Robustness

Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line robustness can be defined as "the ability of a system to resist change without adapting its initial stable configuration".^[1] "Robustness in the small" refers to situations wherein perturbations are small in magnitude, which considers that the "small" magnitude hypothesis can be difficult to verify because "small" or "large" depends on the specific problem. Conversely, "Robustness in the large problem" refers to situations wherein no assumptions can be made about the magnitude of perturbations, which can either be small or large.^[2] It has been discussed that robustness has two dimensions: resistance and avoidance.^[3]

Examples

In different contexts, robustness may refer to:

• In biology
  • Robustness (evolution), the persistence of a system’s characteristics after perturbation (includes mutational robustness and environmental robustness)
  • Robustness (morphology), body types based on strength and a heavy build
• Robust control
• Robust optimization
• Robust decision, a decision that is as immune to uncertainty as is possible and looks good to all constituents long after it is made
• Robust decision making
• Robust statistics, a statistical technique that performs well even if its assumptions are somewhat violated by the true model from which the data were generated
• Robustness (computer science)
• Robustness (economics)
• Structural robustness
• 'Robust', a 6-row barley variety

See also

• Fault-tolerant system and links thereof
• Resilience (disambiguation)

References