Word.ws English Dictionary

frequentism

frequentism noun: an interpretation of probability in terms of frequency, often specifically as the limit of the relative frequency of an event as the sample size approaches infinity.

Noun

frequentism (uncountable)

  1. An interpretation of probability in terms of frequency, often specifically as the limit of the relative frequency of an event as the sample size approaches infinity.
    • Galavotti regards this as an open problem, as some passages from his Philosophical Papers seem to suggest that Ramsey, like Carnap, admitted two notions of probability: one epistemic and subjective, and one empirical and close to frequentism.2007 October 30, Margherita Benzi, “Maria Carla Galavotti, Philosophical Introduction to Probability”, in Erkenntnis, volume 68, number 2, →DOI
    • Laplace continued his research throughout France’s political upheavals. In 1810 he announced the central limit theorem, one of the great scientific and statistical discoveries of all time. It asserts that, with some exceptions, any average of a large number of similar terms will have a normal...2011, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, Yale...

Origin of frequentism

From frequent + -ism.

Questions about frequentism

What does frequentism mean?
Frequentism means an interpretation of probability in terms of frequency, often specifically as the limit of the relative frequency of an event as the sample size approaches infinity.
What part of speech is frequentism?
Frequentism is a noun.

Words near frequentism in the dictionary

  1. frequenteth
  2. frequential
  3. frequentile
  4. frequentiles
  5. frequenting
  6. frequentism
  7. frequentist
  8. frequentistic
  9. frequentists
  10. frequentive
  11. frequently

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frequentism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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