Definition
Plain language
How small a difference has to be before you'll call two things the same.
As stated in the literature
The pre-specified bound in an equivalence test; the null of non-equivalence is rejected when the confidence interval for the difference falls entirely inside the margin.
Also called: margin
Why it matters: Without setting this bound ahead of time, "we found no difference" can mean anything from a genuinely identical result to a study too small to detect a large one.
For example, researchers might decide in advance that if two conditions differ by less than five percentage points, they will treat the conditions as performing the same.
Heard on the show
“More configurations than there are atoms in the observable universe, by an absurd margin.”Episode 002 — An AI Ran a Real Optics Lab for 21 Hours and Found a Transformer-Shaped Pattern in Light