A brief note on overlapping confidence intervals.
Clinical researchers frequently assess the statistical significance of the difference between two means by examining whether the two 95% confidence intervals overlap. The purpose of this brief communication is to illustrate that the 95% confidence intervals for two means can overlap and yet the two means can be statistically significantly different from one another at the alpha = 0.05 level.
Austin
Peter C
PC
Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. peter.austin@ices.on.ca
Hux
Janet E
JE
D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans