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To determine an appropriate sample size n for estimating proportions, the equation below can be solved, where W represents the desired width of the confidence interval. The resulting sample size formula, is often applied with a conservative estimate of p (e.g., 0.5): = /
The colored lines are 50% confidence intervals for the mean, μ. At the center of each interval is the sample mean, marked with a diamond. The blue intervals contain the population mean, and the red ones do not. In statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a tool for estimating a parameter, such as the mean of a population. [1]
when the probability distribution is unknown, Chebyshev's or the Vysochanskiï–Petunin inequalities can be used to calculate a conservative confidence interval; and; as the sample size tends to infinity the central limit theorem guarantees that the sampling distribution of the mean is asymptotically normal.
For a confidence level, there is a corresponding confidence interval about the mean , that is, the interval [, +] within which values of should fall with probability . Precise values of z γ {\displaystyle z_{\gamma }} are given by the quantile function of the normal distribution (which the 68–95–99.7 rule approximates).
If each interval individually has coverage probability 0.95, the simultaneous coverage probability is generally less than 0.95. A 95% simultaneous confidence band is a collection of confidence intervals for all values x in the domain of f(x) that is constructed to have simultaneous coverage probability 0.95.
The Clopper–Pearson interval is an early and very common method for calculating binomial confidence intervals. [11] This is often called an 'exact' method, as it attains the nominal coverage level in an exact sense, meaning that the coverage level is never less than the nominal 1 − α . {\displaystyle \ 1-\alpha ~.} [ 2 ]
When working with small sample sizes (i.e., less than 50), the basic / reversed percentile and percentile confidence intervals for (for example) the variance statistic will be too narrow. So that with a sample of 20 points, 90% confidence interval will include the true variance only 78% of the time. [44]
Given a sample from a normal distribution, whose parameters are unknown, it is possible to give prediction intervals in the frequentist sense, i.e., an interval [a, b] based on statistics of the sample such that on repeated experiments, X n+1 falls in the interval the desired percentage of the time; one may call these "predictive confidence intervals".