Difference beetween decimate an array and decimate function

1. What is the difference between decimation and downsampling?
2. What is decimate function in Matlab?
3. What does it mean to decimate data?
4. Why we use decimate?

What is the difference between decimation and downsampling?

Loosely speaking, “decimation” is the process of reducing the sampling rate. In practice, this usually implies lowpass-filtering a signal, then throwing away some of its samples. “Downsampling” is a more specific term which refers to just the process of throwing away samples, without the lowpass filtering operation.

What is decimate function in Matlab?

Decimation reduces the original sample rate of a sequence to a lower rate. It is the opposite of interpolation. decimate lowpass filters the input to guard against aliasing and downsamples the result. The function uses decimation algorithms 8.2 and 8.3 from [1]. decimate creates a lowpass filter.

What does it mean to decimate data?

Decimation is the process of reducing the sampling frequency of a signal to a lower sampling frequency that differs from the original frequency by an integer value. Decimation also is known as down-sampling.

Why we use decimate?

to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely: Populations of endangered animals have been decimated.