"oversample" - Word of the Day from the OED

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oversample, v.

DRAFT ENTRY Dec. 2007

Brit. /vsmpl/, /vsampl/, U.S. /ovrsæmp()l/  [< OVER- prefix + SAMPLE v. Compare slightly earlier OVERSAMPLING n.] 

    1. trans. Statistics. To sample at a comparatively high rate or frequency in relation to other categories; to over-represent in a sample. Also intr.: to take a disproportionately high sample of a particular category.

1946 Public Opinion Q. 10 375/2 High-income areas are over-sampled in order to strengthen the values at the upper end of the financial distributions. (These data are corrected by assigning a weight to each interview in inverse relation to the sampling ratio used.) 1962 Jrnl. Negro Educ. 31 442/1 We may..have oversampled slightly. 1975 Amer. Jrnl. Polit. Sci. 20 26 (note) Because it oversampled upper-income people, the Literary Digest's infamous 1936 poll mistakenly predicted a landslide victory for Alf Landon over Franklin Roosevelt. 2000 Jrnl. Labor Econ. 18 734 (note) The NAEP [= National Assessment of Educational Progress] oversamples low-SES (socio-economic status) schools located in big cities and rural areas.

    2. trans. Science and Engin To sample at a high frequency relative to the frequency of the data, esp. at a frequency that is much greater than the Nyquist frequency. Also (Electronics): to subject (a digital signal) to oversampling during processing (cf. OVERSAMPLING n. 3b). Also intr.

1966 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) A. 259 545 The fact is that the Moon ‘oversamples’ the response [of the ocean tides] by a factor of 2 or 3. 1981 Science 13 Feb. 700/3 The noise is sufficiently oversampled that results integrated over longer intervals show no influence form the digitization limit. 1986 Electronic Design 20 Feb. 113/1 All are in CMOS. All also oversample; that is, they sample the input signal at 100 to 200 times the required minimum Nyquist rate. 2002 Remote Sensing of Environment (Electronic ed.) 82, The 250-m point sampling strategy proved most optimal because it oversampled the landscape relative to the geostatistical range of actual spatial variation.

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