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16-25
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PowerPoint slides to accompany Croucher, Introductory Mathematics and Statistics, 5e
16.9 Confidence Intervals for an
Unknown Population Proportion
Point estimates
To give a single estimate of an unknown population
proportion (), use the value of the proportion (p) obtained
from a random sample taken from that population.
A single estimate of is referred to as a point estimate.
Point estimates are particularly important in survey work, for
example, to get an idea of how the population sampled feels
about a certain issue.
How accurate a point estimate is depends on two factors:
how variable the data are in the population
the size of the random sample used to make the
estimate
16-26
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PowerPoint slides to accompany Croucher, Introductory Mathematics and Statistics, 5e
Confidence Intervals for an Unknown
Population Proportion (cont)
The standard error of the proportion
The precise measure of accuracy of a point estimate (p) of a
population proportion is provided by the standard error of the
proportion
The formal definition is
Where
= the population proportion
n = the size of the random sample
the value of can be replaced by the sample standard proportion, p
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16-27
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PowerPoint slides to accompany Croucher, Introductory Mathematics and Statistics, 5e
Confidence Intervals for an Unknown
Population Proportion (cont)
The meaning of confidence intervals for
Instead of providing a single point estimate for , we
consider a range of values or an interval within which the
value of may lie.
Be able to provide a probability or level of confidence that
this interval does indeed contain the true value of .
Common probabilities to use are 0.90, 0.95 and 0.99,
although any probability could be used.
Confidence intervals for are based on the values from
random samples
16-28
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PowerPoint slides to accompany Croucher, Introductory Mathematics and Statistics, 5e
Confidence Intervals for an Unknown
Population Proportion (cont)
Construction of confidence intervals for
We are able to construct an interval estimate for the
true value of an unknown population proportion .
The confidence interval for is of the form
where the value of z is chosen as follows:
z = 1.645 for a 90% confidence interval
z = 1.96 for a 95% confidence interval
z = 2.58 for a 99% confidence interval
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16-29
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PowerPoint slides to accompany Croucher, Introductory Mathematics and Statistics, 5e
Conclusion
Look at identifying the properties of the normal distribution and
normal curve
Also identified the characteristics of the standard normal curve
Understood examples of normally distributed data
Read z-score tables and find areas under the normal curve
Found the z-score, given the area under the normal curve
Computed proportions
Checked whether data follow a normal distribution
Understood and applied the Central Limit Theorem
Solved business problems that can be represented by a normal
distribution
Calculated estimates and their standard errors
Calculated confidence intervals for the population mean
Calculated confidence intervals for the population proportion