Pistekohtaista

Pistekohtaista is a Finnish term used primarily in mathematics and data analysis to describe anything that is evaluated or applied at each individual data point or element, rather than globally or on an aggregated level. The word combines piste (point) with kohtaista, indicating a per-point or per-element relation.

In mathematics, the related expressions pistekohtaisesti (adverb) and pistekohtainen (adjective) are common. Pointwise concepts contrast with global or uniform notions. For example, pistekohtainen konvergenssi refers to pointwise convergence of a sequence of functions, meaning convergence occurs at each point in the domain independently, rather than uniformly across the whole domain. The term is widely used in textbooks and articles to specify that a property or operation is applied individually to each input.

In data processing and computing, pistekohtaista also describes element-wise operations on arrays, vectors, or matrices. This usage covers applying a function independently to every element, producing a corresponding element-wise result. The concept is familiar in programming languages and numerical libraries that support per-element computation.

Etymologically, pistekohtaista derives from piste (point) and kohtaista (per point), and its function is descriptive rather than naming a distinct theory or object. It appears as a technical qualifier in Finnish-language scholarly writing and is not typically treated as a standalone topic outside such contexts.

See also: pointwise convergence, element-wise operations, uniform convergence, per-point statistics.