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Continuity Correction

A correction to a discrete Binomial Distribution to approximate a continuous distribution.


\begin{displaymath}
P(a\leq X\leq b) \approx P\left({{a-{\textstyle{1\over 2}}-n...
...leq {b+{\textstyle{1\over 2}}-np\over \sqrt{np(1-p)}}}\right),
\end{displaymath}

where

\begin{displaymath}
z\equiv {(x-\mu)\over \sigma}
\end{displaymath}

is a continuous variate with a Normal Distribution and $X$ is a variate of a Binomial Distribution.

See also Binomial Distribution, Normal Distribution


References

Gonick, L. and Smith, W. The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. New York: Harper Perennial, p. 87, 1993.




© 1996-9 Eric W. Weisstein
1999-05-26