What is "baseline"

baseline \baseline\ n.

1. an imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared; as, they established a baseline for the budget.

2. the back line at each end of a tennis court.

3. (Baseball) the lines between bases on a baseball field along which a baseball player must run while running the bases.

4. a measurement that represents the value of a physical quantity (such as a voltage, or a level of radioactivity) in the absence of effects from other variables in a measurement, test or experiment; a control value.

5. any horizontal line in a plot, graph, or diagram, or on a visual display in an electronic device, used as a reference point to which other values are referred.

also base-line, 1750, originally in surveying, from base (n.) + line (n.). Baseball diamond sense is from 1867. Baseline estimate in use by 1983.

n. 1 A line that is a base for measurement or for construction. 2 A datum used as the basis for calculation or for comparison. 3 (context typography English) A line used as the basis for the alignment of glyphs. 4 (context tennis English) The line at the farthest ends of the court indicating the boundary of the area of play. 5 (context engineering English) A configuration of software, hardware, or a process that is established and documented as a point of reference. vb. (context engineering computing English) To provide a baseline for measurement.

1. n. an imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared; "the established a baseline for the budget"

2. the back line bounding each end of a tennis or handball court; when serving the server must not step over this line [syn: service line]

3. the lines a baseball player must follow while running the bases

A baseline is a line that is a base for measurement or for construction.

The word baseline may refer to:

• baseline (configuration management), the process of managing change
• baseline (sea), the starting point for delimiting a coastal state's maritime zones
  • Baselines of the Chinese territorial sea
  • Baselines of Indonesia
• baseline (surveying), a line between two points of the earth's surface and the direction and distance between them
• baseline (typography), the line upon which most letters "sit" and below which descenders extend
• baseline (budgeting), an estimate of budget expected during a fiscal year
• baseline (medicine), information found at the beginning of a study
• baseline (pharmacology), a person's state of mind or being, in the absence of drugs
• the isoelectric line of an electrocardiogram
• baseline (interferometry), the length of an astronomical interferometer

The name Baseline may refer to:

• Baseline (magazine), a magazine devoted to typography, book arts, graphic design
• Baseline (database), a TV and movie industry database
• Baselines (album), the 1983 debut album of composer Bill Laswell
• Baseline Road (Colorado), a major east-west artery in Boulder, Colorado
• Baseline Road (Ottawa), a major east-west artery in Ottawa, Ontario
• Baseline Road (Arizona), a major east-west artery in Phoenix, Arizona
• Baseline Station (OC Transpo), a transitway station in Ottawa
• Base Line, Arkansas
• Baseline Nunataks
• Baseline Rock

It may also refer to:

• the base line in baseball
• the back line on a tennis court, and also a style of play in tennis; see tennis strategy
• the end line on a basketball court
• a bassline in music
• a shifting baseline in statistics
• Baseline Killer, one of the two simultaneously occurring serial killer cases which terrorized the Phoenix metro area, between August 2005 and June 2006

In pharmacology and matters of biochemistry, baseline describes a person's state of mind or being with the absence of drugs. For example, after an LSD trip, baseline would be the point where the user is completely under control and no longer experiences any effects.

Category:Pharmacodynamics

In surveying, a baseline is a line between two points of the earth's surface and the direction and distance between them. In a triangulation network, at least one baseline needs to be measured to calculate the size of the triangles by trigonometry.

In the United States Public Land Survey System, a baseline is the principal east-west line (i.e., a parallel) upon which all rectangular surveys in a defined area are based. The baseline meets its corresponding principal meridian at the point of origin, or initial point, for the land survey. For example, the baseline for Nebraska and Kansas is shared as the border for both states, at the 40th parallel north.

More specifically a baseline may be the line that divides a survey township between north and south.

Often, a baseline is marked by other features such as a road or boundary between counties.

In configuration management, a "baseline" is an agreed description of the attributes of a product, at a point in time, which serves as a basis for defining change. A "change" is a movement from this baseline state to a next state. The identification of significant changes from the baseline state is the central purpose of baseline identification.

Typically, significant states are those that receive a formal approval status, either explicitly or implicitly. An approval status may be marked individually, when a prior definition for that status has been established by project leaders, or signified by association to a position above or below the established baseline. Nevertheless, this approval status is usually recognized publicly. Thus, a baseline may also mark an approved configuration item, e.g. a project plan that has been signed off for execution. In a similar manner, associating multiple configuration items with such a baseline indicates those items as being approved.

Generally, a baseline may be a single work product, or set of work products that can be used as a logical basis for comparison. A baseline may also be established as the basis for subsequent select activities when the work products meet certain criteria. Such activities may be attributed with formal approval.

Conversely, the configuration of a project often includes one or more baselines, the status of the configuration, and any metrics collected. The current configuration refers to the current status, current audit and/or current metrics. Similarly, but less frequently, a baseline may refer to all items associated with a specific project. This may include all revisions of all items, or only the latest revision of all items in the project, depending upon context.

A baseline may be a specific type of baseline, such as the body of items at a particular certifying review . Some examples include:

• Functional Baseline: initial specifications established; contract, etc.
• Allocated Baseline: state of work products after requirements are approved
• Developmental Baseline: state of work products amid development
• Product Baseline: contains the releasable contents of the project
• others, based upon proprietary business practices

In European and West Asian typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters "sit" and below which descenders extend.

In the example to the right, the letter 'p' has a descender; the other letters sit on the (red) baseline.

Most, though not all, typefaces are similar in the following ways as regards the baseline:

• capital letters sit on the baseline. The most common exceptions are the J and Q.
• Lining figures (see Arabic numerals) sit on the baseline.
• The following text figures have descenders: 3 4 5 7 9.
• The following lowercase letters have descenders: g j p q y.
• Glyphs with rounded lower and upper extents (0 3 6 8 c C G J o O Q) dip very slightly below the baseline ("overshoot") to create the optical illusion that they sit on the baseline, and rise above the x-height or capital height to create the illusion that they have the same height as flat glyphs (such as those for H x X 1 5 7). Peter Karow's Digital Typefaces suggests that typical overshoot is about 1.5%.

The vertical distance of the base lines of consecutive lines in a paragraph is also known as line height or leading, although the latter can also refer to the baseline distance minus the font size.

Northern Brahmic scripts have a characteristic hanging baseline; the letters are aligned to the top of the writing line, marked by an overbar, with diacritics extending above the baseline.

East Asian scripts have no baseline; each glyph sits in a square box, with neither ascenders nor descenders. When mixed with scripts with a low baseline, East Asian characters should be set so that the bottom of the character is between the baseline and the descender height.

A baseline is the line from which the seaward limits of a state's territorial sea and certain other maritime zones of jurisdiction are measured. Normally, a sea baseline follows the low-water line of a coastal state. When the coastline is deeply indented, has fringing islands or is highly unstable, straight baselines may be used.

Baseline magazine is a magazine devoted to typography, book arts and graphic design. Not to be confused with the information technology magazine of the same name that is published by QuinStreet.

A baseline in medicine is information found at the beginning of a study or other initial known value which is used for comparison with later data. The concept of a baseline is essential to the daily practice of medicine in order to establish a relative rather than absolute meaning to data. The meaning of baseline in medicine is very similar to that of the running baseline (baseball) being the direct path that a baserunner is taking to the base he is in route to. If the baserunner is outside the 3 foot margin around his running baseline, then he is considered out. Whereas if a patient with kidney failure (whose creatinine is usually 3.0 mg/dL) suddenly has a creatinine of 5.0 mg/dL, then his creatinine is out of his normal. For that person with kidney failure, absolute normal no longer applies because he will never again be able to obtain an absolutely normal creatinine level (0.5-1.2 mg/dL) with kidneys that no longer function properly.

Baseline budgeting is an accounting method the United States Federal Government uses to develop a budget for future years. Baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements and assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate. Twice a year—generally in January and August—CBO prepares baseline projections of federal revenues, outlays, and the surplus or deficit. Those projections are designed to show what would happen if current budgetary policies were continued as is—that is, they serve as a benchmark for assessing possible changes in policy. They are not forecasts of actual budget outcomes, since the Congress will undoubtedly enact legislation that will change revenues and outlays. Similarly, they are not intended to represent the appropriate or desirable levels of federal taxes and spending.

The genesis of baseline budget projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That act required the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of governmental services. It also required the newly established Congressional Budget Office to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit. OMB published its initial current-services budget projections in November 1974, and CBO's five-year projections first appeared in January 1976. Today's baseline budget projections are very much like those prepared more than two decades ago, although they now span 10 years instead of five.

The Budget Act was silent on whether to adjust estimates of discretionary appropriations for anticipated changes in inflation. Until 1980, OMB's projections excluded inflation adjustments for discretionary programs. CBO's projections, however, assumed that appropriations would keep pace with inflation, although CBO has also published projections without these so-called discretionary inflation adjustments.

CBO's budget projections took on added importance in 1980 and 1981, when they served as the baseline for computing spending reductions to be achieved in the budget reconciliation process. The reconciliation instructions contained in the fiscal year 1982 budget resolution (the so-called Gramm-Latta budget) required House and Senate committees to reduce outlays by a total of $36 billion below baseline levels, but each committee could determine how those savings were to be achieved. The CBO baseline has been used in every year since 1981 for developing budget resolutions and measuring compliance with reconciliation instructions.

The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 provided the first legal definition of baseline. For the most part, the act defined the baseline in conformity with previous usage. If appropriations had not been enacted for the upcoming fiscal year, the baseline was to assume the previous year's level without any adjustment for inflation. In 1987, however, the Congress amended the definition of the baseline so that discretionary appropriations would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation. Other technical changes, annual increase of now approximately 3% plus inflation, to the definition of the baseline were enacted in 1990, 1993, and 1997. Presently, the [automatic annual] Baseline Budgeting increase is about 7%.

Baseline budget projections increasingly became the subject of political debate and controversy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and more recently during the 2011 debt limit debate. Some critics contend that baseline projections create a bias in favor of spending by assuming that federal spending keeps pace with inflation and other factors driving the growth of entitlement programs. Changes that merely slow the growth of federal spending programs have often been described as cuts in spending, when in reality they are actually reductions in the rate of spending growth.

There have been attempts to eliminate the baseline budget concept and replace it with zero based budgeting, which is the opposite of baseline budgeting. Zero based budgeting requires that all spending must be re-justified each year or it will be eliminated from the budget regardless of previous spending levels.

According to the Government Accountability Office, a Baseline is as follows:

Baseline

"An estimate of spending, revenue, the deficit or surplus, and the public debt expected during a fiscal year under current laws and current policy. The baseline is a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in revenues and spending. It assumes that receipts and mandatory spending will continue or expire in the future as required by law and that the future funding for discretionary programs will equal the most recently enacted appropriation, adjusted for inflation. Under the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), to expire at the end of fiscal year 2006, the baseline is defined as the projection of current-year levels of new budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit into the budget year and out-years based on laws enacted through the applicable date.

CBO Baseline

Projected levels of governmental receipts (revenues), budget authority, and outlays for the budget year and subsequent fiscal years, which is now approximately 6% increase pr fiscal-year, assuming generally that current policies remain the same, except as directed by law. The baseline is described in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) annual report for the House and Senate Budget Committees, The Budget and Economic Outlook, which is published in January. The baseline, by law, includes projections for 5 years, but at the request of the Budget Committees, CBO has provided such projections for 10 years. In most years the CBO baseline is revised in conjunction with CBO’s analysis of the President’s budget, which is usually issued in March, and again during the summer. The “March” baseline is the benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed legislation under consideration by Congress."