computational

American  

[kahm-pyoo-tay-shuhn-uhl] / ˌkɑm pyuˈteɪ ʃən əl /

adjective

1. relating to work involving computers or calculations.

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Explanation

Computational is an adjective referring to a system of calculating or "computing," or, more commonly today, work involving computers. Tasks with a lot of computational steps are best performed on modern digital computers. While humans still can’t be beat for their intuition and insight in determining just how to solve a particular problem, we are an error-prone species. Before the invention of computers, teams of people did not only computational work but also needed to check each other's work for mistakes.

Example Sentences

His most influential idea, “bounded rationality,” holds that people lack the information and computational capacity to make truly optimal decisions, and so they must “satisfice”—settle for an option that meets a “good enough” threshold.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 11, 2026

I’m a computational social scientist who studies social and political networks.

From Salon • May 8, 2026

Merz, a staff scientist at Cleveland Clinic, leads a lab dedicated to building computational tools that apply theoretical math to biological research.

From Barron's • May 5, 2026

Meta said the new deal reflects its diversified approach to infrastructure, and shows that no single chip architecture can efficiently serve every computational task.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 24, 2026

It was the year when computational power became infinite—or so close to infinite that it could no longer be measured.

From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman