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7: One-Sample Confidence Intervals

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    130257
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    In hypothesis tests, the purpose was to make a decision about a parameter, in terms of it being greater than, less than, or not equal to a value. But what if you want to actually know what the parameter is. You need to do estimation. There are two types of estimation – point estimator and confidence interval.

    • 7.1: Basics of Confidence Intervals
      A point estimator is just the statistic that you have calculated previously. As an example, when you wanted to estimate the population mean, the point estimator is the sample mean and to estimate the population proportion, you use the sample proportion. Point estimators are really easy to find, but they have some drawbacks. These problems are solved by using confidence intervals.
    • 7.2: One-Sample Interval for the Proportion
    • 7.3: One-Sample Interval for the Mean
    • 7.4: Sample Size Considerations
      Sampling is typically done with a set of clear objectives in mind. Since sampling costs time, effort, and money, it would be useful to be able to estimate the smallest size sample that is likely to meet these criteria.


    This page titled 7: One-Sample Confidence Intervals is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Kozak via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.