# Thread: Probability of a Confidence Interval

1. ## Probability of a Confidence Interval

Is it true to say a 90% confidence interval

"contains 90% of the means on average (as n of means goes to infinity)"?

2. Originally Posted by shalomhk
Is it true to say a 90% confidence interval

"contains 90% of the means on average (as n of means goes to infinity)"?
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say.

The correct interpretation of a confidence interval is based on repeated sampling. If samples of the same size are drawn repeatedly from a population and a 90% confidence interval is calculated from each sample, then 90% of these intervals should contain the population mean as the number of samples becomes large.

3. ## thanks :)

thank you.
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4. Originally Posted by mr fantastic
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say.

The correct interpretation of a confidence interval is based on repeated sampling. If samples of the same size are drawn repeatedly from a population and a 90% confidence interval is calculated from each sample, then 90% of these intervals should contain the population mean as the number of samples becomes large.
Absurd, is it not!

Explaining what a confidence interval really means just shows that classical statistics does not answer the question that was really asked.

RonL