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st: Re: Binomial confidence intervals


From   Joseph Coveney <[email protected]>
To   Statalist <[email protected]>
Subject   st: Re: Binomial confidence intervals
Date   Wed, 08 Sep 2004 21:04:23 +0900

Paul Seed wrote:

As I don't have access to a decent Stats library here, I tried to obtain
the recommended paper (Brown, Cai, & DasGupta.
Interval Estimation for a Binomial Proportion. Statistical Science, 2001,
16, pp. 101-133.)  over the internet; but it is currently behind a "rolling
firewall", until 2005.

Would anyone who has seen it hazard a comment on which of the
new methods  - Wilson, Jeffreys or Agresti they would prefer for
small samples.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the absence of access to the article, you can run -simulate- calling a
program such as the -exbinci- ditty in the do-file below, and make a choice
suitable to your circumstances based on the results.  I wrote the do-file
below in an attempt to illustrate Bobby Gutierrez's point to the list.  In
order to run it, you'll need to install Joseph Hilbe's -rnd- suite from SSC.

In the do-file below, with 10 trials and a population mean of 50% (these are
options in the program that you can change to suit your circumstances), the
true parameter lies within the 95% confidence interval 9797 times out of
10000 experiments for each of the methods.  This compares with a 95%
confidence interval's expectation to contain the parameter 9500 times out of
the 10000 experiments.  (A 95% confidence interval is supposed to contain
the population parameter 95% of the time over the long run.)

With more trials (100) in the experiment, the 95% confidence intervals by
the Jeffreys, Wilson or Agresti methods are reasonably good:  each, 9452
times out of 10000 experiments.  At 9652 times out of 10000 experiments, the
Clopper-Pearson method is still a just a little conservative in its
probability of coverage.

Joseph Coveney

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

clear
set more off
local seed = date("2004-09-08", "ymd")
set seed `seed'
set seed0 `seed'
macro drop seed
program define exbinci, rclass
    version 8.2
    syntax , N(integer) Pi(real)
    rndbin `n' `pi' 1
    foreach method in exact wilson jeffreys agresti {
        ci xb, binomial `method'
// you can trap for the possibility that UL or LL is missing here
        return scalar `method'_covered = (0.5 >= r(lb)) & (0.5 <= r(ub))
    }
end
* population (true) parameter = 0.5; m + n = 10
simulate "exbinci, n(10) pi(0.5)" ///
  exact_covered = r(exact_covered) ///
  wilson_covered = r(wilson_covered) ///
  jeffreys_covered = r(jeffreys_covered) ///
  agresti_covered = r(agresti_covered), reps(10000)
summarize
drop _all
* population parameter = 0.5; m + n = 100
simulate "exbinci, n(100) pi(0.5)" ///
  exact_covered = r(exact_covered) ///
  wilson_covered = r(wilson_covered) ///
  jeffreys_covered = r(jeffreys_covered) ///
  agresti_covered = r(agresti_covered), reps(10000)
summarize
exit



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