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The confidence interval can be expressed in terms of probability with respect to a single theoretical (yet to be realized) sample: "There is a 95% probability that the 95% confidence interval calculated from a given future sample will cover the true value of the population parameter."
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): = /
In the social sciences, a result may be considered statistically significant if its confidence level is of the order of a two-sigma effect (95%), while in particle physics and astrophysics, there is a convention of requiring statistical significance of a five-sigma effect (99.99994% confidence) to qualify as a discovery. [3]
The rule can then be derived [2] either from the Poisson approximation to the binomial distribution, or from the formula (1−p) n for the probability of zero events in the binomial distribution. In the latter case, the edge of the confidence interval is given by Pr(X = 0) = 0.05 and hence (1−p) n = .05 so n ln(1–p) = ln .05 ≈ −2
In contrast, it is worth noting that other confidence interval may have coverage levels that are lower than the nominal , i.e., the normal approximation (or "standard") interval, Wilson interval, [8] Agresti–Coull interval, [13] etc., with a nominal coverage of 95% may in fact cover less than 95%, [4] even for large sample sizes.
In statistics, interval estimation is the use of sample data to estimate an interval of possible values of a parameter of interest. This is in contrast to point estimation, which gives a single value. [1] The most prevalent forms of interval estimation are confidence intervals (a frequentist method) and credible intervals (a Bayesian method). [2]
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).
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".