PARAMETER

Abstract

Parameter is currently a very popular word, particularly among bureaucrats. I think it's generally used as a mispronunciation of "perimeter." A typical sentence from, say, a TV interview might go, "We've bent every effort to incorporate those subfunctions within the parameters of our organizational structure." As perimeter, that might make sense, perimeters being boundaries. I was puzzled as to why so many bureaucrats had decided to pronounce perimeter as parameter. I wondered if perhaps parameter meant nearly the same thing. Maybe a parameter was like a perimeter only better. I looked it up. Webster's New International, third edition:

pa·ram·e·ter. . . 1: the relative intercept made by a plane on a crystollographic axis, the ratio of the intercepts determining the position of the plane 2a: an arbitrary constant characterizing by each of its particular values some particular member of a system (as of expressions, curves, surfaces, functions) < a ∼ is a quantity which may have various values each fixed within the limits of a stated case or discussion—T. F. Weldon > specif: a quantity that describes a statistical population < a clear distinction should always be drawn between ∼s and estimates, i.e., between quantities which characterize the universe, and estimates of these quantities calculated from observations—Statistical Methods in Research & Production > < estimation of the values of the ∼s which enter into the equation representing the chosen relation—Frank Yates > b: an independent variable through functions of which other functions may be expressed < four ∼s are necessary to determine an event, namely the three which determine its position and the one which determines its time—P. W. Bridgman >