All articles starting with P
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Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Point Pleasant is the Mason County seat, West Virginia, at the Ohio-Kanawha river confluence; site of the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant, the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse, and the Mothman legend and museum; population 3,961.
Point process
A point process, sometimes studied as point process theory, is a stochastic model for randomly occurring events in time or space, such as customer arrivals or earthquakes.
Point Reyes
Point Reyes (Tamál-Húye to the Coast Miwok) is a Marin County, California peninsula on the San Andreas Fault, protected since 1962 as Point Reyes National Seashore, with Coast Miwok village sites, the 1579 Drake landfall, historic dairy ranches, and about 151 recorded shipwrecks nearby.
Point Roberts, Washington
Point Roberts, Washington: a 5-square-mile American pene-exclave on the Tsawwassen Peninsula south of Vancouver, reachable by land only through Canada; created by the 1846 Oregon Treaty, dependent on Canadian utilities and tourism.
Point set registration
Point set registration, also known as scan matching, is a computational geometry method that aligns point sets by estimating a spatial transformation, fundamental in robotics and computer vision.
Point shaving
Point shaving, also called shaving points, is match fixing in which players manipulate a game's margin of victory relative to the point spread without changing the winner.
Point shooting
Point shooting: defensive handgun technique of firing without conventional sights by pointing the gun at close targets; developed by Fairbairn and Sykes in Shanghai, brought to OSS training by Rex Applegate, typically one-handed.
Point spectrum
The point spectrum of a linear operator is the set of its eigenvalues, one of the three standard parts of the spectrum in functional analysis.
Point spread function
The point spread function (PSF) of an optical system is the image it forms of a point source, describing how diffraction and aberrations blur the point.
Point subtraction aggression paradigm
The point subtraction aggression paradigm (PSAP) is a laboratory task measuring aggression behaviorally: participants earn money while a fictitious opponent subtracts points, and aggressive retaliation is recorded.
Point system (driving)
A point system for driving is a road-safety scheme where a driver's license record accumulates demerit points for traffic offenses, leading to suspension at a threshold.
Point Thomson Oil and Gas Field
Point Thomson is a gas-condensate field on Alaska's North Slope east of Prudhoe Bay, discovered in 1977, holding an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Point tracking
Point tracking is a computer vision method that follows individually specified points across video frames, estimating each point's full trajectory and occlusion status, as in the tracking any point (TAP) formulation.
POINT trial
POINT trial (Platelet-Oriented Inhibition in New TIA and Minor Ischemic Stroke), NCT00991029: NINDS-funded randomized trial of clopidogrel plus aspirin versus aspirin alone within 12 hours of minor stroke or high-risk TIA; 4,881 patients, lower ischemic events but more hemorrhage at 90 days.
Point-blank range
Point-blank range is the distance from which a projectile hits a target of a given size without holdover for bullet drop; colloquially, a distance too close to miss.
Point-in-time correctness
Point-in-time correctness: building ML training data with an AS OF join so each label row sees only feature values known at label time, preventing temporal data leakage that inflates offline scores; implemented in Feast, Tecton, Hopsworks, and native SQL ASOF joins.
Point-of-care testing
Point-of-care testing (POCT, near-patient testing) is clinical laboratory testing performed at or near the patient, typically with ~15-minute turnaround via lateral flow immunoassays and molecular platforms, governed in the US by CLIA waived-test rules.
Point-of-view shot
Point-of-view shot (POV shot, subjective camera): a film technique placing the camera at a character's eyeline so viewers see what the character sees, typically within a gaze/object/gaze three-shot structure; distinct from the direct-to-camera subjective shot.
Point-to-point (steeplechase)
Point-to-point (pointing) is amateur steeplechase racing over fences for hunting horses and amateur riders, run November–June on temporary countryside courses in Britain and Ireland; rooted in the 1752 Buttevant–Doneraile steeple-to-steeple race.
Point-to-point (telecommunications)
A point-to-point connection is a dedicated telecommunications link joining exactly two endpoints, rather than a shared medium; its forms include leased lines, the PPP data link protocol, and point-to-point microwave radio.
Point-to-Point Protocol
The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is a Layer 2 data link protocol, defined in 1994, that carries multi-protocol datagrams over point-to-point links such as dial-up modem connections.
Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet
Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) is a network protocol that encapsulates PPP frames in Ethernet, letting providers authenticate DSL and fiber subscribers with a login.
Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is a networking protocol that tunnels PPP through IP networks to build VPNs; documented in 1999, it is now deprecated by NIST.
Point72 Asset Management
Point72 Asset Management is a multi-strategy hedge fund in Stamford, Connecticut, controlled by Steve Cohen and successor to SAC Capital, with about $50 billion under management in 2026.
Pointclass
A pointclass is a collection of pointsets, subsets of Polish spaces, organizing definable sets of reals into hierarchies, chiefly the Borel and projective pointclasses of descriptive set theory.
PointConv
PointConv is a convolution operation for 3D point clouds, introduced in 2018 by Wenxuan Wu, Zhongang Qi, and Li Fuxin at Oregon State University and published at CVPR 2019.
Pointe du Hoc
Pointe du Hoc: Normandy promontory between Omaha and Utah beaches scaled by 225 US Army Rangers under Lt. Col. James E. Rudder on D-Day, 6 June 1944, to destroy a 155mm German battery whose guns had been moved inland.
Pointe shoe
Pointe shoe: satin ballet shoe with a rigid toe box and shank enabling dancing en pointe; first danced fully by Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832); professionals use 100-120 pairs per season.
Pointe technique
Pointe technique (sur les pointes) is classical ballet dancing on the tips of the toes in stiffened pointe shoes, debuted on stage by Brugnoli in 1823 and Taglioni's La Sylphide (1832), with loads up to 12 times body weight and strict readiness criteria.
Pointe-Noire Department
Pointe-Noire Department, a department of the Republic of the Congo on the Atlantic coast, comprises the commune of Pointe-Noire and Tchiamba-Nzassi district. Created 2003; 2,134 km2; deep-water port, oil industry, prefect Pierre Cébert Ibocko-Onangha since 2025.