Stochastic (/stəˈkæstɪk/; from Ancient Greek στόχος (stókhos) 'aim, guess')[1] is the property of being well-described by a random probability distribution.[1] Stochasticity and randomness are distinct, in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena; these terms are often used synonymously. In probability theory, the formal concept of a stochastic process is also referred to as a random process.[2][3][4][5][6]
Stochasticity is used in many different fields, including the natural sciences such as biology, technology and engineering fields such as image processing, signal processing, computer science, information theory and telecommunications.[7] chemistry,[8] ecology,[9] neuroscience,[10] physics,[11][12][13][14] and cryptography.[15][16] It is also used in finance (e.g., stochastic oscillator), due to seemingly random changes in the different markets within the financial sector and in medicine, linguistics, music, media, colour theory, botany, manufacturing and geomorphology.[17][18][19]