# Rarefaction vs Rarefying and when to use them in your analysis pipeline

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/rarefaction-vs-rarefying-and-when-to-use-them-in-your-analysis-pipeline/33251
**Category:** General Discussion
**Tags:** q2-boots
**Created:** [June 4, 2025, 7:19pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/rarefaction-vs-rarefying-and-when-to-use-them-in-your-analysis-pipeline/33251 "2025-06-04T19:19:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![colinbrislawn](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/colinbrislawn/32/6221_2.png) [@colinbrislawn](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/colinbrislawn)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 8:20pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/rarefaction-vs-rarefying-and-when-to-use-them-in-your-analysis-pipeline/33251/2 "2025-06-04T20:20:48Z")

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This is a great post!

My first thought is that the words are too dang similar!

Instead, we could call these 'single subsampling' and 'multiple subsampling', which makes the commonality (computational subsampling) and difference (one time, many times) clear.

'Multiple subsampling' is also called 'bootstrapping', and there is a new Qiime2 plugin that does this!

> **[Introduction 🥾 - q2-boots Documentation](https://q2-boots.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)**

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