All articles starting with P
28,818 articles
Performance art
Performance art, also called live art, is art in which the artist's live actions and body are the medium, emerging in the 1960s from Happenings and Fluxus events.
Performance assessment (nuclear waste)
A performance assessment (PA) in radioactive waste disposal is a quantitative evaluation of potential radionuclide releases from a disposal facility and the resulting radiological doses to people.
Performance attribution
Performance attribution is the decomposition of a portfolio's excess return over its benchmark into its sources, most commonly via the Brinson models splitting active return into allocation, selection, and interaction effects.
Performance audit
A performance audit is an independent examination of whether government programs, systems, and organizations operate with economy, efficiency, and effectiveness, producing findings and recommendations for improvement.
Performance Based Regulation
Performance based regulation, or performance-based ratemaking, is utility regulation that ties revenues and earnings to achieved outcomes instead of recovered costs, using mechanisms like revenue decoupling and multiyear rate plans.
Performance bond
A performance bond is a surety bond guaranteeing a project owner that a contractor will complete a contract, with the surety arranging completion if the contractor defaults.
Performance Food Group
Performance Food Group is one of the largest US food and food-related products distributors, with fiscal 2026 net sales of $67.8 billion and about 8% of US foodservice distribution.
Performance indicator
A performance indicator, also called a performance metric, is a measurable variable representing the status of operations, processes, or outcomes. Indicators used by top management are called key performance indicators, or KPIs.
Performance measurement
Performance measurement is the practice of quantifying results against objectives or benchmarks, spanning investment performance, where fund returns are risk-adjusted and compared with benchmarks, and organizational KPIs.
Performance obligation
A performance obligation is a promise in a customer contract to transfer a distinct good or service, the unit of account for revenue recognition under ASC 606 and IFRS 15.
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry written and rehearsed to be performed to an audience, closely related to spoken word, with voice and stage presence carrying part of the meaning.
Performance qualification
Performance qualification (PQ) is the third stage of the four-part qualification model in regulated industries, verifying after installation and operational qualification that equipment and processes perform consistently under normal conditions.
Performance ratio
The performance ratio (PR) is a dimensionless metric for photovoltaic systems, comparing actual delivered energy to ideal output under standard test conditions; typical values run 75 to 90 percent.
Performance reports (shangji)
Performance reports (shangji, 上计) were an annual Han dynasty fiscal and accounting institution in which commanderies reported taxes, population, and criminal cases to the court, which graded local officials accordingly.
Performance specification
A performance specification is a written construction requirement that states the result the work must achieve, such as an acoustic rating, and leaves materials and methods to the contractor.
Performance status
Performance status (PS), measured by the Karnofsky (KPS, 0–100) or ECOG/WHO (0–5) scales, rates cancer patients' functional ability; a strong prognostic factor and common clinical trial eligibility criterion.
Performance testing
Performance testing is a software testing practice that measures an application's responsiveness, reliability, scalability, and resource consumption under a workload of concurrent service requests, using types such as load, stress, spike, and endurance testing.
Performance-based rate
A performance-based rate is a solar incentive paying per kilowatt-hour of measured production over several years, used by the California Solar Initiative and Austin Energy, unlike up-front rebates.
Performance-based seismic design
Performance-based seismic design is an earthquake engineering approach in which buildings are designed to explicit performance objectives, such as repair cost, downtime, or casualties, rather than prescriptive code rules.
Performance-enhancing substance
Performance-enhancing substance: drugs, hormones, and supplements (steroids, EPO, caffeine, creatine) used to boost athletic performance; regulated by WADA's annually updated Prohibited List under strict liability, with efficacy proven for only 5 of 23 classes.
Performance-graded binder
A performance-graded (PG) binder is an asphalt binder classified under the Superpave system by the high and low pavement temperatures at which it meets specified physical properties.
Performance-related pay
Performance-related pay (PRP) is compensation in which salary depends on measured performance, spanning piece rates, commissions, bonuses, merit pay, and profit sharing, covering much of the modern workforce.
Performative male
Performative male: a 2025 Gen Z internet meme archetype satirizing men who adopt feminist politics and a soft-boy aesthetic (matcha, tote bags, Labubu, Clairo) to attract women or clout; peaked summer 2025 with contests in San Francisco and other cities.
Performative utterance
Performative utterance, Austin's term from How to Do Things with Words (1962): an utterance that performs an act (promising, marrying, sentencing) rather than describes, judged felicitous or infelicitous by felicity conditions, not true or false.
Performativity
Performativity: the property of utterances and acts that do what they say, from J. L. Austin's performatives and felicity conditions to Butler's gender performativity and performative prediction in machine learning.
Performer (transformer architecture)
The Performer is a 2020 transformer architecture from Google Research that approximates softmax attention with linear time and memory complexity via its FAVOR+ mechanism, and was presented at ICLR 2021.
Performing arts
Performing arts, also called the live arts, are art forms presented live before an audience: music, dance, theatre, opera, circus, pantomime, and puppetry. Distinguished from visual arts and performance art; a UNESCO intangible heritage domain with major economic and cultural-policy weight.
Performing arts presenters
Performing arts presenters are organizations that select, book, and present artists' work to audiences without producing it themselves. Key facts: APAP founded 1957; CAPF funds ~800 series yearly; US ticket data 2021-26.
Perfume
Perfume, also called parfum, is a mixture of fragrant essential oils, aroma compounds, solvents, and fixatives used to give the human body, objects, and living spaces a pleasant scent.
Perfume (novel)
Perfume (Das Parfum, 1985) is Patrick Süskind's bestselling German historical novel about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an odorless perfumer who murders to create the perfect scent; over 20 million copies, translated into 50+ languages.