In this paper we use the maximum likelihood (ML) and the modified maximum likelihood (MML) methods to estimate the unknown parameters of the inverse Weibull (IW) distribution as well as the corresponding approximate confidence intervals. The estimates of the unknown parameters are obtained based on two sampling schemes, namely, simple random sampling (SRS) and ranked set sampling (RSS). Comparison between the different proposed estimators is made through simulation via their mean square errors (MSE), Pitman nearness probability (PN) and confidence length.