Inference for Proportions

Proportions

Our earlier analysis focused on inference about

population means.

Now we turn our attention to inference about the

proportion of some outcome in a population.

We will consider a single population and then compare

proportions from two populations or treatments.
 The Basics

Population Proportion:
# in population with characteristic
# in population
Sample Proportion:
# in sample with characteristic
n
P̂ is a point estimate of P
 Sampling Distribution of Sample Proportion

Choose an SRS of size n from a population that contains

proportion p of ‘characteristic’. Let the sample proportion be
defined as the number in the sample with the ‘characteristic’
divided by n.
– As the sample size increases, the sampling distribution of the
sample proportion becomes approximately normal.

– The mean of the sampling distribution is p, the population

proportion.
p (1 − p )
– The standard deviation of the sampling distribution is n
 Assumptions for Inference about a Proportion

The data are an SRS from the population of interest.

The population is at least ’10’ times as large as the

sample.

Fact: The normal approximation to the distribution of the

sample proportion is most accurate when p = 0.5
Let’s Try Some Examples
 Comparing Two Proportions
Setting 1: Independent Samples from two populations
– proportion of items in population 1 with characteristic
– proportion of items in population 2 with characteristic

Setting 2: Randomly assign subjects to one of two

treatments
– Probability of success with treatment 1
– Probability of success with treatment 2

In both settings, we wish to compare P and P .

1 2
 The Data

n items from trt/pop 1 n items from trt/pop 2

1 2

X have the characteristic X have the characteristic

1 2

P
'
= X 1
P =
' X 2
1 2
n 1 n 2
 For large n1 and n2

Z=
(Pˆ − Pˆ ) − (P − P )
1 2 1 2

P1 (1 − P1 ) P2 (1 − P2 )
+
n
1 n 2

is approximately standard normal.

 (1 − α )100% Confidence Interval for P1 − P2

( ) ˆ
p (1 − ˆ
p ) ˆ
p (1 − ˆ
p )
Pˆ1 − Pˆ2 ± Z (α / 2) 1 1
+ 2 2

n1 n2
 Hypothesis Test for P1 − P2

Ho: P1 = P2

Under Ho, P1 = P2 estimate the same quantity.

Pˆp = X +X
1 2
is a pooled estimate.
n +n
1 2
 Test Statistic

P −P
' '

Z= 1 2

'
P p (1 − P )'
p
1
 1
1
n + n 
2 
 Set Up for Ha
1. Ha: P
1
> P
2
; Reject Ho if Z ≥ Z(α )

2. Ha: P
1
< P
2
; Reject Ho if Z ≤ −Z(α )

3. Ha: P
1
≠ P 2
; Reject Ho if Z ≥ Z(α / 2 )
Or Z ≤ −Z(α / 2 )
How about another example?