Tolerance interval

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A tolerance interval is a statistical interval within which, with some confidence, a specified proportion of a population falls. This differs from a confidence interval in that the confidence interval bounds a population parameter (the mean or variance, for example) with some confidence, while the bounds of a tolerance interval are a range of possible data values that represents a specified proportion of the population. In simpler terms, a confidence interval characterizes what is known about a single quantity while a tolerance interval characterizes what is known about values across a collection of items.

If the confidence is 100%, because the population distribution parameters are known exactly, then the tolerance interval reduces to a probability interval.

[edit] External links