What is "tracking"

Track \Track\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. tracked; p. pr. & vb. n. tracking.] To follow the tracks or traces of; to pursue by following the marks of the feet; to trace; to trail; as, to track a deer in the snow.

It was often found impossible to track the robbers to their retreats among the hills and morasses.
--Macaulay.

2. (Naut.) To draw along continuously, as a vessel, by a line, men or animals on shore being the motive power; to tow.

n. The act by which something is tracked. vb. (present participle of track English)

n. the pursuit (of a person or animal) by following tracks or marks they left behind [syn: trailing]

Tracking may refer to:

Tracking, one of the first freefall skills learned by a novice skydiver, is the technique of assuming a body position that allows the skydiver to move horizontally while freefalling.

Tracking is a technique in which dogs are trained to locate certain objects by using the object's scent, for a variety of purposes. Tracking has always been an essential skill for dogs to survive in the wild, through hunting and tracking down potential prey.

Tracking in hunting and ecology is the science and art of observing animal tracks and other signs, with the goal of gaining understanding of the landscape and the animal being tracked (quarry). A further goal of tracking is the deeper understanding of the systems and patterns that make up the environment surrounding and incorporating the tracker.

The practice of tracking may focus on, but is not limited to, the patterns and systems of the local animal life and ecology. Trackers must be able to recognize and follow animals through their tracks, signs, and trails, also known as spoor. Spoor may include tracks, scat, feathers, kills, scratching posts, trails, drag marks, sounds, scents, marking posts, the behavior of other animals, habitat cues, and any other clues about the identity and whereabouts of the quarry.

The skilled tracker is able to discern these clues, recreate what transpired on the landscape, and make predictions about the quarry. The tracker may attempt to predict the current location of the quarry and follow the quarry's spoor to that location, in an activity known as trailing.

Prehistoric hunters used tracking principally to gather food. Even in historic times, tracking has been traditionally practiced by the majority of tribal people all across the world. The military and intelligence agencies also use tracking to find enemy combatants in the bush, land, sea, and desert.

Tracking (1994) is a documentary about the band Phish and the recording of the album Hoist. It is directed by the band's bass player, Mike Gordon, who wrote, for the VHS packaging:

Many of the musicians on the album, Alison Krauss, Béla Fleck, and actor Jonathan Frakes, are shown recording tracks that eventually wound up on the album. The documentary is approximately 25 minutes long and was produced by Cactus Films.

Tracking is an element of scouting that encompasses observation, stalking and the following of a trail. Unlike the form of tracking employed in hunting, tracking within the Scouting movement tends to focus on the tracking of people as well as animals. One form of training includes the laying a trail or following a trail laid by others. A trail is made up of a series of signs, largely comprising directions, which are laid on the ground.

In particle physics, the tracking is the act of measuring the direction and magnitude of charged particles momenta. The particles entering a tracker (the device used for tracking), release part of their energy in the device: the tracker has to be finely segmented in order to be able to reconstruct with good precision where the particle passed. Since the tracking is usually made in a region where a magnetic field is present, it is possible to reconstruct part of the helix made by the particle inside the tracker (that is called track), and from the track parameters, and by knowing the mass of the particle under study (which is known by the use of particle identification), it is possible to reconstruct the actual direction and magnitude of the particle momenta. From these information the tracking of charged particles can be used to reconstruct secondary decays, this can be done for B-tagging (in experiments like CDF or at LHC) or to fully reconstruct events (like in BaBar and Belle).

In particle physics there have been many devices used for tracking as bubble chambers, multi wire proportional chambers, time projection chambers, and, with the advent of modern photolithography, the solid state trackers, also called silicon trackers.

Tracking is separating pupils by academic ability into groups for all subjects or certain classes and curriculum within a school. It may be referred to as streaming or phasing in certain schools. In a tracking system, the entire school population is assigned to classes according to whether the students' overall achievement is above average, normal, or below average. Students attend academic classes only with students whose overall academic achievement is the same as their own.

Ability grouping is not synonymous with tracking. Tracking differs from ability grouping by scale and permanence. Ability groups are small, informal groups formed within a single classroom. Assignment to an ability group is often short-term (never lasting longer than one school year), and varies by subject. Assignment to an ability group is made by (and can be changed at any time by) the individual teacher, and is usually not recorded in student records. For example, a teacher may divide a typical mixed-ability classroom into three groups for a mathematics lesson: those who need to review basic facts before proceeding, those who are ready to learn new material, and those who need a challenging assignment. For the next lesson, the teacher may revert to whole-class, mixed-ability instruction, or may assign students to different groups.

Tracking was once popular in English-speaking countries, but is less used now. Tracking systems formed the basis of the Tripartite System in England and Wales until the 1970s, and in Northern Ireland until 2009. Germany uses a tracked system. In Germany, students' achievements in their last of generally four years of primary school determine the type of secondary school they will be permitted to attend, and therefore the type of education they will receive. A tracking system has been in place since the advent of modern education in the Netherlands. After it was relaxed in the 70s and 80s, the tracking system has been gaining substantial strength again since the late 1990s. Weak tracking systems have been used in American schools. In this approach, local schools assign students to classrooms according to their overall achievement, so that a given classroom is primarily composed of students with either high, average, or low academic achievement.

Tracking commercial aviation flights is an activity by enthusiasts or concerned citizens. Tracking is not limited to aircraft activity; it can also include airport activity. Flight tracking via software is a relatively new activity.

Flight/airline tracking, that is the use of flight trackers has been growing due to the obvious reason to know whether a flight has safely landed or whether everything goes according to the schedule so it is indeed the time to go to the airport.

With development of cell phones and other small PDA devices, flight trackers have become a must-have for people who are concerned about arrivals and departures of airplanes. Indeed, modern trackers can track airlines virtually all around the world and inform concerned parties via such commonplace mediums as SMS. The integration of flight tracking into travel management and travel tracking services is a new frontier, allowing increased automation of travel software. This application of flight tracking is currently in its infancy, but is set to grow significantly as systems get more connected.

Despite all the progress, many abrupt events like sudden weather changes are not captured by existing flight trackers because they take their information not from the airplane itself but from dispatcher centers which often do not know the actual status of plane's whereabouts.