ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

confidence interval

A confidence interval is like a range of numbers that tell us what we think the answer to a question is. It's a way of being able to say that we are pretty sure the answer is somewhere in this range with a certain degree of confidence. For example, if you asked someone how tall they were and they said they were between 5 and 6 feet tall - that's their confidence interval. They are pretty sure they are somewhere in that range.