Why can't a confidence level be 100%?

Question

Why can't a confidence level be 100%?

1 Answer

Impact of this question

17669 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2017-05-07T16:03:58

$- \infty \leq n \leq \infty$ $-oo<=n <= oo$

Explanation:

I had wondered that in the past but then you have to think about what is the normal distribution. We know that it covers values from $- \infty \to \infty$ $-oo -> oo$ . This means no matter how wide your range is constructed you will never include all the possible numbers. If you look at most tables I think they report something like .999...

Simply put you can never bee 100% certain you captured the true population value because $- \infty \leq n \leq \infty$ $-oo<=n <= oo$ and any bounded interval will clearly not cover all the possible values. I would argue that being 99% confident seems pretty good to me.

Science

Math

Humanities

... and beyond

Why can't a confidence level be 100%?

1 Answer

Explanation:

Related questions

Impact of this question