What is an example of a sample?

An example of a sample depends on context but generally means a concrete instance of a small part taken from a larger whole. In everyday life, an example of a sample is a free sample of perfume at a department store, a small vial given to try before buying the full bottle. In food, a sample could be a small cube of cheese offered at a grocery store for tasting. In medicine, an example of a sample is a blood sample, where a nurse draws a few milliliters of blood from your arm to send to the lab to check cholesterol or infection. A urine sample is another medical example collected in a cup for testing. In research, an example of a sample is selecting 200 students from a university of 10,000 to survey about campus life, those 200 are a sample of the student population. In manufacturing, an example is taking 10 bottles from a production line of 1000 to test quality. In music, an example of a sample is taking a 5-second drum beat from an old funk record to loop in a new hip-hop song. So a sample is any small representative portion used to learn about, test, or demonstrate the larger whole, and examples are everywhere in shopping, healthcare, science, and art.