Confidence interval

Also written: confidence intervals

A range that probably contains the true value, given the data you sampled.

Other terms from the same lesson

• bootstrap: Estimating uncertainty by resampling your own data, with replacement, many times and seeing how much the answer moves.
• margin of error: The plus-or-minus around an estimate, such as 3.2% ± 0.8%. It is usually about two standard errors.
• resample: Draw a new sample from your data, picking rows at random with replacement, to mimic collecting fresh data.
• standard error: How much an estimate from a sample would wobble if you took a fresh sample. Bigger samples give smaller standard errors.