Confidence interval!!!! - TheBody.com's Bulletin Boards

The confidence interval is the intervall when 95% of the population will have a positive HIV test. For HIV this is 95%@9-41 days. The other 5% MAY take longer. See following text:

Confidence Interval
A confidence interval gives an estimated range of values which is likely to include an unknown population parameter, the estimated range being calculated from a given set of sample data.

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If independent samples are taken repeatedly from the same population, and a confidence interval calculated for each sample, then a certain percentage ( confidence level) of the intervals will include the unknown population parameter . Confidence intervals are usually calculated so that this percentage is 95%, but we can produce 90%, 99%, 99.9%, confidence intervals for the unknown parameter.

The width of the confidence interval gives us some idea about how uncertain we are about the unknown parameter (see precision). A very wide interval may indicate that more data should be collected before anything very definite can be said about the parameter.

Confidence intervals are more informative than the simple results of hypothesis tests (where we decide 'reject H0' or 'don't reject H0') since they provide a range of plausible values for the unknown parameter.

See also confidence limits.

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