Characteristic is also sometimes used as a piece of jargon in discussions of universals in metaphysics, often in the phrase 'distinguishing characteristics'.
An I-V or current-voltage characteristic is the current in a circuit as a function of the applied voltage. It is used, for example, to describe diodes and Langmuir probes.
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As explained in the reading on characteristic functions the characteristic function for a distribution is the expected value of exp(izω).
The computation of the components of the characteristic function is based upon the midpoints of the ranges for the histogram.
The maximum value for which the estimates of the characteristic function based upon the midpoints of the intervals used is probably lower than 16 as was assumed.