In reviewing some not-yet-deleted email, I came across this one, and have
no record of its error(s) having been corrected.
On Sat, 29 Sep 2001, John Jackson wrote:
> How do describe the data that does not reside in the area
> described by the confidence interval?
>
> For example, you have a two tailed situation, with a left tail of .1, a
> middle of .8 and a right tail of .1, the confidence interval for the
> middle is 90%.
Well, no. You describe an 80% C.I., not a 90% C.I.
> Is it correct to say with respect to a value falling outside of the
> interval in the right tail:
>
> For any random inverval selected, there is a .05% probability that the
> sample will NOT yield an interval that yields the parameter being
> estimated and additonally such interval will not include any values in
> area represented by the left tail.
If you're still referring to the 80% C.I. introduced above, ".05%
probability" is not applicable. [Not even if you had stated it
correctly, either as ".05 probability" or as "5% probability". ;-) ]
> Can you make different statements about the left and right tail?
Not for the case you have described. Had you chosen to compute an
asymmetric C.I. (perfectly possible in theory, hardly ever done, so far
as I am aware, in practice) it would be otherwise.
-- DFB.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald F. Burrill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
184 Nashua Road, Bedford, NH 03110 603-471-7128
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