Please help me provide a basic and simple response to this discussion post:

Confidence Intervals

Sampling error is the main reason that people do not trust or like the single point estimates for the things they need measured. However, if people were to use confidence intervals, this helps them accept the results more willingly.

A confidence interval gives an estimated range of values which is likely to include an unknown population parameter. This is the estimated range being calculated from a given set of data. The reason people trust confidence intervals is because they provide more information than point estimates. The confidence intervals for means are intervals created using a procedure that will contain the population mean a specified proportion of the time. Typical it is either 95% or 99%of the time. Given this 95 or 99 percent, it seems pretty accurate hence the reason why people would accept the results more.

No one in my office had a clue what I was speaking about, especially my managers when I asked them if they prefer a single point estimate or a range for important measures. I had to explain the difference (which was really good for me to do). Based on my explanation, my manager said the range would be better. He said that the confidence interval seemed to get you to a more accurate result and in the end being able to trust the data more so than single point estimate.