English

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Etymology

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From co- +‎ vary.

Verb

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covary (third-person singular simple present covaries, present participle covarying, simple past and past participle covaried)

  1. (statistics) To vary together with another variable, particularly in a way that may be predictive
    • 2007 July 18, Thomas Satting, “Identity in 4D”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 140, number 2, →DOI:
      More specifically, to say that there is an informative criterion of diachronic identity is to say that facts of diachronic identity covary with facts about continuants’ instantaneous qualitative profiles [] .
    • 2009, C. James Goodwin, Research In Psychology: Methods and Design[1], John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 175:
      The participants certainly differ in how their practice is distributed (1, 2, or 3 days), but they also differ in how much total practice they get (3, 6, or 9 hours). This is a perfect example of a confound—it is impossible to tell if the results are due to one factor (distribution of practice) or the other (total practice hours); the two factors covary perfectly.
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Translations

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