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Chapter 1 Confidence Interval estimation

Confidence Intervals about a Population Mean, Known

A point estimate of a parameter is the value of a statistic that estimates the value of the parameter.

A confidence interval estimate of a parameter consists of an interval of numbers along with a probability that the interval contains the unknown parameter.

The level of confidence in a confidence interval is a probability that represents the percentage of intervals that will contain if a large number of repeated samples are obtained.

For example, a 95% level of confidence would mean that if 100 confidence intervals were constructed, each based on a different sample from the same population, we would expect 95 of the intervals to contain the population mean.

The construction of a confidence interval for the population mean depends upon three factors The point estimate of the population The level of confidence The standard deviation of the sample mean

Suppose we obtain a simple random sample from a population. Provided that the population is normally distributed or the sample size is large, the distribution of the sample mean will be normal with

95% of all sample means are in the interval

Confidence Intervals About , Unknown

Confidence interval estimation:

X t n 1

s n

Confidence interval estimation for the proportion

p(1 p) pZ n
P is sample proportion

Properties of the t Distribution


1. The t distribution is different for different values of n, the sample size. 2. The t distribution is centered at 0 and is symmetric about 0. 3. The area under the curve is 1. Because of the symmetry, the area under the curve to the right of 0 equals the area under the curve to the left of 0 equals 1 / 2.

Properties of the t Distribution


4. As t increases without bound, the graph approaches, but never equals, zero. As t decreases without bound the graph approaches, but never equals, zero.

5. The area in the tails of the t distribution is a little greater than the area in the tails of the standard normal distribution. This result is because we are using s as an estimate of which introduces more variability to the t statistic.

Properties of the t Distribution

EXAMPLE Finding t-values

Find the t-value such that the area under the t distribution to the right of the t-value is 0.2 assuming 10 degrees of freedom. That is, find t0.20 with 10 degrees of freedom.

Sample size determination for mean


the amount added to or subtracted from sample mean is equal to half the width of the interval. This quantity represents the amount of imprecision in the estimate that results from sampling error. The sampling error e is defined as e Z n . Solving for n gives the sample size needed to construct the appropriate confidence interval will have an acceptable amount of sampling error.
X Z

, n

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