logistic
Noun plurallogistics
Plurallogistics
- 1Relating to logistics, the organizing of how people, equipment and supplies are moved and provided.
The festival ran into serious logistic trouble when half the shuttle buses broke down.
Steady logistic support kept the relief teams supplied through the winter.
Note
This logistic is a separate word that happens to share the spelling: it comes from French logistique, built on loger, to lodge, or logis, a lodging place, not from Greek reckoning. Before a noun, logistical means the same and avoids any clash with the statistical sense, as in logistical support or logistical trouble.
- 2In statistics and mathematics, relating to the logistic function.
The analysts used logistic regression to predict which customers would cancel.
The bacteria showed logistic growth, leveling off once the nutrients ran short.
Note
The logistic curve is S-shaped: growth starts slowly, speeds up, then levels off at a ceiling, as a population does when food runs short. In its standard form the output stays between zero and one, which is why statisticians use logistic regression to turn a score into a probability. The modern mathematical use was shaped partly by its relative, logarithmic.
- 3In mathematics, a function of the logistic type, or a graph showing a logistic curve.
We fitted a logistic to the growth data and estimated the ceiling from it.
Plot a logistic and you will see the familiar S shape.
Note
Analysts use the noun as shorthand for the whole function or its curve: they fit a logistic to their data, or compare two logistics. That plural is spelled exactly like logistics, the organizing of supplies, so when the context is not plainly mathematical it is clearer to say logistic curves.
- 4In mathematics, relating to symbolic logic.
The philosopher defended a logistic account of mathematics, deriving arithmetic from pure logic.
His logistic notation filled the blackboard with arrows and inverted letters.
Note
Here logic is written in symbols and worked by fixed rules, the way algebra is. The word suits the job: it goes back through French to Greek logistikós, practiced in arithmetic and rational, from logos, reason and computation, the same root as logic and logarithm. A logistic notation is a symbolic one, and the subject itself is now usually called symbolic logic.
- 5Relating to basic arithmetic.
The primer opened with the logistic rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.
Apprentices were drilled in logistic operations until they could total a column of figures without error.
Note
An obsolete use from the days when the word meant everyday reckoning: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Older mathematical books can say logistic where a modern one says arithmetical. When reading one, check whether the numbers are counted in sixties, because the sixty-based sense used the same word in the same kind of book.
- 6Skilled at calculating with numbers.
Note
Said of a person, it praised a sure hand with figures; a modern writer would say good with numbers, or numerate. The sense is obsolete, and today the spelling suggests supply and transport or the S-shaped growth curve instead, so a revived use would almost certainly be misread.
- 7Corresponding in size, amount or degree to something else; proportional.
Note
The ratio is the point: two quantities called logistic kept step, so that when one doubled, the other doubled too. The use is obsolete, and nothing in the modern word hints at it. Today's choice is proportional, or pro rata when shares and payments are divided.
- 8Using sexagesimal fractions, those based on sixty, especially in arithmetic or in logarithms.
The navigator looked up the angle in a table of logistic logarithms.
The astronomer expressed the fraction in logistic form, as so many sixtieths and so many sixtieths of a sixtieth.
Note
Sexagesimal fractions count in sixties: a whole splits into sixty parts, each part into sixty more, a scheme that survives in the minutes and seconds of clocks and angles. Logistic logarithms were tables built for numbers written this way, so astronomers could multiply and divide them by adding and subtracting. The sense is obsolete outside the history of mathematics.
- 9The art or skill of calculation.
Note
The name of a craft that has long since been renamed calculation, or simply arithmetic. It stays closest to the Greek behind the symbolic-logic sense, a word for one practiced in arithmetic. Like other names of subjects it took no article: a merchant's son was taught logistic as he was taught grammar.
- 10Sexagesimal arithmetic: calculation in which numbers and fractions are counted in sixties.
The astronomer did all his reckoning in logistic, splitting every degree into sixty minutes and every minute into sixty seconds.
His tables of planetary positions were worked out in logistic rather than in common fractions.
Note
The noun and the adjective for sixty-based fractions belong together: astronomers worked in logistic and wrote their results as logistic fractions. Both are obsolete. A modern writer says sexagesimal arithmetic, or simply speaks of degrees, minutes and seconds.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From French logistique, from Ancient Greek logistikós ("practised in arithmetic; rational"), from logízomai ("I reason, I calculate"), from lógos ("reason, computation"), the same source as logic and logarithm. The "logistic function" was named in French by Pierre François Verhulst in 1845, presumably by analogy with arithmetic and geometric and in contrast with the logarithmic curve, and the term was then borrowed into English.
From French logistique, from loger ("to lodge") or logis ("lodging place").