evaluation
Pluralevaluations
- 1An assessment of someone or something, such as a yearly review of an employee's performance used to decide pay, or a summary of a situation.
Employees receive an annual evaluation that helps determine their next raise.
The consultant's evaluation of the company's finances revealed several hidden risks.
Similarassessment, appraisal, review, analysis, judgment
Note
The word came through Middle French évaluation and is built from evaluate plus -ion, so it names both an act and its result. As a countable noun it is a single verdict or report, such as an annual evaluation or a semestral evaluation that feeds into a final grade. As an uncountable noun it is the practice itself, as in the evaluation of staff. Workplaces and schools use it for formal, recurring judgments.
- 2The process of determining the value that a variable or expression denotes.
The compiler performs evaluation of each expression at runtime.
Evaluation of the variable y produced a value of twelve.
Similarcomputation
Note
Programmers use it for the moment code works out what something stands for. A variable is evaluated to its current value, and an expression is reduced to a single value. The usual frame is evaluation of plus the expression, and what comes out is called its value. Unlike the mathematical sense, the focus is on what the program yields when it reaches that expression, not on finishing an operation.
- 3The completion of a mathematical operation, producing its resulting value; a valuation.
The evaluation of the sum yielded exactly one hundred.
Each evaluation of the operation produces a single numerical result.
Similarcalculation, computation
Note
Mathematics uses the word for carrying an operation through to its end: the evaluation of a sum is finished when it yields a number. It is countable when each run is meant (each evaluation gives one result) and uncountable for the procedure in general. Where the programming sense asks what an expression or variable stands for, this sense stresses completing the operation itself.
Practice
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Origin
This word comes from Middle French évaluation, and is formed from evaluate plus the suffix -ion.