determinism

n : a philosophical doctrine holding that all events are

inevitable consequences of antecedent sufficient causes;

often understood as denying the possibility of free will

nondeterminism

A property of a computation which may have more

than one result.

One way to implement a nondeterministic {algorithm} is using

{backtracking}, another is to explore (all) possible solutions

in parallel.

(1995-04-13)