Why can't a confidence level be 100%?

1 Answer
Will
May 7, 2017

#-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 #-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 #-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.

Related questions
See all questions in Confidence Intervals
Impact of this question
16949 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License