In: Statistics and Probability
I am working on my Business Statistics problem and it needs to be at least 100 words. Here is what It asks: Nothing is for certain. What are acceptable confidence levels for things like you car starting or your paycheck showing up on time? How about a pharmacist giving you the correct medicine?
there are even within a field different reasons for particular confidence intervals. In a clinical trial or pharmacist giving you the correct medicine, you would want to be very confident your treatment wasn't likely to kill anyone, say 99.99%, but you'd be perfectly fine with a 75% confidence interval that your hairspray makes hair stay straight.
In general, confidence intervals is related to uncertainty with which you are comfortable. A 90% confidence interval means one time in ten you'll find an outlier. is that acceptable? On the other hand, if you prefer a 99% confidence interval, is your sample size sufficient that your interval isn't going to be uselessly large?
combine comfort level and sample size. ( Unless you're in a field with very strict rules - clinical trials )
Although, generally the confidence levels are left to the discretion of the analyst, there are cases when they are set by laws and regulations. Examples.
(a) In banking supervision you must use 99% confidence level when computing certain risks, (b) FDA may instruct to use certain confidence levels for drug and device testing in their statistical methodologies