I have encountered this sentence in some form or another in several sciences journals-articles or sometimes in the social media bio of random strangers. I get a gut idea of what it is, but I’d like this explained in detailed words, so that I might also be able to explain this to someone, if prompted.
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**Terms:**
_deterministic_ = the outcome is fully determined by the starting conditions. Randomness is not involved. If you repeat the experiment from the same starting conditions, you will get the same result. In theory, you can predict everything that will follow just by looking at the initial situation and computing how it will go on from there.
_stochastic_ = something random is going on. You can still say what is more likely and what is less likely, but not how a system will actually evolve.
**An example of the meaning of the sentence is:** a die roll. It may well all work in a fully deterministic way. Thay die _had_ to come out 5, because it had to follow the laws of physics. There is no randomness in any of the laws involved (motion, gravity, collisions with the table…). It’s all deterministic and nothing else but a 5 had to come up. But because the system is already fairly complex, for all practical purposes it is _as if_ the 5 came out randomly.
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