variations in the error terms by nodes in a distributed system

Simplest example of this is how Prometheus avoids beating by hash-assigning a random nanosecond delay to the scraping of each node.

Most poetic example is of improvisational song groups (where did I read about this??? Was is Ed). Or maybe New Orleans jazz is a sufficient illustration. The practice being, be aware of the larger trend, and seek interest on the margin.

Rhymes with perturbation theory.