English

Noun

hexadecile ‎(plural hexadeciles)

1. (statistics) Any of the quantiles which divide an ordered sample population into sixteen equally numerous subsets; a subset thus obtained.
   • 1974, Robert George Gough, Improving the Quality of and Aggregating Opinions Expressed as Subjective Probability Distributions [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation], Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, OCLC 19786039, page 16:

     The assessor can then be asked to successively divide an interval into equally likely segments yielding the octiles (X_.125, X_.875), hexadeciles (X_.0625, X_.9375), etc., etc.

   • 2002 July 20, “Defining Quartiles”, in Ask Dr. Math, The Math Forum, Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel University, archived from the original on 6 September 2015:

     With each of the above methods, the quartile values are always either one of the data points, or exactly half way between two data points. Those methods involve only simple arithmetic and are easily extendable to octiles (eighths), hexadeciles (sixteenths), etc. They are not, however, extendable to quintiles (fifths) or percentiles (hundredths), etc. Furthermore, they tend to have a high bias. (That is, the quartile values calculated on subsets of the data set tend to vary more, and are not good predictors of the quartile values of the entire data set.)

2. (astrology, obsolete) The aspect or position of any two celestial bodies separated by 22.5° (that is, 360° divided by 16) as they appear to an observer on earth.
   • 1683, George Wharton, “Of the Planetary Aspects, both Old and New, their Characters, and Æquations”, in John Gadbury, editor, The Works of that Late Most Excellent Philosopher and Astronomer, Sir George Wharton, Bar[onet]. Collected into One Entire Volume, London: Printed by H. H. for John Leigh, at Stationers Hall, OCLC 6498633, page 92:

     But becauſe ſome Aſpects are more Effectual than others, therefore they are (reſpectu graduum, Scientiæ and Congruentiæ, necnon Efficacitatus) thus to be Diſposed: viz. ☌. ☍. ◻. △. ⚹. SS. Q. Bq. Vc. Dec. Td. Sq. SSq. whereunto are added (as in the laſt and loweſt degree of Dignity and Efficacy) the Quindecile, Hexadecile, Vigintile, and the Icoſiteſſeragonall, (or figure of 24 ſides), which are only considered in Venus and Mercury with the Sun.

Usage notes

Not to be confused with hexadecyl.

Hypernyms

• (statistics): quantile

Coordinate terms

• (statistics): median (2-quantile), tercile/tertile (3), quartile (4), quintile (5), sextile (6), septile (7), octile (8), decile (10), hexadecile (16), ventile/vigintile (20), centile/percentile (100)

Adjective

hexadecile ‎(not comparable)

1. (statistics) Of or relating to a hexadecile.
   • 2001, J. B[ruce] Millar; D[avid] R[ichard] L[lewellyn] Davies, “A Reassessment of Temporal Information in Speech Processing [Workshop on Innovative Speech Processing, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 2–3 April 2001]”, in Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, volume 23, number 3, St. Albans, Hertfordshire: Institute of Acoustics, ISSN 0309-8117, archived from the original on 2 March 2011, pages 247–258:

     Parameters are then non-linearly re-scaled to the range of 0 to 15 to create a 4 bit acoustic vector component. Empirical non-linear scales were pre-determined for each parameter such that, over the long term, their values distributed evenly across a set of hexadecile bins representing the full range of the parameter. In the current system a separate non-linear scaling was established for each individual speaker, and, given the extent of the ANDOSL data used, this amounted to deriving equiprobable bins from approximately 10 minutes of spoken phonemically-rich sentence data.

   • 2002 March, David Richard Llewellyn Davies, Representing Time in Automated Speech Recognition [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation], Canberra: Australian National University, OCLC 223640723, archived from the original on 31 December 2015, page 66:

     Several algorithms were tested for the equi-population transform. The simplest consisted of dividing the total population by 16 and then, in a single linear scan, the parameter histogram was divided into hexadecile units. This approach performed poorly where parameter distributions were peaky, which is often the case.

2. (astrology, obsolete) Of or denoting a hexadecile aspect.