Where does process collide?

In computing, a process is one instance of a program that is actually running: the operating system gives it its own private region of memory, its own execution state, and a record of what it is doing, so that many programs can share one machine without corrupting each other. Dennis and Van Horn's 1966 Programming semantics for multiprogrammed computations set out the formal idea of a computation as a separate, protected activity that the system can create, schedule, and control. The referent is a live unit of work inside a computer, tracked by a control block and scheduled by the kernel, and it has nothing to do with a court's authority over a defendant, a family of random variables in time, or a philosopher's account of what is real.[1]

Unit

One running instance of a program, with its own memory and execution state

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Tracked by the operating system through a process control block, a process identifier, and scheduling state

In probability and statistics, a stochastic process is a whole collection of random variables indexed by time or space: instead of one uncertain quantity, it describes how uncertainty unfolds step by step, as in a Markov chain, a Poisson process, or Brownian motion. Doob's 1953 book Stochastic Processes gave the subject its modern, rigorous foundation and its standard toolkit. The referent is a mathematical model of randomness evolving over an index, defined by its distributions and its dependence structure, and it is unrelated to a running program, a court's procedure, or a philosophy of becoming.[2]

Unit

A family of random variables indexed by time or space

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Specified by its finite-dimensional distributions and estimated from observed paths or realisations

In philosophy, process names a whole metaphysics: the view, developed most fully in Whitehead's 1929 Process and Reality, that what is ultimately real is not enduring substances but events and their becoming, so that reality is built from occasions of experience that arise, relate, and pass away. On this picture the world is a web of ongoing happenings rather than fixed things with changing properties. The referent is a claim about the fundamental nature of reality, argued in metaphysics, and it is a wholly different thing from a program in a computer, a court's authority over a defendant, or a family of random variables in time.[3]

Unit

A metaphysical account in which reality is made of events and becoming rather than static substances

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Not directly measured; it is argued and assessed as metaphysics, by coherence and explanatory reach