# Reporting credible/confidence intervals

**URL:** <https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/reporting-credible-confidence-intervals/2262>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [October 20, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/reporting-credible-confidence-intervals/2262 "2017-10-20T22:22:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![wzhong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@wzhong](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/u/wzhong)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/reporting-credible-confidence-intervals/2262/1 "2017-10-20T22:22:11Z")

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Hi, I’m just hoping to clarify what the 95% intervals in Stan’s summary output refer to. These are the intervals obtained after calling summary() on a stanfit object. Are the intervals defined by 2.5% and 97.5% percentiles quantiles from the distribution? Or obtained using mean +/- 1.96 \* sd (I guess this is not the case)? Or are they High Density Intervals?

And maybe a relevant question, what is the suggested way of reporting credible intervals following a Bayesian modeling analyses; reporting 95% quantiles or reporting 95% HDIs?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![bgoodri](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.mc-stan.org/bgoodri/32/4451_2.png) [@bgoodri](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/u/bgoodri)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/reporting-credible-confidence-intervals/2262/2 "2017-10-20T22:33:40Z")

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> [@wzhong](#):
>
> Are the intervals defined by 2.5% and 97.5% percentiles quantiles from the distribution?

yes

> [@wzhong](#):
>
> what is the suggested way of reporting credible intervals following a Bayesian modeling analyses

Suggestions differ. In general, different intervals tell you different things. Central credible intervals are certainly the easiest to compute.