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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."
A confidence interval states there is a 100γ% confidence that the parameter of interest is within a lower and upper bound. A common misconception of confidence intervals is 100γ% of the data set fits within or above/below the bounds, this is referred to as a tolerance interval, which is discussed below.
This feature remains constant with increasing sample size; what changes is that the interval becomes smaller. In addition, 95% confidence intervals are also 83% prediction intervals: one (pre experimental) confidence interval has an 83% chance of covering any future experiment's mean. [3]
For example, a pain-relief drug is tested on 1500 human subjects, and no adverse event is recorded. From the rule of three, it can be concluded with 95% confidence that fewer than 1 person in 500 (or 3/1500) will experience an adverse event. By symmetry, for only successes, the 95% confidence interval is [1−3/ n,1].
Classically, a confidence distribution is defined by inverting the upper limits of a series of lower-sided confidence intervals. [15] [16] [page needed] In particular, For every α in (0, 1), let (−∞, ξ n (α)] be a 100α% lower-side confidence interval for θ, where ξ n (α) = ξ n (X n,α) is continuous and increasing in α for each sample X n.
For example, f(x) might be the proportion of people of a particular age x who support a given candidate in an election. If x is measured at the precision of a single year, we can construct a separate 95% confidence interval for each age. Each of these confidence intervals covers the corresponding true value f(x) with confidence 0.
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).
The approximate value of this number is 1.96, meaning that 95% of the area under a normal curve lies within approximately 1.96 standard deviations of the mean. Because of the central limit theorem, this number is used in the construction of approximate 95% confidence intervals. Its ubiquity is due to the arbitrary but common convention of using ...