Affinity

Affinity is a word used in a variety of fields, usually to indicate some kind of preference, relationship, or a potential or actual closeness between two entities.

Articles dealing with various usages of the word: affinity include:

Commerce and law

• Affinity fraud, a type of scam targeting a specific demographic
• Affinity analysis, a market research and business management technique used to identify products likely to be bought together or the relationship of demand for a product to other external factors such as weather
• Affinity marketing, a method of extending market reach by forming partnerships and cross-selling relationships
• Affinity (law), kinship by marriage

Religion and conviction

• Affinity (canon law), a kinship arising from the sexual intercourse of a man and a woman
• Affinity (Christian organisation), formerly known as the British Evangelical Council
• Affinity group - small protest or activist groups of 10-30 people

Science and technology

• Affinity chromatography
• Affinity electrophoresis
• Affinity laws, in hydraulics, used to express the relationship between variables involved in fan or pump performance
• Affinity (mathematics) - an affine transformation (which preserves collinearity)
• Affinity (pharmacology) - in biochemistry, protein-ligand binding
• Affinity (sociology) - shared interests and commitments between persons in groups, "willingness to associate"; see also interpersonal compatibility and friendliness
• Affinity (taxonomy) - mainly in natural history - resemblance suggesting a common descent or type
• Electron affinity
• Processor affinity, a computing term for the assignment of a task to a given core of a multicore CPU
• In chemistry, chemical affinity is the willingness of two or more elements or compounds to form a chemical or attractive bond of some type, and equally, as a term for the strength of that bond once formed
• In philology, a type of resemblance between languages, suggesting that such languages stem from a common stock
• In philosophy, shared or matching lines of thought, conclusions or objectives
• In geology, minerals and formations where evidence suggests common origins and constitutions
• in natural history, resemblances between biological communities (usually taxons) that suggest that they are of a common origin, type or stock

Various other meanings, media, and games

• Affinity (band), A Jazz/Rock band active in the late 60s and early 70s
• Affinity (Philippines band), a collective of Manila's premier jazz musicians
• The Leper Affinity, a song from Blackwater Park by Opeth
• Affinity (Fire Emblem), the numerous bonuses units in the videogame Fire Emblem have from sharing support conversations with one another
• "Affinity" (Stargate SG-1), a season 8 episode of Stargate SG-1
• Affinity (novel), 1999 novel by Sarah Waters
• Affinity (film), a 2008 feature film based on Sarah Waters' novel
• Elective Affinities - the concept of chemical affinities as a metaphor for human emotional affinities
• See BMJ Group for Affinity (BMJ), a publishing partnership programme of the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd for independent journals

See also

• Refine
• Affine (disambiguation)
• Afinidad (disambiguation)