{"id":1226,"date":"2021-03-16T09:15:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T13:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2021-03-16T09:15:43","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T13:15:43","slug":"what-is-a-95-confidence-interval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1226","title":{"rendered":"What is a 95% confidence interval?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Question:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>A lot of the study findings you mention include 95% CI.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure I understand what that means. Would you please explain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Answer:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Absolutely!\u00a0 The 95% CI (confidence interval) is a statistical term related to our uncertainty about a given estimate.\u00a0 In statistics, we&#8217;re using a set of data to make inferences about a bigger population.\u00a0 A point estimate is our best approximation of the truth and the 95% confidence interval is the range of values that we&#8217;re quite certain (95% certain) that the true estimate falls within.\u00a0 Generally, the wider the confidence interval, the less certain we are in the validity of our point estimate; the narrower the confidence interval, the more certain we are in the validity of our point estimate.\u00a0 It&#8217;s important to pay attention to confidence intervals, especially because they are important reminders of the limitations of the point estimates.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll provide an example to elaborate.\u00a0 The other day, <a href=\"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1200\">I cited some data<\/a> on increased risk of hospitalizations for those infected with the B.1.1.7 variant, &#8220;Controlling for age, sex, region, comorbidities, and several other factors, researchers found that those who were infected with the B.1.1.7 variant had 1.64x higher odds of hospital admission (95% confidence interval 1.32-2.04).&#8221;\u00a0 Here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Our best approximation of the true value, the point estimate, is 1.64.&nbsp; That is, people infected with B.1.1.7 are 1.64x more likely to be admitted to the hospital as compared with those infected with a non-variant form of SARS-CoV-2.&nbsp; But, because we&#8217;re using a smaller set of data to make inferences about a larger population, we can&#8217;t be totally sure of our point estimate, hence the 95% CI&#8230;.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>We are 95% confident that the true value is between 1.32-2.04.&nbsp; That is, we are 95% confident that if we had data on everyone infected with B.1.1.7 variant to compare with data on everyone infected with the non-variant form, we would find that at a minimum, people infected with B.1.1.7 are 1.32x more likely to be admitted to the&nbsp;hospital and at a maximum, they are 2.04x more likely to be admitted to the hospital.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question:\u00a0A lot of the study findings you mention include 95% CI.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure I understand what that means. Would you please explain? Answer:\u00a0Absolutely!\u00a0 The 95% CI (confidence interval) is a statistical term related to our uncertainty about a given estimate.\u00a0 In statistics, we&#8217;re using a set of data to make inferences about a bigger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147,93],"tags":[172,167],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evergreen","category-models","tag-b-1-1-7","tag-variant","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/pexels-photo-5185093.jpeg?fit=867%2C1300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}