Pivot

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A pivot is that on which something turns.

Pivot may also refer to:

• In mechanical engineering and machinery, it is a metal pointed pin or short shaft, such as the end of an axle or spindle. The term occurs frequently in combination with others, for example "pivot-gearing" for a system of gearing in machinery which admits of the shifting of the axis of a driving wheel, so that the power may be communicated in various directions
• Syntactic pivot, in linguistics, the argument of the verb around which the sentence "revolves" — typically the one that the verb agrees with, the one that can be sometimes be omitted and assumed to remain the same as in previous sentences, etc. (in nominative-accusative languages, this is the argument we call "subject")
• In mathematics, specifically linear algebra, a pivot is the first non-zero value of each row of a matrix after the matrix has been converted to row echelon form. The number of pivots in a matrix is equal to the rank of the matrix
• In foreign exchange market trading, pivot points are frequently used in technical analysis to generate resistance and support levels. Pivot point calculations are based on the previous day's high, low, and closing prices for any given currency
• Center pivot irrigation, in agriculture, a large, rotating device that distributes water to a circular section of land
• Pivotlog or Pivot, a free weblog tool written in PHP
• Pivot (stick figure animator), an animation program involving stick men in a fully posable bodily form
• In statistics a pivot is 'the norm' to determine confidence intervals. A pivot is a function of the random variables, [Y_1,...,Y_n] and a parameter whose distribution is known e.g. μ for the normal distribution
• A central concept in the quicksort algorithm

• Pivot (band), a rock band from the United States
• Pivot (Australian band), a post-rock band from Australia