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@gcardone
Created August 10, 2014 17:58
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How to calculate confidence interval for means with unknown standard deviation using the Student t distribution. Needs numpy and scipy
#!/usr/bin/env python
from scipy.stats import t
from numpy import average, std
from math import sqrt
if __name__ == '__main__':
# data we want to evaluate: average height of 30 one year old male and
# female toddlers. Interestingly, at this age height is not bimodal yet
data = [63.5, 81.3, 88.9, 63.5, 76.2, 67.3, 66.0, 64.8, 74.9, 81.3, 76.2,
72.4, 76.2, 81.3, 71.1, 80.0, 73.7, 74.9, 76.2, 86.4, 73.7, 81.3,
68.6, 71.1, 83.8, 71.1, 68.6, 81.3, 73.7, 74.9]
mean = average(data)
# evaluate sample variance by setting delta degrees of freedom (ddof) to
# 1. The degree used in calculations is N - ddof
stddev = std(data, ddof=1)
# Get the endpoints of the range that contains 95% of the distribution
t_bounds = t.interval(0.95, len(data) - 1)
# sum mean to the confidence interval
ci = [mean + critval * stddev / sqrt(len(data)) for critval in t_bounds]
print "Mean: %f" % mean
print "Confidence Interval 95%%: %f, %f" % (ci[0], ci[1])
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