voorkomensratio

Voorkomensratio is a term used in data analysis to describe the ratio between the frequency of a specific item, event, or form and the total frequency of all items within a defined dataset or category. In practice, it is calculated as N(item) divided by N(total), where N(item) is the count of occurrences of the item and N(total) is the total count of all occurrences considered. The measure yields a value between 0 and 1 and can be expressed as a percentage by multiplying by 100.

Applications of the voorkomensratio include assessing the relative prevalence of a particular linguistic form, event, or feature within a corpus or sample. It is commonly used in corpus linguistics to compare how often different word forms occur, in quality control to monitor the share of a specific defect type, or in social science to compare behaviors across different groups. The calculation is straightforward and scalable to large datasets.

Examples help illustrate the concept. If a corpus contains 1,000,000 tokens and the form of interest appears 2,500 times, the voorkomensratio is 0.0025, or 0.25%. A higher ratio indicates greater relative frequency within the chosen dataset.

Limitations of the maat see include sensitivity to how the dataset is constructed, what counts as an occurrence, and the chosen scope. The voorkomensratio does not convey absolute counts or significance by itself and should be interpreted alongside sample size and sampling methods. Related measures include relative frequency and proportion.