Negligent killing of scientific concepts: the stationarity case

Abstract

In scientific vocabulary, the term “process” is used to denote change in time. Even a stationary process describes a system changing in time, rather than a static one that keeps a constant state all the time. However, this is often missed, which has led to misuse of the term “nonstationarity” as a synonym of “change”. A simple rule to avoid such misuse is to answer the question: can the change be predicted in deterministic terms? Only if the answer is positive is it legitimate to invoke nonstationarity. In addition, we should have in mind that models are made to simulate the future rather than to describe the past; the past is characterized by observations (data). Usually future changes are not deterministically predictable and thus the models should, on the one hand, be stationary and, on the other hand, describe in stochastic terms the full variability, originating from all agents of change. Even if the past evolution of the process of interest contains changes explainable in deterministic terms (e.g. urbanization), it is better to describe the future conditions in stationary terms, after “stationarizing” the past observations, i.e. adapting them to represent the future conditions.