User968758 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu:
(once again quoting me without attribution. Surely in an .edu
newsgroup it should not be necessary to explain what is wrong with
unattributed quoting?)
>>"So if you take a good random
>>sample and compute a 95% confidence interval, there is a 95% chance
>>that the true population parameter is within the computed interval."
>>
>>Absolutely not true.
>
>>Care to explain?
>
>Suppose, for the sake of argument, that
>your computed 95% CI for mu is (3.1, 7.6).
>You want to say
>P(3.1<mu<7.6)=.95 ???
>There's no random variable involved here,
I can think of several random variables.
But if 95% of random samples lead to confidence intervals that
contain mu, then any one random sample has a 95% chance of leading
to a confidence interval that contains mu. The problem is, you have
no way to know whether your particular random sample is one of the
95% or one of the 5%.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?"
"My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters."
"The waters? What waters? We're in the desert."
"I was misinformed."
.
.
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