What Is a Slot?

Slot

A slot is a place on the keyboard for typing a letter or symbol. Some slots are marked with arrows to indicate which way to move the cursor, while others are marked by a number of spaces to indicate how far to move it. A slot also may be a position in an airplane, train or bus that allows passengers to sit, but it does not allow them to board.

In video slot machines, the pay table lists the rewards for lining up particular symbols on the machine’s pay line. Historically, electromechanical slot machines had “tilt switches” that would make or break a circuit when they were tilted. Modern machines have electronics that detect any kind of tampering or unusual behavior.

Some experiments suggest that near misses on slot machines may have a reinforcing function, allowing players to continue playing. However, other researchers have found no evidence for this.

In hockey, the slot is the area in front of the goaltender and between the face-off circles. A well-placed one-timer from the high slot is often a game winner. In data management, a slot is a reserved region in a BigQuery Dynamic Distributed Aggregate (DAG) to store and process query results. When the capacity demands of a query change, BigQuery automatically re-evaluates the availability of its slots and re-allocates them as necessary. This helps to ensure that all queries can access all of their required capacity. This dynamic approach makes it possible to scale up and down a query as needed without any downtime or manual intervention.