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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · Statistics for Analysis

Sample

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

/ˈsæmpəl/nounCore term

In data science & analytics, sample means: A smaller group selected from a larger population or dataset and studied in order to draw conclusions about the whole.

In Turkish: örneklem, örnek

How it is used

You take, draw or select a sample, and a good sample is random and representative. Also a verb: 'we sampled 10% of users'. The whole group being studied is called the 'population'.

Example sentences

  1. We took a random sample of 5,000 support tickets and labelled them by hand.

  2. The survey sample isn't representative; it's mostly people from big cities.

Common collocations

  • random sample
  • take a sample
  • representative sample
  • sample data
  • sample sizeThe number of observations, people or units included in a sample or an experiment; larger samples usually give more reliable estimates.
  • datasetA collection of related data, usually organised as a table of rows and columns, that is used for analysis or for training a model.
  • confidence intervalA range of values, calculated from sample data, that is likely to contain the true value; a 95% interval comes from a method that captures the true value 95% of the time.
  • meanThe value you get by adding all the numbers in a group and dividing the total by how many numbers there are; the usual meaning of 'average'.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Statistics for Analysis

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