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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · A/B Testing and Experimentation

Control group

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

nounCore term

In data science & analytics, control group means: The group in an experiment that does not get the change being tested, so its results show what would have happened without that change.

In Turkish: kontrol grubu

How it is used

Also called 'the control'. In an A/B test the control group sees the current version and the treatment group sees the new one. You assign users to a control group, compare against it or hold one out.

Example sentences

  1. Conversion in the treatment group was 4.1%, compared with 3.6% in the control group.

  2. We kept 10% of users in a control group that never received the emails.

Common collocations

  • assign to the control group
  • treatment and control groups
  • compare against the control
  • holdout group
  • A/B testAn experiment in which users are randomly split into two groups that see different versions of something, so you can measure which version performs better.
  • variantOne of the versions shown to users in an experiment, usually the new version that is compared with the control.
  • baselineA simple reference point, such as last year's figure, the current version or a very basic model, against which new results are compared.
  • sample sizeThe number of observations, people or units included in a sample or an experiment; larger samples usually give more reliable estimates.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: A/B Testing and Experimentation

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