CPI:
The price data are collected for a sample of goods and services from a sample of sales outlets in a sample of locations for a sample of times. The weighting data are estimates of the shares of the different types of expenditure in the total expenditure covered by the index. These weights are usually based upon expenditure data obtained from expenditure surveys for a sample of households or upon estimates of the composition of consumption expenditure in the National Income and Product Accounts. Although some of the sampling of items for price collection is done using a sampling frame and probabilistic sampling methods, many items and outlets are chosen in a commonsense way (purposive sampling) that does not permit estimation of confidence intervals. Therefore, the sampling variance cannot be calculated. In any case, a single estimate is required in most of the purposes for which the index is used.
This data is mostly useful to economists. It really doesn't make much sense outside the context it is presented in.
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