noun · academic
distribution
UK/ˌdɪstrɪˈbjuːʃ(ə)n/US/ˌdɪstrɪˈbjuːʃən/dis·TRIB·u·tion
the way in which values are spread out or arranged across possible outcomes; also the act of giving or delivering something across a population
Examples
“The income distribution in the city is highly skewed.”
“The researchers examined the distribution of responses across age groups.”
“The data followed a roughly normal distribution.”
Band 8 sentence
“Before choosing statistical tests we checked whether the outcome followed a normal distribution.”
Collocations
- normal distribution
- distribution of
Word family
Common mistakes
the distribution is in age groups→the distribution across age groups
distributionses→distributions
Say it for a higher band
5spread→6pattern→7+distribution
Synonyms
spread
Easily confused
dispersion
“The dispersion of scores can be summarised by variance or standard deviation.”
Related words
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In Science & Research
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