Confidence Intervals

TD 604, 2022
By the Central Limit theorem
• We want to find the average height, μ , of all rural children of 3 years of
age in a district
• We randomly select 100 children in this age bracket from various villages
across the district, and find the average height of this sample set of 100,
• We then pick another sample set of 100. And find
• …find …. , ,.. And so on
• We plot this distribution of s.
• We get a Normal distribution, where is the mean of this distribution = μ
• The standard deviation σ /√n
 Random set of 100

All children 3 Find Another random set of 100 Find

years of age in
the district

𝜎𝑋
𝜇,𝜎

𝑋1 μ𝑋 𝑋2

The Central Limit Theorem says, that this distribution of s will tend towards being a Normal
distribution, no matter what the underlying distribution. But the more symmetrical is the underlying
distribution, the closer this will be to a Normal distribution.
 Central Limit Theorem

A sample of size n is taken from a population with mean μ and standard deviation σ
If the sample has a mean of X :
The expected value of X is μ and standard deviation σx= σ /√n
When n is large, the sampling distribution tends towards a Normal distribution
 In practice
All children 3 is unknown
years of age in
the district We find one , and then try to estimate from it
Since it is a Normal Distribution, we know that the probability of being
𝜇,𝜎 within a certain distance of

95%

𝑋1
The likelihood of an being within a certain range of , can be estimated as illustrated above. In the above figure, the non-
pink area is 95%, and this represents the range where:
< µ + 1.96 and > µ - 1.96
OR µ - 1.96 < µ + 1.96
Which can be rearranged to: - 1.96 µ < + 1.96
Confidence interval

The sample mean X is drawn from a normal distribution with mean μ and standard deviation =

The quantity zα/2 is the z-score that cuts off an area of α/2 in the right-hand tail. The quantity −zα/2 is the z-
score that cuts off an area of α/2 in the left-hand tail. The interval ± zα/2 will cover the population mean μ
for a proportion 1 − α of all samples that could possibly be drawn. Therefore ± zα/2 is a level 100(1 − α)%
confidence interval for μ.
 Confidence Interval
A 100(1-α) confidence level for μ has a confidence interval given by:
 About standard deviation of a population
We know , but we don’t know or . However, we can approximate to s, the standard deviation
of the sample itself, if the sample size is large enough. Which in a normal distribution may be
considered to be 30.
Of sample set of 100 children of 3 years of age, the average height is
computed to be 30”. The sample standard deviation to be s = 8”. What
can we say about the mean of the underlying population, μ?
Problem
• The article “Study on the Life Distribution of Microdrills” (Z. Yang, Y.
Chen, and Y. Yang, Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 2002:301–
305) reports that in a sample of 50 microdrills drilling a low-carbon
alloy steel, the average lifetime (expressed as the number of holes
drilled before failure) was 12.68 with a standard deviation of 6.83.
Find a 90% confidence interval for the mean lifetime of microdrills
under these conditions.
Some commonly used confidence intervals
when the sample size s large enough
Confidence intervals computed from the same population with different confidence levels:
(a) One hundred 68% confidence intervals (b) One hundred 95% confidence intervals (c) One hundred 99.7% confidence
intervals computed from these samples
The greater the confidence interval, the more likely they are to cover the mean and hence more reliable, but with lower
precision.
The sample set must be a random selection

Yields from 100 runs of a chemical process plotted against time

The data shows a trend. This means that each run is in some way
affected by the last run, so they are not random samples. And
hence this dataset cannot be used to find the confidence interval.
One sided confidence interval
• In a sample of 100 steel wires the average breaking strength is 50 kN,
with a standard deviation of 2 kN
• Find a 95% lower confidence bound for the mean strength.
• Someone says that the mean strength is less than 50.4 kN. With what
level of confidence can this statement be made?
Confidence interval ≠probability of the mean
being in an interval
A 90% confidence interval for the mean diameter (in cm) of steel rods manufactured on a certain
extrusion machine is computed to be (14.73, 14.91).
True or false: The probability that the mean diameter of rods manufactured by this process is between
14.73 and 14.91 is 90%.
False:
The mean diameter of the rods is fixed. It is not a variable . It depends on the manufacturing process,
and not on the sample we have chosen. What we can say that we are 90% confident that the population
mean is between 14.73 and 14.91. The mean is what it is, it may be 14.93.
True:
The probability that the mean diameter will be in this interval is 90%
True:
A method for computing a 90% confidence interval has probability 90% of covering the population mean
End of slide deck