State a confidence interval without overclaiming it

I told my manager the confidence interval means we're 95% sure, and now I'm not sure that's actually true.

IntermediateRead 5 minDoing: 30 minutes5 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

One sentence about a confidence interval that a statistician would not have to correct

Before you start

You need

A confidence interval you've already worked out for some number, like an average, a rate, or a difference between two groups, that you're about to put in front of someone else.

Not covered

How to compute the interval in the first place, or what to tell someone when a test comes back not statistically significant.

Leans on

Statistics Fundamentals Cheat Sheetthe Confidence Interval and Confidence Level rows are the exact definitions this recipe untangles.
Dashboards & Reporting Cheat Sheetthe Semantic layer / Metric catalog row is the pattern behind writing the footnote once and reusing it everywhere.

5 steps

Where to go next

An A/B test isn't significant, and the team still needs a call

the manager's question is about a test that came back not significant rather than about reading an interval you already trust.

Checked 26 Aug 2026

Part of the Statistics Fundamentals cookbook