Pathology

Pathology (in ancient Greek pathos = feeling, pain, suffering and logos = discourse or treatise , i.e., system of formal study) is the study of the processes underlying disease and other forms of illness, harmful abnormality, or dysfunction.

Other uses

Pathological can also be used in data sets in mathematics or statistics to reference an exteptionally (or awkwardly, or inconveniently) atypical example or set of data, often one which does not abide by rules or succumb to treatment that other similar cases usually do:

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• Pathological (mathematics)
• Pathological science

Computer science uses this term in a slightly different sense with regard to the study of algorithms. Here, an input (or set of inputs) is said to be pathological if it causes atypical behavior from the algorithm, such as a violation of its average case complexity, or even its correctness. For example, hash tables generally have pathological inputs: sets of keys that collide on hash values. The term is often used pejoratively, as a way of dismissing such inputs as being specially designed to break a routine that is otherwise sound in practice.

Related Topics:
Computer science - Input - Algorithm - Hash table

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