> "The data is fixed" refers only to the data we know. Okay, yeah. The sample is fixed. The entire population is random. I'll use this terminology. > In the f

> "The data is fixed" refers only to the data we know. Okay, yeah. The sample is fixed. The entire population is random. I'll use this terminology. > In the frequentist model, we have to pretend that this fixed data is actually a random distribution With confidence intervals, we're modelling the entire population as a random distribution, using the fixed sample's mean and variance to compute estimates of the population's mean and variance. I think this is different than "pretending the sample is random". If you constructed a normal model of the sample, you would just use the sample's mean and standard deviation. But to model the population, you typically use the sample's standard error as an estimate of the population's standard deviation. This is critical. You have to account for the fact that the population is much larger than your sample.