A confidence interval is a range of values that is expected to contain the true population parameter with a specified level of confidence, such as 95%. Confidence intervals are often used instead of hypothesis tests. The width of the confidence interval depends on the desired confidence level, with wider intervals for higher confidence levels. A normal distribution is a bell-shaped symmetric frequency curve where the mean, median and mode are equal, and 68%, 95%, and 99% of values fall within 1, 2, and 3 standard deviations of the mean, respectively.
A confidence interval is a range of values that is expected to contain the true population parameter with a specified level of confidence, such as 95%. Confidence intervals are often used instead of hypothesis tests. The width of the confidence interval depends on the desired confidence level, with wider intervals for higher confidence levels. A normal distribution is a bell-shaped symmetric frequency curve where the mean, median and mode are equal, and 68%, 95%, and 99% of values fall within 1, 2, and 3 standard deviations of the mean, respectively.
A confidence interval is a range of values that is expected to contain the true population parameter with a specified level of confidence, such as 95%. Confidence intervals are often used instead of hypothesis tests. The width of the confidence interval depends on the desired confidence level, with wider intervals for higher confidence levels. A normal distribution is a bell-shaped symmetric frequency curve where the mean, median and mode are equal, and 68%, 95%, and 99% of values fall within 1, 2, and 3 standard deviations of the mean, respectively.
A confidence interval is a range of values that is expected to contain the true population parameter with a specified level of confidence, such as 95%. Confidence intervals are often used instead of hypothesis tests. The width of the confidence interval depends on the desired confidence level, with wider intervals for higher confidence levels. A normal distribution is a bell-shaped symmetric frequency curve where the mean, median and mode are equal, and 68%, 95%, and 99% of values fall within 1, 2, and 3 standard deviations of the mean, respectively.
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What Is a Confidence Interval?
A confidence interval is defined as the range of values that we observe in our
sample and for which we expect to find the value that accurately reflects the population.
Confidence, in statistics, is another way to describe probability. Analysts often use
confidence intervals than contain either 95% or 99% of expected observations. For example, if you construct a confidence interval with a 95% confidence level, you are confident that 95 out of 100 times the estimate will fall between the upper and lower values specified by the confidence interval.
Your desired confidence level is usually one minus the alpha (α) value you used in your statistical test:
Confidence level = 1 − a
So if you use an alpha value of p < 0.05 for statistical significance, then your confidence level would be 1 − 0.05 = 0.95, or 95%.
Hypothesis testing
When interpreting research findings, researchers need to assess whether these findings may have occurred by chance. Hypothesis testing is a systematic procedure for deciding whether the results of a research study support a particular theory which applies to a population. Hypothesis testing uses sample data to evaluate a hypothesis about a population. A hypothesis test assesses how unusual the result is whether it is reasonable chance variation or whether the result is too extreme to be considered chance variation. The purpose of hypothesis testing is to test whether the null hypothesis (there is no difference, no effect) can be rejected or approved. If the null hypothesis is rejected, then the research hypothesis can be accepted. If the null hypothesis is accepted, then the research hypothesis is rejected.
Normal distribution
A normal distribution is a bell-shaped frequency distribution curve. Most of the data
values in a normal distribution tend to cluster around the mean. The further a data point is from the mean, the less likely it is to occur. Mean, mode and median are equal. There are many things, such as intelligence, height, and blood pressure, that naturally follow a normal distribution. For example, if you took the height of one hundred 22-year-old women and created a histogram by plotting height on the x-axis, and the frequency at which each of the heights occurred on the y-axis, you would get a normal distribution.
All forms of (normal) distribution share the following characteristics:
1. It is symmetric
A normal distribution comes with a perfectly symmetrical shape. This means that the distribution curve can be divided in the middle to produce two equal halves. The symmetric shape occurs when one-half of the observations fall on each side of the curve.
2. The mean, median, and mode are equal
The middle point of a normal distribution is the point with the maximum frequency, which means that it possesses the most observations of the variable. The midpoint is also the point where these three measures fall. The measures are usually equal in a perfectly (normal) distribution.
3. Empirical rule
In normally distributed data, there is a constant proportion of distance lying under the curve between the mean and specific number of standard deviations from the mean. For example, 68.25% of all cases fall within +/- one standard deviation from the mean. 95% of all cases fall within +/- two standard deviations from the mean, while 99% of all cases fall within +/- three standard deviations from the mean.
4. Skewness and kurtosis
Skewness and kurtosis are coefficients that measure how different a distribution is from a normal distribution. Skewness measures the symmetry of a normal distribution while kurtosis measures the thickness of the tail ends relative to the tails of a normal distribution.
