Threshold is a very charged word with many meanings.
Literally it is the sill of a doorway or the entrance to a house or a building.
But threshold means also a point of entering or beginning.
A point where you part to something new.
The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the vote which a political party requires to secure any representation.
This limit can operate in various ways.
In mathematical or
statistical modelling a threshold model
is any model where a threshold value, or set of threshold values, is used to
distinguish ranges of values where the behaviour predicted by the model varies
in some important way.
A particularly important instance arises in
toxicology, where the model for the effect of a drug may be that there is zero
effect for a dose below a critical or threshold value, while an effect of some
significance exists above that value.
Certain types of
regression model may also include threshold effects.
Or in psychology threshold can mean the point at which the stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.
Threshold is also a term in biology.
As scientists learn
more about how our planet works, both now and in the past, they are
increasingly aware of the existence of environmental ‘tipping points’ – points
of no return.
These are thresholds
beyond which environmental change becomes hard to stop.
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Certain concepts are held to
be central to the mastery of the chosen subject.
These
concepts, could be described as ‘threshold’ ones because without the knowledge of them it is not possible to
understand the subject wholly.
Threshold is a very strong word with many hues and shades.
I have always loved taking pictures of doors, gates and entryways.
The idea of threshold fascinates me.
I want to know what you can find on the other side.
What kind of world there will be waiting for us.
I have always wanted to explore those worlds beyond, know what the life is like there.
That is one of the reasons I live now in Ecuador, instead of Finland.
But it is also something that drives me to write, to explore what is beyond what we see.
And what we seem to see.
Thresholds are powerful and evoke compelling images.
Do you dare to enter?
