Adjustment

• Date: 1644

Definitions

• 1 : the act or process of adjusting
• 2 : a settlement of a claim or debt in a case in which the amount involved is uncertain or full payment is not made
• 3 : the state of being adjusted
• 4 : a means (as a mechanism) by which things are adjusted one to another
• 5 : a correction or modification to reflect actual conditions

Descriptions

Adjustment (from late Latin ad-juxtare, derived from juxta, near, but early confounded with a supposed derivation from Justus, right) means regulating, adapting or settling in a variety of contexts:

• Adjustment (law) has several meanings; many relate to insurance, contracts, or the resolution of disputes.
• In engineering, mathematics, and geodesy, adjustment means the optimal parameter estimation of a mathematical model so as to best fit a data set. The most important method is the least squares adjustment, found by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
• In metrology, adjustment is the set of operations carried out on an instrument in order that it provides given indications corresponding to given values of the measurand.
• In psychology, adjustment means the behavioral process of balancing conflicting needs, or needs against obstacles in the environment. Humans and animals regularly do this, for example, when they are stimulated by their physiological state to seek food, they eat (if possible) to reduce their hunger and thus adjust to the hunger stimulus. Adjustment disorder occurs when there is an inability to make a normal adjustment to some need or stress in the environment.
• In statistics, it is the compensation for confounding variables.