I have a bit of a nitpicky question on the use of the phrase ‘confidence intervals’ throughout the report. Are these really supposed to be interpreted as confidence intervals? Rather than the Bayesian alternative, ‘credible intervals’..?
My understanding was that the phrase ‘confidence interval’ 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 aren’t 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 ‘confidence interval’ in our report is better described by the term ‘credible interval’.
We chose to use with the term ‘confidence interval’ because my impression is that this is the more commonly used and understood terminology within EA specifically, but also global health in general—even 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 ‘confidence intervals’ throughout the report. Are these really supposed to be interpreted as confidence intervals? Rather than the Bayesian alternative, ‘credible intervals’..?
My understanding was that the phrase ‘confidence interval’ 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 aren’t 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 ‘confidence interval’ in our report is better described by the term ‘credible interval’.
We chose to use with the term ‘confidence interval’ because my impression is that this is the more commonly used and understood terminology within EA specifically, but also global health in general—even though it is not technically entirely accurate.
Makes sense, thank you for the reply and clarification!