"Aliasing"?
The term derives from the field of "signal processing". The term aliasing describes a phenomenon related to measuring recurrent events like radio signals or sound. Your coo-coo clock may have a bird which pops out every hour on the hour, but if you pay attention (called "sampling") every 45 minutes, you might think it pops out only once every 3 hours. The resulting ambiguity or difference between "truth" and "appearance" is undesirable and is usually handled through some form of reconstructed "in-between" values--a process called anti-aliasing.
http://courses.washington.edu/arch481/1.Tapestry%20Reader/7.Glossary/1.A-C/alAliasing/0.default.html
Left: An aliased image of the letter A in Times New Roman. Right: An anti-aliased image.
