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

If using a computational tool to process information constitutes “disclosure” to a third party, the implications extend to everyone who has ever stored a confidential document in the cloud or sent an email.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 6, 2026

A pioneer in computational neuroscience, Marr was best known for his work on vision, treating it as a multilevel system and not merely a system of neurons.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 29, 2026

They are credited with proposing the first mathematical model of a neural network to explain how the brain’s biological connectivity produces complexity—thus leading to a computational theory of the mind.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 29, 2026

The team located them using a new computational tool called Conservatory, developed through collaboration among the laboratories of Idan Efroni at Hebrew University, Madelaine Bartlett at Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, and Zachary Lippman at CSHL.

From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 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