betas

Noun

beta (countable and uncountable, plural betas)

1. The second letter of the Greek alphabet (Β, β), preceded by alpha (Α, α) and followed by gamma, (Γ, γ). In modern Greek it represents the voiced labiodental fricative sound of v found in the English words have and vase.
2. (rare) An academic grade better than a gamma and worse than an alpha.
   • But let me tell you happy extroverts that only Vera Telfer and H. A. C. Evans got even an alpha minus; only T. E. Hendrie got a beta plus […]1957, R. Avery, “This Week’s Competition”, in Time & Tide, volume 38, number 1, page 184
3. Average sensitivity of a security's price to overall securities market prices.
   • An inspection of the results indicate that Property Trusts is the lowest risk industry with a long-run beta of 0.4520 while Gold is the highest risk industry with a long-run beta of 1.5229.2001, Cheng-Few Lee, editor, Advances in Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management, volume 8, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 143
4. (uncountable) The phase of development after alpha testing and before launch, in which software, while not complete, has been released to potential users for testing.
   • The company is offering a public beta program to test the software.
5. (countable) Software in such a phase; a preliminary version.
   • He quickly deduced our goal—ship a quality beta—but he also quickly discerned that we had no idea about the quality of the product because of our pile of untriaged bugs.2007, Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, page 107
6. (proscribed, uncountable) Any kind of content from early development that was not used in the final product.
   • beta levels; beta characters; beta items in a video game

See all 19 meanings of beta