IOU
Abbreviation with 2 meanings
| Stands for | I owe you |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 2 |
| Categories | Writing & Everyday, Technology & Computing |
| Also written | IoU |
IOU has two meanings. It stands for I owe you (everyday) or Intersection over union (artificial intelligence).
Meanings of IOU at a glance
| # | IOU stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I owe you | Writing & Everyday › Everyday |
| 2 | Intersection over union | Technology & Computing › Artificial Intelligence |
1. I owe you
Writing & Everyday · Everyday Abbreviations
A written or spoken acknowledgment of a debt, ranging from a casual note promising to repay a friend to an informal document recording a loan. The letters were chosen for their sound: "I-O-U."
Example: I'm short on cash, so here's an IOU for the $20 until payday.
An IOU is generally not a negotiable instrument like a check or promissory note, because it records a debt without an unconditional promise to pay a set amount on a set date; courts may still treat it as evidence of a debt. The form has been recorded since the 1600s. Figuratively, "I owe you one" thanks someone for a favor.
2. Intersection over union (IoU)
Technology & Computing · Artificial Intelligence Abbreviations
A metric for object detection and segmentation that divides the overlap between a predicted region and the true region by the area of their union, from 0 (no overlap) to 1 (perfect match).
Example: A detection counts as correct only if its box has an IoU of at least 0.5 with the ground truth.
Also called the Jaccard index, after botanist Paul Jaccard, who used it to compare plant communities in 1901. The 0.5 threshold comes from the PASCAL VOC benchmark, while COCO averages thresholds from 0.5 to 0.95. In finance an IOU is a written promise to pay.
Related abbreviations
More everyday abbreviations
- incl. – Including or included
- info – Information
- Inst. – Institute
- intl. – International
- lic. – License
- max – Maximum
- Mgr – Manager
- min – Minimum
See all 82 everyday abbreviations →