One-Sample

Confidence
Intervals I
ENM 500
PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS FOR ENGINEERS
Learning Objectives
At the end of One-Sample Confidence Intervals I and its
associated activities and assignments, students should be able to:
1. Understand and describe confidence intervals, prediction intervals,
tolerance intervals
2. Construct confidence intervals (two-sided or one-sided), and find
appropriate sample sizes to build confidence intervals for:
1. the mean of a normal distribution with a known variance
2. the mean of a normal distribution with an unknown variance
3. the variance or standard deviation of a normal distribution
4. a population proportion
3. Construct a prediction interval and a tolerance interval for a normal
distribution

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Class Preparation
Read Chapter 8 sections 8-1 through 8-2.
pages 271-287
Review the lecture slides.
Work the class prep problems for One Sample
Confidence Intervals I in Wiley Plus.

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What is a Confidence Interval?
A Confidence interval is an interval estimate of a population
parameter based on a sample from that population
Expands on a point estimate for a population parameter
Provides some indication of the uncertainty associated with a point
estimate
Confidence intervals are used to report information about a
population
The most common, and most interesting population parameters
are
population mean
population variance
proportion of times something occurs in a population

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Confidence Interval on the mean of a population
Confidence interval on the mean
An interval of the form
With the property
The endpoints and are calculated from sample data
and are instances of the random variables and
Different samples may give different values for and
With a fixed confidence level where
A 90% confidence interval is equivalent to
A 95% confidence interval is equivalent to 5
A 99% confidence interval is equivalent to

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Interpreting a Confidence Interval
Confidence Interval on the mean is a random interval
A
The computed interval brackets the true value of with
confidence
A subtle difference:
95% confidence is not the same as 95% probability
True: If repeated samples were taken and the 95% confidence
interval was computed for each sample, then 95% of the
intervals would contain the population mean
Not Really True: There is a 95% chance that the population
mean is contained in an interval computed from a single sample

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Each sample creates its own Confidence Interval

The interval
created from
Sample 2 does
not span the
true mean of 0

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Four interesting cases and one special case
A Confidence Interval based on a sample from a single
population can be constructed for many different population
parameters
In this course we limit ourselves to the four most useful
single-sample cases
Case 1: the mean of a normal distribution with a known variance
Case 2: the mean of a normal distribution with an unknown variance
Case 3: the variance or standard deviation of a normal distribution
Case 4: a population proportion
Special Case: the mean of an arbitrary distribution given a large
sample

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Math behind the confidence interval for Case 1
Start
with something we know to be true

And substitute the standardized form of for

After a little algebraic manipulation

Which has the form of a confidence interval

Where the lower and upper limits are given by

and
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Confidence Interval formula for Case 1
A confidence interval on the mean of a normal
population with a known variance is given by

where
is the population mean
is the size of the random sample
is the sample mean
is the known population standard deviation
is the upper percentage point for the standard normal

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Confidence Bound formulas for Case 1

The upper and lower confidence bounds on the mean

of a normal population with a known variance are given
by
and
where
is the population mean
is the size of the random sample
is the sample mean
is the known population standard deviation
is the upper percentage point for the standard normal
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Selecting a sample size for Case 1
The
minimum sample size for a two-sided confidence interval
on the mean of a normal population with a known variance
that has confidence the error is no greater than is given by

where
is the population mean
is the sample mean
, or, the length of the confidence interval is
is the known population standard deviation
is the upper percentage point for the standard normal
is the required sample size (round up)

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Case 1 Class Prep Problems
Complete exercises 8-3, 8-11, 8-19

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Some problems with Case 1
The
CI for Case 1 relies on two big givens
the measurements are exactly normally distributed and
the variance of that distribution is known
Case 2 is built for the most common situation
the measurements are approximately normally distributed
but we dont know the population variance
In most situations we dont know the distribution or the variance
however, if we have a large sample ()
we can use the large sample version of Case 1
substituting the sample standard deviation, , for the population standard
deviation,

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The t-distribution
Recall
the random variable is defined by
is a function of one random variable,
The random variable follows a standard normal distribution
Now, the random variable is defined by
Note is a function of two other random variables, and
The random variable follows a t-distribution that depends
on the size of the sample used to calculate and
For a sample size of the quantity is called the degrees of freedom
The percentage point of the t-distribution with degrees of freedom
is denoted

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The t-distribution (cont.)
Similar to the standard normal distribution
Centered around 0
Symmetric
Roughly bell shaped
Puts more weight in the tails of the distribution than the
standard normal
Larger sample sizes give better estimates of the
population variance
As the sample size increases...
the t-distribution approaches the standard normal distribution

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Math behind the confidence interval for Case 2
Start
with something we know to be true

And substitute in the definition of

After a little algebraic manipulation

Which has the form of a confidence interval

Where the lower and upper limits are given by

and
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Confidence Interval formula for Case 2
confidence interval on the mean of a normal
A
population with unknown variance is given by

where
is the population mean
is the size of the random sample
is the sample mean
is the sample standard deviation
is the percentage point for the t distribution with degrees of
freedom
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Confidence Bound formulas for Case 2
upper and lower confidence bounds on the mean of a
A
normal population with unknown variance are given by
and
where
is the population mean
is the size of the random sample
is the sample mean
is the sample standard deviation
is the percentage point for the t distribution with degrees of
freedom
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Selecting a sample size for Case 2

Suppose we want to be confident the maximum error is

no greater than
For Case 1 the desired sample size was
we know and specify and
so we can look up and solve for
For Case 2 the analogous sample size would be
we specify and , but need to know in order to look up
even if we start with the worst case and look up
we still dont know until we compute it from our sample of size
it cant be done

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Case 2 Class Prep Problems
Complete exercises 8-25, 8-31

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Special Case: large-sample Interval on the mean
We can create a confidence interval for the mean of a
population
Even if we dont know the distribution
it doesnt have to meet the normality requirements for Case 1
or Case 2
As long as we have a large enough sample size (

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Math behind the large sample Confidence Interval
When the sample size is large (, the CLT kicks in, and
The distribution of approaches , so

And using to approximate has little effect on the

distribution
So, an approximate large sample confidence interval
for the mean of an arbitrary distribution is given by

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Large-sample Confidence Interval on the mean
A large-sample confidence interval on the mean of
population with an arbitrary distribution is given by

where
is the population mean
is the size of the random sample (and should be at least 40)
is the sample mean
is the sample standard deviation
is the upper percentage point for the standard normal

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Answers to Class Prep Problems
See Appendix C Answers to Selected Exercises

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