Trade-off
A trade-off (or tradeoff) is a situational decision that involves diminishing or losing on quality, quantity, or property of a set or design in return for gains in other aspects. In simple terms, a tradeoff is where one thing increases, and another must decrease. Tradeoffs stem from limitations of many origins, including simple physics – for instance, only a certain volume of objects can fit into a given space, so a full container must remove some items in order to accept any more, and vessels can carry a few large items or multiple small items. Tradeoffs also commonly refer to different configurations of a single item, such as the tuning of strings on a guitar to enable different notes to be played, as well as an allocation of time and attention towards different tasks.
The concept of a tradeoff suggests a tactical or strategic choice made with full comprehension of the advantages and disadvantages of each setup. An economic example is the decision to invest in stocks, which are risky but carry great potential return, versus bonds, which are generally safer but with lower potential returns.
By compressing an , you can reduce transmission time/costs at the expense of CPU time to perform the compression and decompression. Depending on the compression method, this may also involve the tradeoff of a loss in image quality.
image
By using a , you may be able to reduce CPU time at the expense of space to hold the table, e.g. to determine the parity of a byte you can either look at each bit individually (using shifts and masks), or use a 256-entry table giving the parity for each possible bit-pattern, or combine the upper and lower nibbles and use a 16-entry table.
lookup table
For some situations (e.g. string manipulation), a may be able to use inline code for greater speed, or call run-time routines for reduced memory; the user of the compiler should be able to indicate whether speed or space is more important.
compiler
Architecture tradeoff analysis method
Bias–variance tradeoff
Biological constraints
Carrier's constraint
Cost-benefit analysis
Detection error tradeoff
Economy (linguistics)
Evolutionary medicine
Evolutionary physiology
Evolutionary tradeoff
Negotiation
Paradox
Patient trade-off
Risk assessment
Risk management
Space–time tradeoff
Systems theory
Time-trade-off
Trade-off theory of capital structure
Williamson trade-off model
Indifference curve
Albuquerque, R. L. de, K. E. Bonine, and T. Garland, Jr. 2015. Speed and endurance do not trade-off in phrynosomatid lizards. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 88:634–647.
Alexander, R. McN. 1985. The ideal and the feasible: physical constraints on evolution. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 26:345-358.
Bennett, A. F., Lenski, R. E. 2007. An experimental test of evolutionary trade-offs during adaptation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:8649-8654.
temperature
Campbell, D. E., and J. S. Kelly. 1994. Trade-off theory. The American Economic Review 84:422-426.
Haak, D. C., McGinnis, L. A., Levey, D. J., Tewksbury, J. J. 2012. Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 279:2012-2017.
Roff, D. A., Fairbairn, D. J. 2007. The evolution of trade-offs: where are we? J. Evol. Biol. 20:433-447.
Stearns, S. C. 1989. Trade-offs in evolution. Functional Ecology 3:259-268.
life-history
Philipson, C. D. et al. 2014. A trait-based trade-off between growth and mortality: evidence from 15 tropical tree species using size-specific relative growth rates. Ecology & Evolution 4: 3675–3688. 10.1002/ece3.1186