All articles starting with L

Leasehold islands

A leasehold island is an island held under lease rather than owned outright, with lessees getting possession and use rights for terms of 30 to 99 years.

Leasehold valuation tribunal (LVT): former England and Wales tribunal for leaseholder-landlord disputes over enfranchisement, lease extension, and service charges; replaced in England by the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) in 2013, continuing in Wales.

Leash

A leash, called a lead in British English, is a line of leather, rope, or chain used to hold and control an animal, most often a dog.

Least bittern

Least bittern (Botaurus exilis, formerly Ixobrychus exilis), smallest heron of the Americas, a secretive marsh bird of cattail wetlands. Eats small fish, nests over water, global population about 310,000; Special Concern in Canada.

Least common multiple

The least common multiple (LCM), also called the smallest common multiple, is the smallest positive integer that two nonzero integers both divide evenly, such as lcm(6, 9) = 18.

Least count

The least count of a measuring instrument is the smallest change in the measured quantity it can resolve, such as 0.1 mm for a common vernier caliper.

Least developed countries

The least developed countries (LDCs) are a United Nations category of 44 countries, created in 1971, judged disadvantaged by low income, weak human assets, and vulnerability.

Least frequently used (cache algorithm)

Least frequently used (LFU) is a cache replacement algorithm that evicts the entry with the lowest access count, used in operating systems, caching libraries, and web proxies.

Least mean squares algorithm

The least mean squares algorithm, introduced by Widrow and Hoff in 1960, is an adaptive filtering method that minimizes mean squared error via stochastic gradient descent.

Least mean squares filter

The least mean squares filter is an adaptive filtering algorithm that adjusts filter weights by stochastic gradient to minimize error, used by the million in echo cancellers and equalizers.

Least significant difference test

The least significant difference (LSD) test, also called Fisher's LSD, is a pairwise multiple comparison procedure used after ANOVA to decide which pairs of treatment means differ significantly.

Least squares

Least squares, or the least-squares method, is a statistical estimation method that minimizes the sum of squared deviations between observed data and a model's predictions; Legendre published it in 1805.

Least weasel

Least weasel (Mustela nivalis), smallest carnivore, Holarctic rodent hunter; 19 subspecies, MC1R winter-white polymorphism, Least Concern (IUCN 2015), distinct from stoat by lack of black tail tip.

Least-squares channel estimation

Least-squares channel estimation is a method in which a wireless receiver fits known transmitted pilot symbols to received measurements, minimizing squared error; it is simpler than MMSE but noisier.

Least-squares migration

Least-squares migration (LSM) is a seismic imaging method that iteratively inverts a forward modeling operator to produce images with fewer artifacts, truer amplitudes, and higher resolution than conventional migration.

Least-squares support-vector machine

A least-squares support-vector machine (LS-SVM) is a reformulation of the support-vector machine that replaces the hinge loss with squared error, so training reduces to solving a linear system.

Least-to-most prompting

Least-to-most prompting is a prompting method for large language models that decomposes a complex problem into subproblems and solves them sequentially, introduced by Zhou et al. in 2022.

Least-upper-bound property

The least-upper-bound property, also called the supremum property, says every nonempty subset of an ordered set that is bounded above has a least upper bound in the set.

Leasys

Leasys is a European long-term car rental and fleet-leasing company owned equally by Stellantis and Crédit Agricole, operating in 11 European countries from its Italian headquarters.

Leather

Leather is animal hide or skin converted by tanning into a stable, long-lasting material that keeps its fibrous structure, made mainly from cattle, sheep, and goats.

Leather gloves

Leather gloves are hand coverings cut and sewn from animal skin, ranging from thin dress gloves to heavy work gauntlets; leather stays the standard material where fit, durability, and dexterity matter.

Leather pride flag

Leather pride flag, designed by Tony DeBlase and first shown May 28, 1989 at International Mr. Leather, Chicago: nine black and royal blue stripes, white center stripe, red heart; designer assigned no symbolism.

Leather subculture

The leather subculture, also known as the leather scene, is a community centered on leather clothing that grew from gay bars and motorcycle clubs in the 1950s and 1960s.

Leatherback sea turtle

Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), largest living turtle; only sea turtle without a hard shell; jellyfish eater, dives to 4,000 feet; ESA endangered, IUCN Vulnerable.

Leatherface

Leatherface, also called Bubba Sawyer or Thomas Hewitt, is the masked, chainsaw-wielding killer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise, created by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel in 1974 and first played by Gunnar Hansen.

Leatherface (2017 film)

Leatherface (2017) is a horror prequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the eighth franchise film, directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, starring Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor, released October 20, 2017 to poor reviews.

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, a 1990 New Line slasher directed by Jeff Burr, the first non-Tobe Hooper sequel, starring Kate Hodge, Ken Foree, and R.A. Mihailoff; cut from an X to an R rating, released January 12, 1990, grossing $5.8 million.