I have a bit of a nitpicky question on the use of the phrase āconfidence intervalsā throughout the report. Are these really supposed to be interpreted as confidence intervals? Rather than the Bayesian alternative, ācredible intervalsā..?
My understanding was that the phrase āconfidence intervalā has a very particular and subtle definition, coming from frequentist statistics:
80% Confidence Interval: For any possible value of the unknown parameter, there is an 80% chance that your data-collection and estimation process would produce an interval which contained that value.
80% Credible interval: Given the data you actually have, there is an 80% chance that the unknown parameter is contained in the interval.
From my reading of the estimation procedure, it sounds a lot more like these CIs are supposed to be interpreted as the latter rather than the former? Or is that wrong?
Appreciate this is a bit of a pedantic question, that the same terms can have different definitions in different fields, and that discussions about the definitions of terms arenāt the most interesting discussions to have anyway. But the term jumped out at me when reading and so thought I would ask the question!
Yes, indeed, what we call āconfidence intervalā in our report is better described by the term ācredible intervalā.
We chose to use with the term āconfidence intervalā because my impression is that this is the more commonly used and understood terminology within EA specifically, but also global health in generalāeven though it is not technically entirely accurate.
This is a fascinating summary!
I have a bit of a nitpicky question on the use of the phrase āconfidence intervalsā throughout the report. Are these really supposed to be interpreted as confidence intervals? Rather than the Bayesian alternative, ācredible intervalsā..?
My understanding was that the phrase āconfidence intervalā has a very particular and subtle definition, coming from frequentist statistics:
80% Confidence Interval: For any possible value of the unknown parameter, there is an 80% chance that your data-collection and estimation process would produce an interval which contained that value.
80% Credible interval: Given the data you actually have, there is an 80% chance that the unknown parameter is contained in the interval.
From my reading of the estimation procedure, it sounds a lot more like these CIs are supposed to be interpreted as the latter rather than the former? Or is that wrong?
Appreciate this is a bit of a pedantic question, that the same terms can have different definitions in different fields, and that discussions about the definitions of terms arenāt the most interesting discussions to have anyway. But the term jumped out at me when reading and so thought I would ask the question!
Yes, indeed, what we call āconfidence intervalā in our report is better described by the term ācredible intervalā.
We chose to use with the term āconfidence intervalā because my impression is that this is the more commonly used and understood terminology within EA specifically, but also global health in generalāeven though it is not technically entirely accurate.
Makes sense, thank you for the reply and clarification!