Difference Between Confidence Interval And Margin Of Error
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Definition Of Margin Of Error
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Margin Of Error 95 Confidence Interval
is a question and answer site for people interested in statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, and data visualization. Join them; it only takes a minute: Sign up Here's how it what would cause the margin of error in a confidence interval to decrease works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top How are margins of error related to confidence Intervals? up vote 8 down vote favorite 2 Can somebody tell me the difference between margins of error and confidence intervals? On the Internet I see these two meanings getting used interchangeably. Is it right to say, does margin of error increase with confidence level "Confidence intervals are shown as 1.96 and displayed on the graphs as error margins"? confidence-interval survey polling share|improve this question edited Jan 31 '12 at 19:31 whuber♦ 145k17281541 asked Jan 31 '12 at 15:56 Mintuz 143115 1 Useful discussions on this topic can be found by searching our site. –whuber♦ Jan 31 '12 at 19:30 add a comment| 2 Answers 2 active oldest votes up vote 9 down vote accepted The Internet is full of garbage, as all of us know. It helps to find authoritative sources and focus on them to help resolve such issues. A pamphlet published by the American Statistical Association (attributed to Fritz Scheuren and "thoroughly updated circa 1997") defines the margin of error as a 95% confidence interval (p. 64, at right). In light of this, it is surprising that the Wikipedia article on margin of error uses a different definition, even though it references this pamphlet! Wikipedia writes, The margin of error is usually defined as the "radius" (or half the width) of a confidence interval for a particular statistic from a survey. ... When a single, global margin of error is reported for a survey,
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Confidence Interval And Margin Of Error Relationship
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Confidence Interval And Margin Of Error Worksheet
of Error In a confidence interval, the range of values above and below the sample statistic is called the margin of error. For example, suppose we wanted to know the percentage of adults http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22021/how-are-margins-of-error-related-to-confidence-intervals that exercise daily. We could devise a sample design to ensure that our sample estimate will not differ from the true population value by more than, say, 5 percent (the margin of error) 90 percent of the time (the confidence level). How to Compute the Margin of Error The margin of error can be defined by either of the following equations. Margin of error = http://stattrek.com/estimation/margin-of-error.aspx Critical value x Standard deviation of the statistic Margin of error = Critical value x Standard error of the statistic If you know the standard deviation of the statistic, use the first equation to compute the margin of error. Otherwise, use the second equation. Previously, we described how to compute the standard deviation and standard error. How to Find the Critical Value The critical value is a factor used to compute the margin of error. This section describes how to find the critical value, when the sampling distribution of the statistic is normal or nearly normal. The central limit theorem states that the sampling distribution of a statistic will be nearly normal, if the sample size is large enough. As a rough guide, many statisticians say that a sample size of 30 is large enough when the population distribution is bell-shaped. But if the original population is badly skewed, has multiple peaks, and/or has outliers, researchers like the sample size to be even larger. When the sampling distribution is nearly normal, the critical value can be expressed as a t score or as a z score. When the sample size is smaller, the critical valu
a confidence interval estimate of a population mean: sample size, variability in the population, and confidence level. For each of these quantities separately, explain briefly what happens to the margin of error http://inspire.stat.ucla.edu/unit_10/solutions.php as that quantity increases. Answer: As sample size increases, the margin of error decreases. As the variability in the population increases, the margin of error increases. As the confidence level increases, the margin of error increases. Incidentally, population variability is not something we can usually control, but more meticulous collection of data can reduce the variability in our measurements. The third of these--the relationship between confidence level margin of and margin of error seems contradictory to many students because they are confusing accuracy (confidence level) and precision (margin of error). If you want to be surer of hitting a target with a spotlight, then you make your spotlight bigger. 2. A survey of 1000 Californians finds reports that 48% are excited by the annual visit of INSPIRE participants to their fair state. Construct a 95% confidence interval margin of error on the true proportion of Californians who are excited to be visited by these Statistics teachers. Answer: We first check that the sample size is large enough to apply the normal approximation. The true value of p is unknown, so we can't check that np > 10 and n(1-p) > 10, but we can check this for p-hat, our estimate of p. 1000*.48 = 480 > 10 and 1000*.52 > 10. This means the normal approximation will be good, and we can apply them to calculate a confidence interval for p. .48 +/- 1.96*sqrt(.48*.52/1000) .48 +/- .03096552 (that mysterious 3% margin of error!) (.45, .51) is a 95% CI for the true proportion of all Californians who are excited about the Stats teachers' visit. 3. Since your interval contains values above 50% and therefore does finds that it is plausible that more than half of the state feels this way, there remains a big question mark in your mind. Suppose you decide that you want to refine your estimate of the population proportion and cut the width of your interval in half. Will doubling your sample size do this? How large a sample will be needed to cut your interval