=+virtually never the case that x 5 . The point estimate says nothing about how close it might be to . An alternative to reporting a single most plausible value of the parameter being estimated is to calculate and report an entire interval of plausible values—an interval estimate or confidence interval (CI). A confidence interval is always calculated by first selecting a confidence level, which is a measure of the degree of reliability of the interval. A confidence interval with a 95% confidence level for the true average breaking strength might have a lower limit of 9162.5 and an upper limit of 9482.9. Then at