Glossary entry

Spanish term or phrase:

acotable

English translation:

can be brought within known bounds/can be shown to fall within known bounds

Added to glossary by Sandra Meneaud
Apr 13 17:07
1 mo ago
29 viewers *
Spanish term

acotable

Spanish to English Tech/Engineering Engineering (general) Metrology
Would anyone happen to know how to translate 'acotable' please? (Context below). I think it might refer to the fact that a measurement is 'definable'/'determined'/'delimited' etc. after corrections have been carried out to correct uncertainty in the measurement of an object, but I'm not absolutely sure. Thanks in advance.

Discussion

Lisa Rosengard Apr 15:
En el referente las mediciones parecen ser variables, es decir que pueden cambiarse o pueden ser corregidas si se encuentra algo no muy preciso. Así pienso que si es acotable puede ser alterado hasta un cierto límite.
(In English it's a quantity which is variable within defined limits.)

Proposed translations

+1
22 hrs
Selected

can be brought within known bounds

Correcciones residuales
(desconocidos pero acotables)

-->
Residual errors
(Unknown, but can be brought within known bounds)
OR
Residual errors
(Unknown, but can be shown to fall within known bounds)

In the telegraphic language of the Asker's presentation slide, we can't be sure which of those translations is most appropriate. Hopefully this will be clarified elsewhere in the document.

Background theory:
https://www.probabilitycourse.com/chapter6/6_2_0_probability...

"For example, suppose that you are an engineer and you design a communication system. Your company wants to ensure that the error probability in your system be less than a given value, say 10−5.

Calculating the exact value of probability might be difficult due to some unknown parameters or simply because the communication system is a complicated one. Here you do not actually need to find the error probability exactly, but all you need to do is to show that it is less than 10−5.

In this section, we will discuss several inequalities. Depending on the problem you are dealing with, you might decide which one to use."

In that quote, 'less than 10−5' is a bound (more specifically, a 'Union Bound', as explained in the next section of the quoted document).
Peer comment(s):

agree Yvonne Gallagher
2 days 1 hr
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Many thanks for this explanation Jennifer."
+1
1 hr

delimited or restricted

I believe there is an error in the Spanish text: "acotable" is not a word so I assume it refers to "acotado" from the verb "acotar". This means that the closest match in terms of meaning is "to delimit" or "to restrict".

I found a document that explains the following:
"La correción residual es desconocida pero existe la posiblidad de acotarla. De ahí una primera definición de incertidumbre: La incertidumbre de la medida es una cota superior del valor de la corrección residual."
Peer comment(s):

agree neilmac : Although I think "acotable" is a word. I found more than 7000 results in a search, many of which are dodgy, but some appear to be from respectable publications.
59 mins
neutral philgoddard : You're ignoring -'able', meaning 'capable of being'.
13 hrs
Something went wrong...
+1
4 hrs

Unknown but can be narrowed down.

Corrections made to the measurement can be narrowed down for example using a spline and interpolating.
Plenty of examples in the web.
Peer comment(s):

agree philgoddard : Or 'minimised'.
10 hrs
neutral Jennifer Levey : A single 'correction to a measurement' has no width, therefore it cannot be 'narrowed down'. What is 'narrowed down' (in layman's language...) is the range of values encountered, quantified by its upper and/or lower bounds.
20 hrs
Not a given nunber but its best estimate within a range of variation.
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