In Confidence
level, enter the level of confidence for the confidence interval.
Usually, a confidence level of 95% works well. A 95% confidence level indicates that, if you take 100 random samples from the population, the confidence intervals for approximately 95 of the samples will contain the population parameter.
For a given set of data, a lower confidence level produces a narrower confidence interval, and a higher confidence level produces a wider confidence interval. The width of the interval also tends to decrease with larger sample sizes. Therefore, you may want to use a confidence level other than 95%, depending on your sample size.
- If your sample size is small, a 95% confidence interval may be too wide to be useful. Using a lower confidence level, such as 90%, produces a narrower interval. However, the likelihood that the interval contains the population parameter decreases.
- If your sample size is large, consider using a higher confidence level, such as 99%. With a large sample, a 99% confidence level may still produce a reasonably narrow interval, while also increasing the likelihood that the interval contains the population parameter.
