Sampling

The process of going to grocery store on Sunday right about lunch time and circling the store getting sample after sample until you’ve had enough to eat and drink. We love the spinach bites and that new organic orange-mango juice. Sampling is the process of taking a smaller group from the entire population and then studying that sample as a way to learn something about the population as a whole.

A couple of important safety tips: Make sure your sample is large enough to give decent results, and make sure your sampling method (and there are scads of different ways to take a sample) nets you a sample that is similar in makeup to the population as a whole. Like if your population is 70% women and 30% men, your sample should probably have similar, though not necessarily identical, breakdowns.