strong law of large numbers
- noun
- Specialized
- According to the strong law of large numbers, as the number of observations increases, the sample mean will get closer to the population mean.
Examples
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What was it that made us want to talk about the strong law of large numbers instead of the weak law of large numbers?
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This sum here, if we forget about that term, this sum here, by the strong law of large numbers is equal to well.
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The strong law of large numbers guarantees that the average of a large number of trials will reflect the expected outcome.
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The mathematician explained that the strong law of large numbers is fundamental to understanding how probabilities behave in large samples.
Synonyms
When a sample gets larger, its average gets closer to the average of the whole group
A theorem that says the average of many independent random results almost certainly equals the true average
The average of a large random sample gets close to the true value for the whole group
Surface Forms
Morphology
strong + law + of + large + number
This is a technical name for a specific probabilistic theorem whose precise meaning (almost sure convergence of sample averages to the expected value) is not recoverable from the literal senses of 'strong', 'law', 'large' and 'numbers'. A B1 learner who knows the component words might guess it is an important rule about large numbers, but would not be able to infer the theorem's statistical/convergence content without specialized exposure, so it is opaque.
Etymology
Strong law of large numbers comes from old gambling and counting ideas: large numbers means doing something many times and law means a rule about the results. The word strong was added to show the rule is very sure, so the phrase means the rule that the 'average' result will settle down as you repeat an experiment many times.