Margin Of Error

Margin of error is a small allowable amount of miscalculation or alteration of circumstances. It is guided by the principle that there is always room for error and gathered data does not perfectly represent the true situation. This statistical value is often expressed in percentage; only a maximum of 0.05% margin of error is allowed in research statistical procedures.

For instance, a psychology student may want to find out if eating bananas can significantly uplift moods. He then finds out that most of the scores of those who ate bananas were higher than those who didn’t. However, the statistical results indicated that the margin of error of such comparison was 0.07%. Hence, his findings were declared statistically insignificant.