relative frequency

American  

noun

Statistics.

1. the ratio of the number of times an event occurs to the number of occasions on which it might occur in the same period.

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relative frequency British  

noun

1. 1. the ratio of the actual number of favourable events to the total possible number of events; often taken as an estimate of probability

   2. the proportion of the range of a random variable taking a given value or lying in a given interval

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Example Sentences

“We deal with violations regarding raptors and birds of prey on a relative frequency but I haven’t seen anything to this level of disregard for the animal in quite a while.”

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 25, 2026

"One of the things that was interesting is the relative frequency of bird tracks," Fiorillo said.

From Science Daily • Mar. 12, 2024

People on the East Coast earlier this month experienced something that occurs with relative frequency in the West: ominous orange skies lit up by dense wildfire smoke.

From Scientific American • Jun. 16, 2023

Despite their relative frequency and unfathomable size, finding a supermassive black hole is no easy task.

From Salon • Jan. 13, 2023

It states simply that in the long run the difference between the probability of some event and the relative frequency with which it occurs approaches zero.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos