Impact Trust • Working glossary

Stochastic processes / events

A system that evolves randomly, but with underlying probabilities. Events are inherently random and unpredictable – you can’t know when or where they’ll happen.

Details

Our Take
Pure jargon outside technical circles. 'Unpredictable events' or 'random shocks' works fine for everyone else. Included for completeness because it appears in risk literature. The concept -- that some events are genuinely random but occur within probabilistic distributions -- explains why risk models fail: they model the distribution but cannot predict the specific event.
Examples of Use
Probability theory, risk science
Synonyms/Variants
Random events; Unpredictable shocks; Probabilistic events
Typical everyday wording
Unpredictable events that happen within a range of possibilities.