[R] binom package (was: no subject)

spencerg spencer.graves at prodsyse.com
Tue May 19 23:26:56 CEST 2009


      There are 17 different help pages in 5 different packages citing 
"Agresti and Coull".  This is quickly displayed using the "RSiteSearch" 
package as follows: 


library(RSiteSearch)
HTML(RSiteSearch.function("Agresti and Coull"))


      I have not checked all these 17, but they doubtless help explain 
Agresti and Coull's point that the term "exact confidence interval" is 
like a lot of terms in Marketing:  The substance falls far short of the 
hype for most purposes. 


      Hope this helps. 
      Spencer Graves


Douglas Bates wrote:
> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, 18 May 2009, Debbie Zhang wrote:
>>     
>
>   
>>> Based on a set of binomial sample data, how would you utilize the "nlm"
>>> function in R to estimate the true proportion of the population?
>>>       
>
>   
>> I can't see why anyone would want to use nlm() for this.  The sample
>> proportion is the MLE, and binom.test() gives an exact confidence interval.
>>     
>
> Homework exercise intended to teach the use of optimization when you
> can separately work out what the answer should be?
>
> And, as you probably know, the exact confidence interval from
> binom.test is not as "good" as the approximate interval described by
> Agresti and B.A. Coull in a 1998 American Statistician article.  (The
> coverage of the exact interval is at least the nominal value but it
> can be greater because the binomial is discrete.)
>
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