black box
črna škatla
| Black box systems | |
|---|---|
 | |
| System | |
| Black box · Oracle machine | |
| Methods and techniques | |
| Black-box testing · Blackboxing | |
| Related techniques | |
| Feed forward · Obfuscation · Pattern recognition · White box · White-box testing · System identification | |
| Fundamentals | |
| A priori information · Control systems · Open systems · Operations research · Thermodynamic systems | |
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an engine, an algorithm, the human brain, an institution or government.
To analyse something modeled as an open system, with a typical "black box approach", only the behavior of the stimulus/response will be accounted for, to infer the (unknown) box. The usual representation of this black box system is a data flow diagram centered in the box.
The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is most commonly referred to as a white box (sometimes also known as a "clear box" or a "glass box").
