What's the difference between arbitrary and irrational?

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.

Irrational


Definition:

  • (a.) Not rational; void of reason or understanding; as, brutes are irrational animals.
  • (a.) Not according to reason; absurd; foolish.
  • (a.) Not capable of being exactly expressed by an integral number, or by a vulgar fraction; surd; -- said especially of roots. See Surd.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Take-out: Apple can still innovate and Apple can still generate irrational lust out of thin air.
  • (2) Irrational fear, anxiety and prejudice are not less common among health professionals than in the community generally; they require attention in HIV-related educational programs.
  • (3) This is the latest rejection for an irrational bully whose brand is increasingly toxic.” Referring to earlier controversial comments made on the US campaign trail, Salmond also said of Trump: His behaviour and comments are unlikely to attract the votes of many Mexican Americans or Muslim Americans.
  • (4) The high prevalence of harmful habits in the young families and also some unfavourable features of their lifestyle were detected (low physical activity, irrational diet, etc).
  • (5) Sure enough, the rowdy crowd in the Fox News audience gave him a lusty boo - the loudest of a rambunctious night and maybe of the entire primary season so far - while Gingrich called him "utterly irrational" for questioning the manner of Bin Laden's killing.
  • (6) There are rationally treatable fears arising from the acute situation (especially in rehabilitation patients) as well as the irrational anxieties of the mainly endogenous depressive.
  • (7) The irrational motivations of refusal (particularly, denial and delusional ideation) have been evoked much more often then rational motivations (therapeutic inefficiency, secondary effects).
  • (8) Although critics have argued that psychiatric medications in correctional settings are often prescribed in a clinically irrational manner, without adequate diagnostic criteria, and for the purposes of coercive control rather than treatment, there has been no systematic research in an attempt to validate these claims.
  • (9) And they should be able to "tolerate high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty and rapid change – and at times irrational political demands".
  • (10) He described Anderson as “highly intelligent,” “irrational,” and “calculated” in the violence he carried out against his former partner, Rosie Batty and their son.
  • (11) The danger is that it will leave their irrational aspects intact, while stripping away the essential protections they offer to our wildlife.
  • (12) In general, providing up-to-date information in a small group setting can effectively reduce irrational fears.
  • (13) People are dying to get into this company because they are on Facebook, it's irrational if you look at the numbers.
  • (14) Debating issues such as unemployment benefits and the rehabilitation of prisoners, I was suddenly propelled into the role of standalone lefty whose views were brandished "dreamy" and "irrational".
  • (15) The most frequent causes for destabilization of the remission were bronchopulmonary infections, incorrect reduction or discontinuing of the medication, formal supportive therapy, psychologic demobilization and irrational supportive therapy.
  • (16) I assert that this state of biological psychiatry is due to its violation of an epistemological criterion of rationality, i.e., the relevance criterion; that is, contemporary biological psychiatry is irrational as it adopts a conception irrelevant to the psychobiological domain.
  • (17) It is contended that these deviations, rather than representing irrational biases, could be due to (a) unspecified information over which causal inferences are computed and (b) the questionable normativeness of the models against which these deviations have been measured.
  • (18) But only now, when the world's biggest economies have been lashed by the fallout from the irrational exuberance of the markets, has the idea captured the imagination of their leaders, including Gordon Brown , right.
  • (19) The combined application of clonidine and prazosin in antihypertensive treatment is probably not only irrational but ought to be discouraged in view of the interaction between the drugs, which leads to a reduced antihypertensive potency of clonidine.
  • (20) He said Iran's enemies had understood the message of the naval exercises, saying: "We have no plan to begin any irrational act but we are ready against any threat."