Confidence Interval

Learn about confidence interval, the central limit theorem, and their relationships with standard deviation.

Understanding the concept

Confidence interval is a critical concept in inferential statistics. It estimates the range of plausible values for a population parameter based on a data sample. Confidence intervals provide a way to quantify the uncertainty associated with point estimates. We use standard deviation to define confidence intervals.

Suppose we gather the math test scores of high school students in a country, and we wish to determine the 95% confidence interval of the population mean. We collect a random sample of 200 high school students from across the country and use their scores in the calculation.

The calculation result means that we can be 95% confident that the average score on the math exam for all high school students in the country falls between the lower and upper range of the confidence interval.

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