精益六西格玛咨询报告(LYM Analysis tollgate review)【质量精品】.ppt

* What Is a Confidence Interval? We know that when we take the average of a sample, it is probably not exactly the same as the average of the population. Confidence intervals help us determine the likely range of the population parameter. For example, if my 95% confidence interval is 5 +/- 2, then I have 95% confidence that the mean of the population is between 3 and 7. Why Do We Need Confidence Intervals? Sample statistics, such as Mean and Standard Deviation, are only estimates of the population’s parameters. Because there is variability in these estimates from sample to sample, we can quantify our uncertainty using statistically-based confidence intervals. Confidence intervals provide a range of plausible values for the population parameters (? and ?). Any sample statistic will vary from one sample to another and, therefore, from the true population or process parameter value. Confidence Interval for the Mean (Mu) with Population Standard Deviation (Sigma) Unknown A very important point to remember is that for this example we assumed that we knew the population standard deviation, and many times that is not the case. Often, we have to estimate both the mean and the standard deviation from the sample. When Sigma is not known, we use the t-distribution rather than the normal (z) distribution. The t-distribution will be explained next. In many cases, the true population Sigma is not known, so we must use our sample standard deviation (s) as an estimate for the population standard deviation (s). Since there is less certainty (not knowing Mu or Sigma ), the t-distribution essentially “relaxes” or “expands” our confidence intervals to allow for this additional uncertainty. In other words, for a 95% confidence interval, you would multiply the standard error by a number greater than 1.96, depending on the sample size. 1.96 comes from the normal distribution, but the number we will use in this case will come from the t-distribution. What Is This t-Distri