High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Stochastic (from the Greek ?????? for aim or guess) means random. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E. Nelson, any kind of time development (be it deterministic or essentially probabilistic) which is analyzable in terms of probability deserves the name of stochastic process.The use of the term stochastic to mean based on the theory of probability has been traced back to Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, who meant the sense of making conjectures that the Greek term bears since ancient philosophers, and after the title of "Ars Conjectandi" that Bernoulli gave to his work on probability theory.