Two Inferential Tasks

Beginning with this chapter, we enter the realm of inferential statistics, where we generalize from a single sample to draw conclusions about an entire population or process. When statisticians use the term inference, it refers to two basic activities. Sometimes we want to estimate the value of a population parameter, and sometimes we want to ask whether the parameter is or is not equal to a specific value. In this chapter, we'll restrict our attention to categorical dichotomous data and focus on the proportion of a population that falls in one category.

We'll discuss the ideas of confidence interval estimation and of significance testing (often called hypothesis testing). Along the way, we'll illustrate these techniques ...

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