Why Margin of Error and Confidence Intervals Matter in
Statistics Statistical results should always include a margin of
error and confidence intervals. This information is important
because you often see statistics that try to estimate numbers
pertaining to an entire population based on a survey of only a
part of the population; in fact, you see these statistics almost
every day in the form of survey results. For example, the media
tells you what the average gas price is in the U.S., how
Americans feel about the job the president is doing, or how many
hours people spend on the Internet each week. But no one can
give you a single-number result and claim it’s an accurate
estimate of the entire population unless he collected data on
every single member of the population. For example, you may hear
that 60 percent of the American people support the president’s
approach to healthcare, but you know they didn’t ask you, so how
could they have asked everybody? And since they didn’t ask
everybody, you know that a one-n