unambiguous

• adj.

• 明白な、明確な

関

apparent、apparently、clear、clearly、definite、definitely、distinct、distinctly、evident、evidently、explicit、explicitly、indisputable、obvious、obviously、overt、overtly、palpable、plain、pronounced、unambiguously、unequivocal

　

WordNet

1. having or exhibiting a single clearly defined meaning; "As a horror, apartheid...is absolutely unambiguous"- Mario Vargas Llosa
2. can be felt by palpation; "a palpable tumor"
3. capable of being perceived; especially capable of being handled or touched or felt; "a barely palpable dust"; "felt sudden anger in a palpable wave"; "the air was warm and close--palpable as cotton"; "a palpable lie" (同)tangible
4. sell; "We cleared a lot of the old model cars"
5. free (the throat) by making a rasping sound; "Clear the throat" (同)clear_up
6. make a way or path by removing objects; "Clear a path through the dense forest"
7. remove; "clear the leaves from the lawn"; "Clear snow from the road"
8. the state of being free of suspicion; "investigation showed that he was in the clear"
9. completely; "read the book clear to the end"; "slept clear through the night"; "there were open fields clear to the horizon" (同)all_the_way
10. clear and distinct to the senses; easily perceptible; "as clear as a whistle"; "clear footprints in the snow"; "the letter brought back a clear image of his grandfather"; "a spire clean-cut against the sky"; "a clear-cut pattern" (同)clean-cut, clear-cut
11. make free from confusion or ambiguity; make clear; "Could you clarify these remarks?"; "Clear up the question of who is at fault" (同)clear_up, shed_light_on, crystallize, crystallise, crystalize, crystalise, straighten out, sort out, enlighten, illuminate, elucidate
12. easily deciphered (同)decipherable, readable
13. affording free passage or view; "a clear view"; "a clear path to victory"; "open waters"; "the open countryside" (同)open
14. characterized by ease and quickness in perceiving; "clear mind"; "a percipient author" (同)percipient
15. settle, as of a debt; "clear a debt"; "solve an old debt" (同)solve
16. pass by, over, or under without making contact; "the balloon cleared the tree tops" (同)top
17. (especially of a title) free from any encumbrance or limitation that presents a question of fact or law; "I have clear title to this property" (同)unmortgaged
18. allowing light to pass through; "clear water"; "clear plastic bags"; "clear glass"; "the air is clear and clean"
19. be debited and credited to the proper bank accounts; "The check will clear within 2 business days"
20. characterized by freedom from troubling thoughts (especially guilt); "a clear conscience"; "regarded her questioner with clear untroubled eyes"
21. clear from impurities, blemishes, pollution, etc.; "clear the water before it can be drunk"
22. clear of charges or deductions; "a clear profit"
23. free from clouds or mist or haze; "on a clear day"
24. free from confusion or doubt; "a complex problem requiring a clear head"; "not clear about what is expected of us"
25. free from contact or proximity or connection; "we were clear of the danger"; "the ship was clear of the reef"
26. free from flaw or blemish or impurity; "a clear perfect diamond"; "the clear complexion of a healthy young woman"
27. free from payment of customs duties, as of a shipment; "Clear the ship and let it dock"
28. go away or disappear; "The fog cleared in the afternoon"
29. make clear, bright, light, or translucent; "The water had to be cleared through filtering"
30. pass an inspection or receive authorization; "clear customs"
31. readily apparent to the mind; "a clear and present danger"; "a clear explanation"; "a clear case of murder"; "a clear indication that she was angry"; "gave us a clear idea of human nature"
32. remove (people) from a building; "clear the patrons from the theater after the bomb threat"
33. remove the occupants of; "Clear the building"
34. rid of instructions or data; "clear a memory buffer"
35. not elaborate or elaborated; simple; "plain food"; "stuck to the plain facts"; "a plain blue suit"; "a plain rectangular brick building"
36. extensive tract of level open land; "they emerged from the woods onto a vast open plain"; "he longed for the fields of his youth" (同)field, champaign
37. lacking embellishment or ornamentation; "a plain hair style"; "unembellished white walls"; "functional architecture featuring stark unornamented concrete" (同)bare, spare, unembellished, unornamented
38. not mixed with extraneous elements; "plain water"; "sheer wine"; "not an unmixed blessing" (同)sheer, unmingled, unmixed
39. lacking patterns especially in color (同)unpatterned
40. free from any effort to soften to disguise; "the plain and unvarnished truth"; "the unvarnished candor of old people and children" (同)unvarnished
41. easy to perceive; especially clearly outlined; "a distinct flavor"; "a distinct odor of turpentine"; "a distinct outline"; "the ship appeared as a distinct silhouette"; "distinct fingerprints"
42. recognizable; marked; "noticed a distinct improvement"; "at a distinct (or decided) disadvantage" (同)decided
43. (often followed by `from' (同)distinguishable
44. appearing as such but not necessarily so; "for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent"; "the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies"; "the ostensible truth of their theories"; "his seeming honesty" (同)ostensible, seeming
45. clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment; "the effects of the drought are apparent to anyone who sees the parched fields"; "evident hostility"; "manifest disapproval"; "patent advantages"; "made his meaning plain"; "it is plain that he is no reactionary"; "in plain view" (同)evident, manifest, patent, plain, unmistakable
46. precise; explicit and clearly defined; "I want a definite answer"; "a definite statement of the terms of the will"; "a definite amount"; "definite restrictions on the sale of alcohol"; "the wedding date is now definite"; "a definite drop in attendance"
47. known for certain; "it is definite that they have won"
48. in an unambiguous manner; "she stated her intentions unequivocally" (同)unequivocally

PrepTutorEJDIC

1. 触ってみることができる / 明白な
2. 『晴れた』;明るい(bright) / 『透き通った』,透明な / (形・輪郭などが)『はっきりした』,くっきりした / (音が)はっきり聞こえる(聞き取れる) / 『分かりやすい』,あいまいさのない / 《補語にのみ用いて》はっきり知っている,確信している / 明せきな,理路整然とした / 妨害(支障)のない / 汚れ(しみ,きず)がない / 《補語のみ用いて》(…を)免れた,(…が)ない,(…から)解放された《+『of』+『名』》 / 《名詞の前,時に名詞の後に用いて》丸々の;正味の / はっきりと,明瞭に,明確に / (…から)離れて《+『of』+『名』》 / 全く,まるまる / (…を)…‘から'『取り除く』,片付ける;(人を)…‘から'立ち去らせる《+『名』+『of』+『名』》 / (…から)〈物〉'を'『取り除く』,片付ける;(…から)〈人〉'を'立ち去らせる《『名』『+『from』(『out of』,『off』)+『名』》 / 'を'きれいにする,清らかにする;…を明るくする / …‘に'触れないで越す / (罪・疑い・責任などから)…'を'逃れさせる』,免除する《+『名』+『of』+『名』》 / 〈議会・税関・手形交換所など〉'を'すんなりと通過する,‘の'許可を簡単に得る / 《話》…'を'まるまるもうける,‘の'純益を上げる / 〈負債〉を清算する,〈手形〉を釧済する;〈小切手〉を現金化する / 『明るくなる』;澄む / 消え去る,過ぎ去る / (じゃま物のない)開けた場所,あき地
3. 『はっきり見える』(『聞こえる』) / 『はっきり理解できる』,明白な / 全くの(sheer) / 混ぜ物のない,生(き)のままの;飾りのない;無地の / ありのままの / 『質素な』,飾り(模様)のない / (食べ物が)淡白な / 平凡な,並みの,普通の;素朴な / 『平原』,平野;《the Great Plains》(北米の)大平原地帯
4. (編みもので)平編みの,基本編みで作った / 平編み,基本編み
5. 『別の』,別個の(separate) / 『明りょうな』,はっきりした;まぎれもない / 特異な,独特な;目立つ,目ざましい
6. 『明白な』,はっきりした / 『外見上の』,見かけの,うわべの
7. 『一定の』,(明確に)限定された / 『明確な』,確実な,すでに確定した

Wikipedia preview

出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2015/12/02 21:58:18」(JST)

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"Ambiguous" redirects here. For the film, see Ambiguous (film).

Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is noted for its ambiguous central figure, whose head can be viewed as being a human male's face with a pointed nose and pointy chin or being the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the first two right "true" legs visible.

Ambiguity is a type of uncertainty of meaning in which several interpretations are plausible. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The ambi- part of the name reflects an idea of "two" as in two meanings.)

The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately apparent), whereas with information that is vague, it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level of specificity.

Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity. For example, the same piece of information may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another.

Linguistic forms

Structural analysis of an ambiguous Spanish sentence:
'Pepe vio a Pablo enfurecido
Interpretation 1: When Pepe was angry, then he saw Pablo
Interpretation 2: Pepe saw that Pablo was angry.

Here, the syntactic tree in figure represents interpretation 2.

The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase pertains to its having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs. "Meaning" here refers to whatever should be captured by a good dictionary. For instance, the word "bank" has several distinct lexical definitions, including "financial institution" and "edge of a river". Another example is as in "apothecary". One could say "I bought herbs from the apothecary". This could mean one actually spoke to the apothecary (pharmacist) or went to the apothecary (pharmacy).

The context in which an ambiguous word is used often makes it evident which of the meanings is intended. If, for instance, someone says "I buried $100 in the bank", most people would not think someone used a shovel to dig in the mud. However, some linguistic contexts do not provide sufficient information to disambiguate a used word. For example,

Lexical ambiguity can be addressed by algorithmic methods that automatically associate the appropriate meaning with a word in context, a task referred to as word sense disambiguation.

The use of multi-defined words requires the author or speaker to clarify their context, and sometimes elaborate on their specific intended meaning (in which case, a less ambiguous term should have been used). The goal of clear concise communication is that the receiver(s) have no misunderstanding about what was meant to be conveyed. An exception to this could include a politician whose "weasel words" and obfuscation are necessary to gain support from multiple constituents with mutually exclusive conflicting desires from their candidate of choice. Ambiguity is a powerful tool of political science.

More problematic are words whose senses express closely related concepts. "Good", for example, can mean "useful" or "functional" (That's a good hammer), "exemplary" (She's a good student), "pleasing" (This is good soup), "moral" (a good person versus the lesson to be learned from a story), "righteous", etc. " I have a good daughter" is not clear about which sense is intended. The various ways to apply prefixes and suffixes can also create ambiguity ("unlockable" can mean "capable of being unlocked" or "impossible to lock").

Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can have two (or more) different meanings because of the structure of the sentence—its syntax. This is often due to a modifying expression, such as a prepositional phrase, the application of which is unclear. "He ate the cookies on the couch", for example, could mean that he ate those cookies that were on the couch (as opposed to those that were on the table), or it could mean that he was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies. "To get in, you will need an entrance fee of $10 or your voucher and your drivers' license." This could mean that you need EITHER ten dollars OR BOTH your voucher and your license. Or it could mean that you need your license AND you need EITHER ten dollars OR a voucher. Only rewriting the sentence, or placing appropriate punctuation can resolve a syntactic ambiguity. For the notion of, and theoretic results about, syntactic ambiguity in artificial, formal languages (such as computer programming languages), see Ambiguous grammar.

Spoken language can contain many more types of ambiguities which are called phonological ambiguities, where there is more than one way to compose a set of sounds into words. For example "ice cream" and "I scream". Such ambiguity is generally resolved according to the context. A mishearing of such, based on incorrectly resolved ambiguity, is called a mondegreen.

Semantic ambiguity happens when a sentence contains an ambiguous word or phrase—a word or phrase that has more than one meaning. In "We saw her duck" (example due to Richard Nordquist), the word "duck" can refer either

1. to the person's bird (the noun "duck", modified by the possessive pronoun "her"), or
2. to a motion she made (the verb "duck", the subject of which is the objective pronoun "her", object of the verb "saw").

For example, "You could do with a new automobile. How about a test drive?" The clause "You could do with" presents a statement with such wide possible interpretation as to be essentially meaningless. Lexical ambiguity is contrasted with semantic ambiguity. The former represents a choice between a finite number of known and meaningful context-dependent interpretations. The latter represents a choice between any number of possible interpretations, none of which may have a standard agreed-upon meaning. This form of ambiguity is closely related to vagueness.

Linguistic ambiguity can be a problem in law, because the interpretation of written documents and oral agreements is often of paramount importance.

Intentional application

See also: Word-sense disambiguation

Philosophers (and other users of logic) spend a lot of time and effort searching for and removing (or intentionally adding) ambiguity in arguments, because it can lead to incorrect conclusions and can be used to deliberately conceal bad arguments. For example, a politician might say "I oppose taxes which hinder economic growth", an example of a glittering generality. Some will think he opposes taxes in general, because they hinder economic growth. Others may think he opposes only those taxes that he believes will hinder economic growth. In writing, the sentence can be rewritten to reduce possible misinterpretation, either by adding a comma after "taxes" (to convey the first sense) or by changing "which" to "that" (to convey the second sense), or by rewriting it in other ways. The devious politician hopes that each constituent will interpret the statement in the most desirable way, and think the politician supports everyone's opinion. However, the opposite can also be true – An opponent can turn a positive statement into a bad one, if the speaker uses ambiguity (intentionally or not). The logical fallacies of amphiboly and equivocation rely heavily on the use of ambiguous words and phrases.

In Continental philosophy (particularly phenomenology and existentialism), there is much greater tolerance of ambiguity, as it is generally seen as an integral part of the human condition. Martin Heidegger argued that the relation between the subject and object is ambiguous, as is the relation of mind and body, and part and whole. In Heidegger's phenomenology, Dasein is always in a meaningful world, but there is always an underlying background for every instance of signification. Thus, although some things may be certain, they have little to do with Dasein's sense of care and existential anxiety, e.g., in the face of death. In calling his work Being and Nothingness an "essay in phenomenological ontology" Jean-Paul Sartre follows Heidegger in defining the human essence as ambiguous, or relating fundamentally to such ambiguity. Simone de Beauvoir tries to base an ethics on Heidegger's and Sartre's writings (The Ethics of Ambiguity), where she highlights the need to grapple with ambiguity: "as long as philosophers and they [men] have thought, most of them have tried to mask it...And the ethics which they have proposed to their disciples has always pursued the same goal. It has been a matter of eliminating the ambiguity by making oneself pure inwardness or pure externality, by escaping from the sensible world or being engulfed by it, by yielding to eternity or enclosing oneself in the pure moment.". Ethics cannot be based on the authoritative certainty given by mathematics and logic, or prescribed directly from the empirical findings of science. She states: "Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting". Other continental philosophers suggest that concepts such as life, nature, and sex are ambiguous. Recently, Corey Anton has argued that we cannot be certain what is separate from or unified with something else: language, he asserts, divides what is not in fact separate. Following Ernest Becker, he argues that the desire to 'authoritatively disambiguate' the world and existence has led to numerous ideologies and historical events such as genocide. On this basis, he argues that ethics must focus on 'dialectically integrating opposites' and balancing tension, rather than seeking a priori validation or certainty. Like the existentialists and phenomenologists, he sees the ambiguity of life as the basis of creativity.

In literature and rhetoric, ambiguity can be a useful tool. Groucho Marx's classic joke depends on a grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: "Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know". Songs and poetry often rely on ambiguous words for artistic effect, as in the song title "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to the color, or to sadness).

In narrative, ambiguity can be introduced in several ways: motive, plot, character. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the latter type of ambiguity with notable effect in his novel The Great Gatsby.

Christianity and Judaism employ the concept of paradox synonymously with 'ambiguity'. Many Christians and Jews endorse Rudolf Otto's description of the sacred as 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans', the awe-inspiring mystery which fascinates humans. The orthodox Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton regularly employed paradox to tease out the meanings in common concepts which he found ambiguous, or to reveal meaning often overlooked or forgotten in common phrases. (The title of one of his most famous books, Orthodoxy, itself employing such a paradox.)

Metonymy involves the use of the name of a subcomponent part as an abbreviation, or jargon, for the name of the whole object (for example "wheels" to refer to a car, or "flowers" to refer to beautiful offspring, an entire plant, or a collection of blooming plants). In modern vocabulary critical semiotics, metonymy encompasses any potentially ambiguous word substitution that is based on contextual contiguity (located close together), or a function or process that an object performs, such as "sweet ride" to refer to a nice car. Metonym miscommunication is considered a primary mechanism of linguistic humour.

Psychology and management

In sociology and social psychology, the term "ambiguity" is used to indicate situations that involve uncertainty. An increasing amount of research is concentrating on how people react and respond to ambiguous situations. Much of this focuses on ambiguity tolerance. A number of correlations have been found between an individual's reaction and tolerance to ambiguity and a range of factors.

Apter and Desselles (2001) for example, found a strong correlation with such attributes and factors like a greater preference for safe as opposed to risk-based sports, a preference for endurance-type activities as opposed to explosive activities, a more organized and less casual lifestyle, greater care and precision in descriptions, a lower sensitivity to emotional and unpleasant words, a less acute sense of humor, engaging a smaller variety of sexual practices than their more risk-comfortable colleagues, a lower likelihood of the use of drugs, pornography and drink, a greater likelihood of displaying obsessional behavior.

In the field of leadership, David Wilkinson (2006) found strong correlations between an individual leader's reaction to ambiguous situations and the Modes of Leadership they use, the type of creativity, Kirton (2003) and how they relate to others.

Music

In music, pieces or sections which confound expectations and may be or are interpreted simultaneously in different ways are ambiguous, such as some polytonality, polymeter, other ambiguous meters or rhythms, and ambiguous phrasing, or (Stein 2005, p. 79) any aspect of music. The music of Africa is often purposely ambiguous. To quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1935, p. 195), "Theorists are apt to vex themselves with vain efforts to remove uncertainty just where it has a high aesthetic value."

Visual art

The Necker cube, an ambiguous image

In visual art, certain images are visually ambiguous, such as the Necker cube, which can be interpreted in two ways. Perceptions of such objects remain stable for a time, then may flip, a phenomenon called multistable perception. The opposite of such ambiguous images are impossible objects.

Pictures or photographs may also be ambiguous at the semantic level: the visual image is unambiguous, but the meaning and narrative may be ambiguous: is a certain facial expression one of excitement or fear, for instance?

Constructed language

Some languages have been created with the intention of avoiding ambiguity, especially lexical ambiguity. Lojban and Loglan are two related languages which have been created for this, focusing chiefly on syntactic ambiguity as well. The languages can be both spoken and written. These languages are intended to provide a greater technical precision over big natural languages, although historically, such attempts at language improvement have been criticized. Languages composed from many diverse sources contain much ambiguity and inconsistency. The many exceptions to syntax and semantic rules are time-consuming and difficult to learn.

Computer science

In computer science, the SI prefixes kilo-, mega- and giga- are used ambiguously to mean either the first three powers of 1000 (1000, 1000² and 1000³) or the first three powers of 1024 (1024, 1024² and 1024³), respectively.

Mathematical notation

Mathematical notation, widely used in physics and other sciences, avoids many ambiguities compared to expression in natural language. However, for various reasons, several lexical, syntactic and semantic ambiguities remain.

Names of functions

The ambiguity in the style of writing a function should not be confused with a multivalued function, which can (and should) be defined in a deterministic and unambiguous way. Several special functions still do not have established notations. Usually, the conversion to another notation requires to scale the argument or the resulting value; sometimes, the same name of the function is used, causing confusions. Examples of such underestablished functions:

• Sinc function
• Elliptic integral of the third kind; translating elliptic integral form MAPLE to Mathematica, one should replace the second argument to its square, see Talk:Elliptic integral#List of notations; dealing with complex values, this may cause problems.
• Exponential integral,
• Hermite polynomial,

Expressions

Ambiguous expressions often appear in physical and mathematical texts. It is common practice to omit multiplication signs in mathematical expressions. Also, it is common to give the same name to a variable and a function, for example, . Then, if one sees , there is no way to distinguish whether it means multiplied by , or function evaluated at argument equal to . In each case of use of such notations, the reader is supposed to be able to perform the deduction and reveal the true meaning.

Creators of algorithmic languages try to avoid ambiguities. Many algorithmic languages (C++ and Fortran) require the character * as symbol of multiplication. The Wolfram Language used in Mathematica allows the user to omit the multiplication symbol, but requires square brackets to indicate the argument of a function; square brackets are not allowed for grouping of expressions. Fortran, in addition, does not allow use of the same name (identifier) for different objects, for example, function and variable; in particular, the expression f=f(x) is qualified as an error.

The order of operations may depend on the context. In most programming languages, the operations of division and multiplication have equal priority and are executed from left to right. Until the last century, many editorials assumed that multiplication is performed first, for example, is interpreted as ; in this case, the insertion of parentheses is required when translating the formulas to an algorithmic language. In addition, it is common to write an argument of a function without parenthesis, which also may lead to ambiguity. Sometimes, one uses italics letters to denote elementary functions. In the scientific journal style, the expression means product of variables , , and , although in a slideshow, it may mean .

A comma in subscripts and superscripts sometimes is omitted; it is also ambiguous notation. If it is written , the reader should guess from the context, does it mean a single-index object, evaluated while the subscript is equal to product of variables , and , or it is indication to a trivalent tensor. The writing of instead of may mean that the writer either is stretched in space (for example, to reduce the publication fees) or aims to increase number of publications without considering readers. The same may apply to any other use of ambiguous notations.

Subscripts are also used to denote the argument to a function, as in .

Examples of potentially confusing ambiguous mathematical expressions

, which could be understood to mean either or . In addition, may mean , as means (see tetration).

, which by convention means , though it might be thought to mean , since means .

, which arguably should mean but would commonly be understood to mean .

Notations in quantum optics and quantum mechanics

It is common to define the coherent states in quantum optics with and states with fixed number of photons with . Then, there is an "unwritten rule": the state is coherent if there are more Greek characters than Latin characters in the argument, and photon state if the Latin characters dominate. The ambiguity becomes even worse, if is used for the states with certain value of the coordinate, and means the state with certain value of the momentum, which may be used in books on quantum mechanics. Such ambiguities easy lead to confusions, especially if some normalized adimensional, dimensionless variables are used. Expression may mean a state with single photon, or the coherent state with mean amplitude equal to 1, or state with momentum equal to unity, and so on. The reader is supposed to guess from the context.

Ambiguous terms in physics and mathematics

Some physical quantities do not yet have established notations; their value (and sometimes even dimension, as in the case of the Einstein coefficients), depends on the system of notations. Many terms are ambiguous. Each use of an ambiguous term should be preceded by the definition, suitable for a specific case. Just like Ludwig Wittgenstein states in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "... Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning."

A highly confusing term is gain. For example, the sentence "the gain of a system should be doubled", without context, means close to nothing.
It may mean that the ratio of the output voltage of an electric circuit to the input voltage should be doubled.
It may mean that the ratio of the output power of an electric or optical circuit to the input power should be doubled.
It may mean that the gain of the laser medium should be doubled, for example, doubling the population of the upper laser level in a quasi-two level system (assuming negligible absorption of the ground-state).

The term intensity is ambiguous when applied to light. The term can refer to any of irradiance, luminous intensity, radiant intensity, or radiance, depending on the background of the person using the term.

Also, confusions may be related with the use of atomic percent as measure of concentration of a dopant, or resolution of an imaging system, as measure of the size of the smallest detail which still can be resolved at the background of statistical noise. See also Accuracy and precision and its talk.

The Berry paradox arises as a result of systematic ambiguity in the meaning of terms such as "definable" or "nameable". Terms of this kind give rise to vicious circle fallacies. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal.

Mathematical interpretation of ambiguity

The Necker cube and impossible cube, an underdetermined and overdetermined object, respectively.

In mathematics and logic, ambiguity can be considered to be an underdetermined system (of equations or logic) – for example, leaves open what the value of X is – while its opposite is a self-contradiction, also called inconsistency, paradoxicalness, or oxymoron, in an overdetermined system – such as , which has no solution – see also underdetermination.

Logical ambiguity and self-contradiction is analogous to visual ambiguity and impossible objects, such as the Necker cube and impossible cube, or many of the drawings of M. C. Escher.

Pedagogic use of ambiguous expressions

Ambiguity can be used as a pedagogical trick, to force students to reproduce the deduction by themselves. Some textbooks give the same name to the function and to its Fourier transform:

.

Rigorously speaking, such an expression requires that ; even if function is a self-Fourier function, the expression should be written as ; however, it is assumed that the shape of the function (and even its norm ) depend on the character used to denote its argument. If the Greek letter is used, it is assumed to be a Fourier transform of another function, The first function is assumed, if the expression in the argument contains more characters or , than characters , and the second function is assumed in the opposite case. Expressions like or contain symbols and in equal amounts; they are ambiguous and should be avoided in serious deduction.

See also

• Abbreviation
• Ambiguity (law)
• Ambiguity tolerance
• Amphibology
• Decision problem
• Disambiguation (disambiguation)
• Double entendre

• Essentially contested concept
• Fallacy
• Formal fallacy
• Golden hammer
• Informal fallacy

• Self reference
• Semantics
• Uncertainty
• Vagueness
• Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity
• Word-sense disambiguation

References

External links

• Ambiguity entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Ambiguity at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
• Ambiguity at PhilPapers
• Collection of Ambiguous or Inconsistent/Incomplete Statements
• Leaving out ambiguities when writing

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• Biochemical features of native red wines and genetic diversity of the corresponding grape varieties from Campania region.

• Muccillo L, Gambuti A, Frusciante L, Iorizzo M, Moio L, Raieta K, Rinaldi A, Colantuoni V, Aversano R.SourceDepartment of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Sannio, via Port'Arsa 11, 82100 Benevento, Italy; Department of Agricultural Sciences, Division of Plant Genetics and Biotechnology, University of Naples Federico II, Via Università 100, 80055 Portici, Italy.
• Food chemistry.Food Chem.2014 Jan 15;143:506-13. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.07.133. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
• Campania region has always been considered one of the most appreciated Italian districts for wine production. Wine distinctiveness arises from their native grapevines. To better define the chemical profile of Campania autochthonous red grape varieties, we analysed the phenolic composition of Agliani
• PMID 24054274

• Metabolomics in asthma.

• Luxon BA.SourceUniversity of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd, Galveston, TX, 77555-1157, USA, baluxon@utmb.edu.
• Advances in experimental medicine and biology.Adv Exp Med Biol.2014;795:207-20. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-8603-9_13.
• Asthma and airway inflammation are responses to infectious stimuli and the mechanisms of how they are mediated, whether by the innate or adaptive immune response systems, are complex and results in a broad spectrum of possible metabolic products. In principle, a syndrome such as asthma should have a
• PMID 24162911

• Detection of melamine on fractals of unmodified gold nanoparticles by surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

• Roy PK, Huang YF, Chattopadhyay S.SourceNational Yang-Ming University, Institute of Biophotonics, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
• Journal of biomedical optics.J Biomed Opt.2014 Jan;19(1):011002. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.19.1.011002.
• A simple way of detecting melamine in raw milk is demonstrated via surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) using fractals of bare and nonfunctionalized ~30 nm gold nanoparticles (AuNP) distributed on a solid support. The technique demonstrates the formation of AuNP fractals, from a random distrib
• PMID 23752785

• Do different fairness contexts and facial emotions motivate 'irrational' social decision-making in major depression? An exploratory patient study.

• Radke S, Schäfer IC, Müller BW, de Bruijn ER.SourceRadboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, The Netherlands. Electronic address: s.radke@donders.ru.nl.
• Psychiatry research.Psychiatry Res.2013 Dec 15;210(2):438-43. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2013.07.017. Epub 2013 Jul 30.
• Although 'irrational' decision-making has been linked to depression, the contribution of biases in information processing to these findings remains unknown. To investigate the impact of cognitive biases and aberrant processing of facial emotions on social decision-making, we manipulated both context
• PMID 23910237

Japanese Journal

• 数量詞を含む文における多義性の段階性と漠然性の関連 : Three boys met two girlsを中心に

• 石井 隆之
• 近畿大学総合社会学部紀要 = Applied sociology research review Kinki University 3(2), 17-29, 2014-07
• … 専攻: 理論言語学(Abstract) The English sentence containing quantifiers is unambiguous at first sight: however, if the number of quantifiers appearing in one sentence is n, the degree of polysemy (DP) will be n!, which is defined as the basic DP in this paper, according to the bundling theory presented in my previous papers. …
• NAID 120005467138

• 一貫性・明瞭性診断による静的UMLモデリング学習支援システムの設計と評価

• 野沢 光太郎,松澤 芳昭,酒井 三四郎
• 情報処理学会論文誌 55(5), 1471-1484, 2014-05-15
• UML(Unified Modeling Language)によるオブジェクト指向モデリング初学者の最初の目標は「クラス図を用いた第三者との正確なコミュニケーション能力」の獲得である.本研究では,この目標に到達するための学習支援を目的として,UML静的モデル(クラス図とオブジェクト図)の多重度を診断するシステムを開発した.本システムの特徴は,クラス図-オブジェクト図間の矛盾の指摘(一貫性の診断)だ …
• NAID 110009770520

• New insights into the catalytic active-site structure of multicopper oxidases

• Komori Hirofumi,Sugiyama Ryosuke,Kataoka Kunishige,Miyazaki Kentaro,Higuchi Yoshiki,Sakurai Takeshi
• Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography 70(3), 772-779, 2014-03
• … At low levels of X-ray exposure, unambiguous electron density for an O atom was observed inside the trinuclear copper centre (TNC) in both MCOs. …
• NAID 120005451980

• 2種類の符号系列を用いたレーダの2次エコー抑圧法(測位・航法及び一般)

• 加藤 万莉絵,酒巻 洋,平田 和史
• 電子情報通信学会技術研究報告. SANE, 宇宙・航行エレクトロニクス 113(387), 25-30, 2014-01-16
• パルスレーダの受信信号には所望(1次)エコー以外にパルス繰り返し周波数で決まる最大観測距離以遠からの不要なエコーが2次エコーとして混入する場合がある.従来,2次エコー対策の1つとして擬似ランダム符号系列を用いてパルス間位相変調を行い,周波数領域で2次エコーを拡散する方法が用いられている.しかし,この方法では2次エコーの強度が高い場合,拡散された2次エコーに1次エコーが埋もれ,推定精度が劣化する課題 …
• NAID 110009825354

Related Links

• unambiguousの意味・用例｜英辞郎 on the WEB：アルク

unambiguous 【形】 〔発言・指示・表現などが〕曖昧でない、明らかな、明白な、... - アルクがお届けする進化するオンライン英和・和英辞書データベース。一般的な単語や連語から、イディオム、専門用語、スラングまで幅広く収録。

• unambiguous - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

If something is unambiguous, there are no two ways to interpret it. If your girlfriend burns all your letters, texts you that she hates you, and moves a thousand miles away, the unambiguous message is that she’s finished with you.

• Unambiguous | Define Unambiguous at Dictionary.com

Unambiguous definition, not ambiguous, or unclear; distinct; unequivocal: The object of the experiment was to reach an unambiguous conclusion about climate change. See more. ... Demand that they sort through the data with their ...

Related Pictures

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★リンクテーブル★

リンク元	「distinct」「pronounced」「clear」「明白」「unequivocal」
拡張検索	「unambiguously」

「distinct」

　　[★]

• adj.

• はっきりした、明瞭な、(論)判明な。明確な、紛れもない、めざましい

There is usually no distinct murmur related to the VSD, because it is typically large and thus generates little turbulence.(PHD.393)

distinct entity：はっきりとした

• はっきりと識別する(視覚など)
• 別個の(separate)、独特な(individual)、性質(種類が)が異なる(from)

関

characteristic, characteristically, clear, clearly, definite, definitely, diagnostic, differ, different, differently, discrete, discriminative, discriminatively, discriminatory, disparate, dissimilar, distinctive, distinctively, distinctly, explicit, explicitly, pathognomonic, separate, separately, unambiguous, unambiguously, variant, vary

　 　 　 　

「pronounced」

　　[★]

• adj

• 口に出した。明白な。著しい。きっぱりした、決然たる

Shortness of breath may occur bacause the diaphragm is elevated when the accumulation of fluid becomes more pronounced.

Other side effects that are related to the pharmacological effects in the CNS include a reduction in libido, parkinsonian signs, and hyperprolactinemia that may become sufficiently pronounced to cause gynecomastia and galactorrhea.(GOO.853)

関

apparent, apparently, clear, clearly, evident, evidently, indisputable, obvious, obviously, overt, overtly, palpable, plain, unambiguous, unambiguously, unequivocal

pronounce

　

「clear」

　　[★]

• adj.

• 明るい、澄み切った。すんだ、透き通った。(音・声が)はっきり聞こえる

関

apparent、apparently、clarification、clearly、distinct、distinctly、evident、evidently、indisputable、obvious、obviously、overt、overtly、palpable、plain、pronounced、unambiguous、unambiguously、unequivocal

　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　

「明白」

　　[★]

英

clear、apparent、evident、obvious、pronounced、palpable、unambiguous、plain、overt、unequivocal、indisputable、clearly、apparently、evidently、obviously、unambiguously、overtly

関

明らか、顕性、清澄、単純、単味、見かけ上、明解、明確、明瞭、平地、簡素、クリア、触知できる、争う余地のない

「unequivocal」

　　[★]

• adj.

• 明解な、明白な

• 1. not equivocal; unambiguous; clear; having only one possible meaning or interpretation:
• 2. absolute; unqualified; not subject to conditions or exceptions:

関

apparent、apparently、clear、clearly、evident、evidently、indisputable、obvious、obviously、overt、overtly、palpable、plain、pronounced、unambiguous、unambiguously、unequivocally

　 　

「unambiguously」

　　[★]

• adv.

• 明白に、明確に

関

apparent、apparently、clear、clearly、definite、definitely、distinct、distinctly、evident、evidently、explicit、explicitly、indisputable、obvious、obviously、overt、overtly、palpable、plain、pronounced、unambiguous、unequivocal