Estimating_Parameters
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In general, we assume that we know everything about an situation we are observing except for the value of a certain numerical parameter. We use the data to get information about that parameter. The most common case is that of the location parameter of a Normal Distribution which we estimate by the Arithmetic Mean of the observations.
When we just quote the estimated value, we are using Point Estimation. More often, we wish to find an interval with a high probability of covering the value of the parameter. This is a confidence interval, a specific form of an Interval Estimation.