In statistics, a population is the complete set of all objects or people of interest. Typically, studies definite their population of interest at the outset. Populations can have a finite size but potentially very large size. For example,
- All valves produced by a specific manufacturing plant
- All adult females in the United States
- All smokers
Populations can also have an infinite size. For example, infinite populations are used for all possible results of a sequence of trials, such as flipping a coin.