One Night Only: Offensive Packers-Redskins Game Review, Mythbusters Edition

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by warriorzpath

I know this is off topic but the one buzzword/phrase that everyone uses that gets on my nerves is - sample size. That buzzword always reminds me of food servers at a mall food court giving away little bite sized food samples with toothpicks.

An entire game, by definition, cannot be a sample. A sample is supposed to be a portion of something that is meant to represent the whole. I can see a series being a sample of a game, but what does a "sample size" really consist of?

"Sample size" is a statistical term which describes how small or large a data set is. If you ask one mall food server what they think of the Redskins, the sample size is one. If you ask the same question of three mall food servers, the sample size is three.

If someone says, "The sample size is small," that means that there weren't enough instances to draw a strong conclusion.