How to Use tractable in a Sentence
tractable
adjective- This new approach should make the problem more tractable.
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These problems would be more tractable if the bank had done more to slim down.
—Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2019
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As often turns out to be the case, though, there’s One Weird Math Trick that makes the problem more tractable.
—Chad Orzel, Forbes, 6 Oct. 2021
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In which case, this will lead to problems on the fiscal side that are probably tractable.
—CBS News, 29 Apr. 2020
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Then would come the much more tractable and cognizable job of fixing ObamaCare.
—Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 18 July 2017
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But Pask and Lamm pointed out a number of ways that the thylacine is a far more tractable system than a mammoth.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 16 Aug. 2022
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On the flip side, a less tractable cat (say, one who growls or hisses when frightened) may scratch and claw her way out of your lap to avoid the procedure.
—Dr. Rob Sharp, Country Living, 10 Mar. 2010
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In fact, questions about the nature of possible alien languages are tractable.
—Arik Kershenbaum, WSJ, 27 Mar. 2021
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Is the sitter skeptical and tense, or compliant and tractable?
—Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2021
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And there were, in fact, glimmers of a tractable path to better products — if Congress will provide billions of dollars to speed things up.
—Matthew Herper, STAT, 28 July 2022
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But the neural code—which could also benefit AI research—is one of those problems that look less tractable over time.
—John Horgan, Scientific American, 28 Sep. 2022
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As tens of millions of us continue to shelter in place, the most tractable of teens are feeling frustrated and anxious.
—Lisa Boone, Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr. 2020
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Unruly adolescent dogs—the adorable and tractable puppies of a year ago—are now testing the patience of their human caregivers.
—Jessica Pierce, Scientific American, 26 Oct. 2021
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Even then, the integrals tend to blow up, forcing theorists to employ myriad tricks and techniques to make the problems tractable.
—Byadrian Cho, science.org, 30 Nov. 2022
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Writing genomes that contain millions of nucleotides, as in bacteria and yeast, has become tractable as well.
—Andrew Hessel, Scientific American, 10 Nov. 2020
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Plus, adding to their protection was a strong, tractable appendage that allowed Heterobranchia to burrow within the sediment of the seafloor, buffering their bodies and shells from the acid of the ocean.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 2 Nov. 2022
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In town in traffic, the buttery clutch and tractable power output make commutes more fun, while out on the open road, even near its top speed, the Meteor feels unhurried, solid and composed.
—Bill Roberson, Forbes, 20 May 2021
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This involves converting the PDE into a set of tractable algebraic equations that are assumed to hold over tiny increments of space and time.
—Quanta Magazine, 19 Apr. 2021
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In the aftermath, the government withdrew the list a few weeks after it was announced and has been working with online retailers to come up with a more tractable solution.
—Bloomberg.com, 18 May 2017
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But trying to render the squishy c-word using tractable inputs and functions is a difficult, if not impossible, task.
—Oliver Whang, New York Times, 6 Jan. 2023
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But another idea presented at the White House summit seems more tractable: that of vaccines that are given by the nose or mouth that would be better at preventing infection.
—Matthew Herper, STAT, 28 July 2022
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Probably the first place to look for AI-generated hacks is in financial systems, since those rules are designed to be algorithmically tractable.
—WIRED, 7 Feb. 2023
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Starr therefore decided to focus on a subsection of the spike protein known as the receptor binding domain, which is just a few hundred amino acids — a much more tractable problem.
—Quanta Magazine, 11 Jan. 2022
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Because elliptic curves are so ungovernable, number theorists look for ways to link them with more tractable objects.
—Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 29 Nov. 2022
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The non-neglectedness of K-12 education in America itself makes the issue less tractable, for the reasons described above.
—Dylan Matthews, Vox, 30 Oct. 2018
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Maybe increasing clearance rates for serial killers is more tractable, an easier lift than bringing those numbers down.
—Dylan Matthews, Vox, 12 Nov. 2018
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On the other hand, Douek added, niche apps may represent a more tractable moderation problem if people accept that they’re not meant to be a public square for political speech.
—Ashley Fetters Maloy and Will Oremus, Anchorage Daily News, 23 Dec. 2021
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As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized?
—The New Yorker, 3 June 2022
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The corresponding symplectic spaces are more complicated than the one for a pendulum, but still tractable.
—Quanta Magazine, 15 Apr. 2024
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And the film gets plenty of pathos out of Andy’s relationship with Rosie, a generally sweet and tractable kid who’s too young to understand any of what’s going on, but not too young to respond warmly to displays of affection.
—Tasha Robinson, The Verge, 21 Apr. 2018
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tractable.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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