sparsity

English

Etymology tree

Latin sparsusbor.

English sparse

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-ts

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts

Latin -itāsder.

Old French -itebor.

Middle English -ite

English -ity

English sparsity

From sparse + -ity.

sparsity (usually uncountable, plural sparsities)

The property of being sparse; sparseness.
- 1958 August, “Closing of the Midland & Great Northern Line”, in Railway Magazine, pages 525-526:
  It is this duplication of facilities which is mainly responsible for the poor loadings experienced on the Midland & Great Northern line, apart, of course, from the general sparsity of traffic in Northern Norfolk, and the fenlands around the Wash.
- 2020 June 12, Cleve Moler and Jack Little, “A History of MATLAB”, in Proc. ACM Program. Lang.‎^[1], volume 4, number HOPL, →DOI, page 26:
  And an operation on a mixture of sparse and full matrices produces a sparse result unless the operator ordinarily destroys sparsity.

the property of being sparse