How Do Confidence Intervals Work?
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This Demonstration shows the confidence interval, , for based on random samples of size from a normal population with mean and standard deviation , where is the sample mean and is the margin of error for a level interval. There are two cases, corresponding to when is assumed known, or is not known and is estimated by the standard deviation in the sample. For the known case, , where the critical value is determined so that the area to the right of is . Similarly in the unknown case, , where is the sample standard deviation and is the critical value determined from a -distribution with degrees of freedom.
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Contributed by: Ian McLeod (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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If we assume that , the unknown mean, has a suitable noninformative prior, the confidence interval with level confidence is equivalent to the highest posterior density interval [1] p. 85 and p. 98, and we can make the natural statement that .
[1] G. E. P. Box and G. C. Tiao, Bayesian Inference in Statistical Analysis, Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1973.
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