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Confidence intervals, prediction intervals and tolerance intervals for negative binomial distributions

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Abstract

The problems of constructing confidence intervals (CIs) for a proportion, prediction intervals (PIs) for a future sample size in a negative binomial sampling to observe a specified number of successes and tolerance intervals (TIs) for negative binomial distributions are considered. For interval estimating the success probability, we propose CIs based on the fiducial approach and the score method, evaluate them and compare them with available CIs with respect to coverage probability and precision. We propose PIs based on the fiducial approach and joint sampling approach, and compare them with the exact and other approximate PIs. We also propose TIs on the basis of our new CIs and evaluate them with respect to coverage probability and expected width. All three statistical intervals are illustrated using two examples with real data.

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Notes

  1. http://www.census.gov/acs/www/methodology/sample_size_and_data_quality/.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to three reviewers for providing valuable comments, suggestions and references relevant to this article.

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Correspondence to K. Krishnamoorthy.

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Appendix

Appendix

R code to compute HPM-PI

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Dang, BA., Krishnamoorthy, K. Confidence intervals, prediction intervals and tolerance intervals for negative binomial distributions. Stat Papers 63, 795–820 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-021-01255-y

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