How to Use combinatorial in a Sentence

combinatorial

adjective
Definition of combinatorialnext
  • Those spins can be used to represent a combinatorial problem.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 10 Feb. 2020
  • That’s been the supersized science news of the last 24 hours, thanks to a clever combinatorial analysis of social networks and weight gain.
    — Brandon Keim, WIRED, 26 July 2007
  • In other words, at what scale - or scales - and with how much detail given the myriad of combinatorial processes.
    — Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes, 3 Sep. 2021
  • Yet combinatorial games remain challenging because the number of ways a game can play out might be dizzyingly large.
    — Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 25 Jan. 2023
  • Through combinatorial magic, your body makes as many types of antibodies as there are stars in the Andromedagalaxy — one thousand billion.
    — Brendan Borrell, Rolling Stone, 8 Dec. 2021
  • The process of discovery then becomes a matter of exploring the combinatorial space of different graphs.
    — The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 24 Oct. 2022
  • But because of the combinatorial explosion in the number of possible maps, even millions of maps made by the random-seed-and-grow technique account for only a tiny fraction of all possible maps.
    — Mike Orcutt, Quanta Magazine, 1 June 2023
  • Hertz’s combinatorial approach works best when the prevalence of the disease in a community is no higher than 5 percent, with around 1 percent being ideal.
    — Marla Broadfoot, Scientific American, 13 May 2020
  • Where a human can test a small set of curated theories on a sparse set of data, a machine can test a huge number of combinatorial possibilities on massive datasets.
    — Stephen Ibaraki, Forbes, 12 July 2022
  • The end result is an AI that can solve combinatorial puzzles without relying on human knowledge.
    — Roni Dengler, Discover Magazine, 19 July 2019
  • Evolution has had billions of years to explore, by trial and error, the combinatorial possibilities of amino acids.
    — Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2020
  • How computationally complex is the human brain, and how large is its combinatorial space?
    — Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes, 3 Sep. 2021
  • This combinatorial process is fundamentally different to the ones that physicists generally consider, and which are governed by the laws of physics.
    — The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 29 Apr. 2022
  • While some were veterans, many were newcomers to Marvel's ever-broadening paracosm—a narrative web that already crammed more than 60 heroes into May's Avengers: Endgame, and will continue its combinatorial creep over at least the next three years.
    — Peter Rubin, WIRED, 26 July 2019
  • In a combinatorial system, different pairings between a small number of ligands and receptors can specify a much larger number of targets.
    — Quanta Magazine, 16 Sep. 2021
  • For Strachey, though, the interesting thing was how a simple setup, using only about seventy base words, could produce a combinatorial explosion of results—on the order of three hundred billion different letters.
    — Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 14 Feb. 2017
  • In particular, Wolfram acknowledges the work of Roger Penrose on combinatorial space-time in the early 1970s, which anticipated Wolfram’s approach.
    — The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 24 Apr. 2020
  • The potential advantages are increased by the combinatorial effects of several cannabinoids and terpenes delivered by these gummies.
    — Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 20 June 2023
  • New testing techniques have revealed a combinatorial quagmire of infections in individual patients, even in routine practice.
    — Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic, 17 Nov. 2021
  • The combinatorial principle might also extend to situations beyond cell growth and development.
    — Quanta Magazine, 16 Sep. 2021
  • Algorithmic art isn’t limited to abstract or combinatorial art, either.
    — Gabriel Nicholas, Slate Magazine, 11 Dec. 2017
  • These systems use quantum mechanical properties to create combinatorial computing capabilities that exceed what is possible in classical systems.
    — Sam Mugel, Forbes, 16 Aug. 2022
  • Mathematician Ian Stewart explains the twisty history of combinatorial optimization.
    — Ian Stewart, Wired, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Its immense combinatorial capacity facilitates the systematic investigation of the entire field of possibilities.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2023
  • Different clusters of those complaints suggest different potential explanations, creating a combinatorial explosion of diagnostic possibilities.
    — WIRED, 2 Sep. 2022
  • Bigger LLMs have more ways of putting skills together, which leads to a combinatorial explosion of abilities.
    — Quanta Magazine, 22 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'combinatorial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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