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Software Engineering vocabulary · Machine Learning and Data Processing

Confidence interval

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, confidence interval means: A range of values, calculated from sample data, that is likely to contain the true value; a 95% interval comes from a method that captures the true value 95% of the time.

In Turkish: güven aralığı

How it is used

Often shortened to CI. You calculate or report a confidence interval, usually at 95%. Analysts present results as 'a lift of 3%, with a 95% CI from 1% to 5%'. A narrow interval means a more precise estimate.

Example sentences

  1. The confidence interval runs from -1% to 4%, so we can't rule out that there's no effect at all.

  2. Please show the confidence interval on the chart, not just the point estimate.

Common collocations

  • 95% confidence interval
  • narrow confidence interval
  • wide confidence interval
  • report the confidence interval
  • p-valueThe probability of seeing a result at least as extreme as the one observed if there were really no effect, that is, if the null hypothesis were true.
  • statistical significanceA sign that a result is unlikely to be explained by random chance alone, usually judged by whether the p-value falls below a threshold chosen in advance, such as 0.05.
  • sample sizeThe number of observations, people or units included in a sample or an experiment; larger samples usually give more reliable estimates.
  • standard deviationA measure of how spread out values are around the mean: a small value means most values are close to the average, a large one means they vary a lot.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Machine Learning and Data Processing

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