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 technically distinct concepts: the former refers to a modeling approach, while the latter describes phenomena; in everyday conversation, however, these terms are often used interchangeably. 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]