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Statistics vocabulary · Sampling

Sample

Meaning in statistics, with examples

/ˈsæmpəl/nounCore term

In statistics, sample means: A smaller group selected from a population and actually studied, so that conclusions about the whole population can be drawn from it.

In Turkish: örneklem, örnek

How it is used

Used both as a noun (a sample of 400 students) and as a verb (we sampled 400 students). Methods sections describe how the sample was drawn and how representative it is; common adjectives are random, representative, small, large and biased.

Example sentences

  1. The sample consisted of 412 undergraduate students from three universities.

  2. Our sample is too small to compare regions separately.

Common collocations

  • draw a sample
  • representative sample
  • a sample of 500 people
  • the sample consisted of
  • populationThe whole group of people, items or events that a study wants to draw conclusions about, for example all adults in a country or all invoices issued in one year.
  • sample sizeThe number of observations or participants included in a study, usually written as n (or N for the total).
  • random sampleA sample chosen so that every member of the population has a known, usually equal, chance of being selected, which helps avoid systematic bias.
  • sampling errorThe natural difference between a value calculated from a sample and the true population value, which arises simply because only part of the population was studied.
  • convenience sampleA sample made up of people who are easy to reach, such as students in the researcher's own class or visitors to a website, rather than people chosen at random.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Sampling

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