ExactCIdiff: An R Package for Computing Exact Confidence Intervals for the Difference of Two Proportions

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2013

Publication Title

The R Journal

Volume

5

Issue

2

First page number:

62

Last page number:

70

Abstract

Comparing two proportions through the difference is a basic problem in statistics and has applications in many fields. More than twenty confidence intervals (Newcombe, 1998a,b) have been proposed. Most of them are approximate intervals with an asymptotic infimum coverage probability much less than the nominal level. In addition, large sample may be costly in practice. So exact optimal confidence intervals become critical for drawing valid statistical inference with accuracy and precision. Recently, Wang (2010, 2012) derived the exact smallest (optimal) one-sided 1 – α confidence intervals for the difference of two paired or independent proportions. His intervals, however, are computer-intensive by nature. In this article, we provide an R package ExactCIdiff to implement the intervals when the sample size is not large. This would be the first available package in R to calculate the exact confidence intervals for the difference of proportions. Exact two-sided 1 – α interval can be easily obtained by taking the intersection of the lower and upper one-sided 1 – α/2 intervals. Readers may jump to Examples 1 and 2 to obtain these intervals.

Keywords

Binary system (Mathematics); Mathematical statistics; Probabilities; Statistics

Disciplines

Clinical Trials | Medicine and Health Sciences | Statistical Methodology | Statistics and Probability | Vital and Health Statistics

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.


Search your library

Share

COinS