Calculator Uni

Confidence Interval Calculator

Compute confidence intervals for a sample mean.

Sample statistics

95% confidence interval

48.432 to 51.568

Margin of error

± 1.568

Standard error

0.8

Uses the z-interval; for very small samples (n < 30) the t-distribution widens the interval slightly.

What the interval means

A 95% CI is built so that if you repeated the sampling many times, 95% of the intervals would contain the true mean. The margin of error shrinks with the square root of n — quadrupling the sample halves the interval, which is why precision gets expensive.

Reading polls and studies

'52% ± 3' is a confidence interval: the true value plausibly sits anywhere from 49 to 55, so a 52–48 lead may be no lead at all. Overlapping intervals between groups usually mean the difference isn't statistically established.

Related calculators