(obstetrics) the number of live-born children a woman has delivered; "the parity of the mother must be considered"; "a bipara is a woman who has given birth to two children"
(mathematics) a relation between a pair of integers: if both integers are odd or both are even they have the same parity; if one is odd and the other is even they have different parity
(computer science) abit that is used in an error detection procedure in which a 0 or 1 is added to each group of bits so that it will have either an odd number of 1's or an even number of 1's; e.g., if the parity is odd then any group of bits that arrives with an even number of 1's must contain an error
(physics) parity is conserved in a universe in which the laws of physics are the same in a right-handed system of coordinates as in a left-handed system
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing: (http://www.foldoc.org/, Editor Denis Howe)
An extra bit added to a byte or word to reveal errors in storage (in RAM or disk) or transmission. Even (odd) parity means that the parity bit is set so that there are an even (odd) number of one bits in the word, including the parity bit. A single parity bit can only reveal single bit errors since if an even number of bits are wrong then the parity bit will not change. Moreover, it is not possible to tell which bit is wrong, as it is with more sophisticated error detection and correction systems.
