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Old 10-November-2005, 11:22 PM
grant hutchison grant hutchison is offline
Order of Kilopi
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 7,616
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ZaphodBeeblebrox
The BIG Problem Is, How Do you Determine the Confidence Interval?
A ball chosen at random has only a 5% chance of coming from the lowest-numbered 5% of balls, and a 95% chance of coming from the other, higher-numbered balls. We are therefore 95% certain that our ball, number 7, has a higher number than the lowest 5% of balls. So we are 95% certain that the lowest-numbered 5% consists of fewer than 7 balls. If there are only 6 or fewer balls in a 5% sample, then the total number of balls must be (6*20)=120 or fewer. When we draw ball number 7, we are therefore immediately 95% confident that there are 120 or fewer balls in the urn.

Grant Hutchison
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