ABSTRACT
In Chapter 7, techniques to find point estimators, such as the method of moments and maximum likelihood, were introduced as well as were criteria to evaluate the “goodness” of an estimator; however, even the most ecient unbiased estimator is not likely to estimate the population parameter exactly. Further, a point estimate provides no information about the precision or reliability of the estimate. Consequently, the construction of an interval estimate or confidence interval (CI ), where the user can control the precision (width) of the interval as well as the reliability (confidence) that the true parameter will be found in the confidence interval, is desirable.
