distribution

/ˈdɪstrəˌbjuʃən/

/dɪstrɪˈbjuʃɪn/

Other forms: distributions

Distribution means the passing out of something. A teacher is in charge of distribution of corrected essays. A lunch lady manages the distribution of food.

Distribution can also refer to the way something is distributed. In our country, many are concerned about the distribution of wealth, which is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the richest few. When you put money in a brokerage account, it's called a contribution. Taking it out is a distribution.

Definitions of distribution

1. noun

   the act of distributing or spreading or apportioning
   types:

   assigning, assignment

   the act of distributing something to designated places or persons

   redistribution

   distributing again

   dispensation

   the act of dispensing (giving out in portions)

   allocation, allotment, apportioning, apportionment, assignation, parceling, parcelling

   the act of distributing by allotting or apportioning; distribution according to a plan

   deal

   the act of distributing playing cards

   revenue sharing

   distribution of part of the federal tax income to states and municipalities

   share-out, sharing

   a distribution in shares

   grant, subsidisation, subsidization

   the act of providing a subsidy

   allocation, storage allocation

   (computer science) the assignment of particular areas of a magnetic disk to particular data or instructions

   reallocation, reallotment, reapportionment

   a new apportionment (especially a new apportionment of congressional seats in the United States on the basis of census results)

   deal

   the act of apportioning or distributing something

   rationing

   the act of rationing

   parcel, portion, share

   the allotment of some amount by dividing something

   misdeal

   an incorrect deal

   generosity, unselfishness

   acting generously

   gift, giving

   the act of giving

   type of:

   act, deed, human action, human activity

   something that people do or cause to happen
2. noun

   the spatial or geographic property of being scattered about over a range, area, or volume
   “worldwide in distribution”

   “the distribution of nerve fibers”

   “in complementary distribution”

   synonyms: dispersion

   antonyms:

   concentration

   the spatial property of being crowded together

   types:

   complementary distribution, complementation

   (linguistics) a distribution of related speech sounds or forms in such a way that they only appear in different contexts

   diaspora

   the dispersion or spreading of something that was originally localized (as a people or language or culture)

   diffusion, dissemination

   the property of being diffused or dispersed

   innervation

   the distribution of nerve fibers to an organ or body region

   scatter, spread

   a haphazard distribution in all directions

   diffuseness

   the spatial property of being spread out over a wide area or through a large volume

   type of:

   spacing, spatial arrangement

   the property possessed by an array of things that have space between them
3. noun

   the commercial activity of transporting and selling goods from a producer to a consumer
   type of:

   commerce, commercialism, mercantilism

   transactions (sales and purchases) having the objective of supplying commodities (goods and services)
4. noun

   (statistics) an arrangement of values of a variable showing their observed or theoretical frequency of occurrence
   synonyms: statistical distribution

   types:

   equidistribution

   a flat distribution having equal frequencies of occurrence

   frequency distribution

   a distribution of observed frequencies of occurrence of the values of a variable

   Gaussian distribution, normal distribution

   a theoretical distribution with finite mean and variance

   Poisson distribution

   a theoretical distribution that is a good approximation to the binomial distribution when the probability is small and the number of trials is large

   sample, sample distribution, sampling

   items selected at random from a population and used to test hypotheses about the population

   Bernoulli distribution, binomial distribution

   a theoretical distribution of the number of successes in a finite set of independent trials with a constant probability of success

   acceptance sampling

   a statistical procedure for accepting or rejecting a batch of merchandise or documents; involves determining the maximum number of defects discovered in a sample before the entire batch is rejected

   random sample

   a sample in which every element in the population has an equal chance of being selected

   proportional sample, representative sample, stratified sample

   the population is divided into strata and a random sample is taken from each stratum

   type of:

   arrangement, organisation, organization, system

   an organized structure for arranging or classifying