sample
Other forms: samples; sampling; sampled
A sample is a small part of something that either represents a bigger whole or is designed to let you try something out. You might ask to try a sample of an exotic ice cream flavor before committing to buying a whole cone.
Sample comes from the Old French essample, meaning "example." In social science experiments, researchers try to find a sample of people to study that is representative of the intended population as a whole. At the grocery store, you might be given a sample of peanut butter on a little cracker to entice you to buy it. In that case, you are given the chance to sample, or taste, the product.
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a small part of something intended as representative of the wholetypes:coupona test sample of some substancecross sectiona sample meant to be representative of a whole populationgrab samplea single sample or measurement taken at a specific time or over as short a period as feasiblerandom samplea sample grabbed at randomtastinga small amount (especially of food or wine)type of:example, illustration, instance, representativean item of information that is typical of a class or group
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all or part of a natural object that is collected and preserved as an example of its classtypes:specimena bit of tissue or blood or urine that is taken for diagnostic purposescorea cylindrical sample of soil or rock obtained with a hollow drillcytologic specimena specimen used for cytologic examination and diagnosistype of:natural objectan object occurring naturally; not made by man
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items selected at random from a population and used to test hypotheses about the populationsynonyms: sample distribution, samplingtypes:acceptance samplinga statistical procedure for accepting or rejecting a batch of merchandise or documents; involves determining the maximum number of defects discovered in a sample before the entire batch is rejectedrandom samplea sample in which every element in the population has an equal chance of being selectedproportional sample, representative sample, stratified samplethe population is divided into strata and a random sample is taken from each stratumtype of:distribution, statistical distribution(statistics) an arrangement of values of a variable showing their observed or theoretical frequency of occurrence
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take a sample of
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Vocabulary lists containing sample
There's a strong probability that you'll want review this list of terms related to statistics. Learn about data, plots, and random sampling. Odds are that you'll never confuse the words mean and median again.
Stories about aggressive vultures, a festive ballet, and newborn pandas all contributed words to this list of vocabulary from the week's news.