Coverage versus Confidence

Abstract

This article is intended to help students understand the concept of a coverage probability involving confidence intervals. Mathematica is used as a language for describing an algorithm to compute the coverage probability for a simple confidence interval based on the binomial distribution. Then, higher-level functions are used to compute probabilities of expressions in order to obtain coverage probabilities. Several examples are presented: two confidence intervals for a population proportion based on the binomial distribution, an asymptotic confidence interval for the mean of the Poisson distribution, and an asymptotic confidence interval for a population proportion based on the negative binomial distribution.