Aoristic for Dummies

Aoristic is a fancy word, but don't worry, I'm here to break it down for you! So, imagine you have a bunch of different moments in your life, like little snapshots. Each snapshot represents a single point in time, whether it's a specific day, hour, or even just a minute. These moments can be spread out over a long period, like days or weeks, or they can be really close together, like seconds or minutes.

Now, picture all of these snapshots laid out in front of you on a timeline. Each snapshot has a start and end time, right? Well, here comes the important part. When we talk about something being "aoristic," it means that we are just looking at the start times of those moments. We don't care about when they ended, we're only interested in when they began.

Let's take an example to make things clearer. Say you have a bunch of photographs of your family on different vacations. Each photograph represents a different moment in time. Now, if I asked you which day each vacation started, you would look at each photograph and tell me the date when your family left for the vacation. You wouldn't worry about when they came back or how long the vacation lasted. That's exactly what being "aoristic" means! We're just focusing on when things started, not when they ended.

Now, I should let you know that "aoristic" is a word that is more commonly used in statistics and criminology. Here, it refers to a specific method or technique used to analyze data or understand patterns. When we analyze data using the aoristic method, we're interested in the start times of certain events or incidents, not their duration or how they ended.

So, to sum it all up, when something is "aoristic," we're only concerned with when it started, not when it ended. It's like looking at the beginning of an event without thinking about its end. Just like sorting through your family vacation pictures and focusing on the start dates instead of how long each vacation lasted.