily the incidental discovery of a "silent" tumor.
  • (19) We report two patients receiving maintenance valproate, one with resolving acute hepatitis C and the other with chronic persistent hepatitis C, with incidental microvesicular steatosis demonstrated on oil-red O stains.
  • (20) It is recommended that incidental teaching procedures be included in future language development programs for children with autism.