Resolution

noun
1.
a formal expression of opinion or intention made, usually after voting, by a formal organization, a legislature, a club, or other group.
Compare concurrent resolution, joint resolution.
2.
the act of resolving or determining upon an action, course of action, method, procedure, etc.
3.
a resolve; a decision or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something.
Her resolution to clear her parents’ name allowed her no other focus in life.
4.
the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose:
She showed her resolution by not attending the meeting.
5.
the act or process of resolving or separating something into constituent or elementary parts.
6.
the resulting state.
7.
Optics. the act, process, or capability of distinguishing between two separate but adjacent objects or sources of light or between two nearly equal wavelengths.
Compare resolving power.
8.
a solution, accommodation, or settling of a problem, controversy, etc.
9.
Music.

the progression of a voice part or of the harmony as a whole from a dissonance to a consonance.
the tone or chord to which a dissonance is resolved.

10.
reduction to a simpler form; conversion.
11.
Medicine/Medical. the reduction or disappearance of a swelling or inflammation without suppuration.
12.
the degree of sharpness of a computer-generated image as measured by the number of dots per linear inch in a hard-copy printout or the number of pixels across and down on a display screen.
noun
1.
the act or an instance of resolving
2.
the condition or quality of being resolute; firmness or determination
3.
something resolved or determined; decision
4.
a formal expression of opinion by a meeting, esp one agreed by a vote
5.
a judicial decision on some matter; verdict; judgment
6.
the act or process of separating something into its constituent parts or elements
7.
(med)

return from a pathological to a normal condition
subsidence of the symptoms of a disease, esp the disappearance of inflammation without the formation of pus

8.
(music) the process in harmony whereby a dissonant note or chord is followed by a consonant one
9.
the ability of a television or film image to reproduce fine detail
10.
(physics) another word for resolving power

resolution res·o·lu·tion (rěz’ə-lōō’shən)
n.

The subsiding or termination of an abnormal condition, such as a fever or an inflammation.

The act or process of separating or reducing something into its constituent parts.

The fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, as on a video display terminal.

1. the maximum number of pixels that can be displayed on a monitor, expressed as (number of horizontal pixels) x (number of vertical pixels), i.e., 1024×768. The ratio of horizontal to vertical resolution is usually 4:3, the same as that of conventional television sets.
2. A mechanical method for proving statements of first order logic, introduced by J. A. Robinson in 1965. Resolution is applied to two clauses in a sentence. It eliminates, by unification, a literal that occurs “positive” in one and “negative” in the other to produce a new clause, the resolvent.
For example, given the sentence:
(man(X) => mortal(X)) AND man(socrates).
The literal “man(X)” is “negative”. The literal “man(socrates)” could be considered to be on the right hand side of the degenerate implication
True => man(socrates)
and is therefore “positive”. The two literals can be unified by the binding X = socrates.
The truth table for the implication function is
A | B | A => B –+—+——- F | F | T F | T | T T | F | F T | T | T
(The implication only fails if its premise is true but its conclusion is false). From this we can see that
A => B == (NOT A) OR B
Which is why the left hand side of the implication is said to be negative and the right positive. The sentence above could thus be written
((NOT man(socrates)) OR mortal(socrates)) AND man(socrates)
Distributing the AND over the OR gives
((NOT man(socrates)) AND man(socrates)) OR mortal(socrates) AND man(socrates)
And since (NOT A) AND A == False, and False OR A == A we can simplify to just
mortal(socrates) AND man(socrates)
So we have proved the new literal, mortal(socrates).
Resolution with backtracking is the basic control mechanism of Prolog.
See also modus ponens, SLD Resolution.
3. address resolution.
(1996-02-09)