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Testing for non-zero probability

 
 
gusfish
 
Reply Sun 20 Jul, 2025 08:35 pm
I have a sample of size S from a population of Pass/Fail test outcomes of size P. I'm trying to understand: if all S have passed, what is the confidence that the proportion of Passes in P is 0%?

In my mind, it's possible that the next test after the (S)th test might be a fail, which would then suggest a confidence of S/(S+1). But is that the right way to think about this?

Thanks.
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engineer
 
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Reply Sat 26 Jul, 2025 10:39 am
@gusfish,
There is a thumbrule for the exact question you are asking. If you have N samples with no failures, you can say with a 95% confidence that the failure rate is less than 1 in N/3. So if you have 300 passing values, the worse failure rate you could expect (with a 95% confidence interval) is 1 in 100 or 1%.

You can never say that the percentage is zero. If might be one is a million, or one in a billion, but mathematically, you can't get to zero. Practically, you might be comfortable saying that though. If it takes a thousand years to get one billion samples and your failure rate is lower than one in a billion, then it's probably not going to happen in our lifetimes.
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