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04 Aug 2005 - 04:20
low birth weight paradox (& Monty Hall)
Monty Hall, part 2
Monty Hall, part 3
false positives
false positives, part 2
Doug Sundseth on Monty Hall
John Kay: We are likely to get probability wrong (subscription only)
Monty Hall diagram from Curious Incident
probability question from Saxon 8/7
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I have to pack & get out of here, but I remember not understanding the Monte Hall game! Your posts have been SO helpful. The low birth rate example is an important one. From time to time op-ed columnists will write these outraged columns about how every other country on the planet has a lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. and how here we are super-rich and we can't even muster up the health care to save babies, blah-blah-blah. Well, it turns out we include incredibly tiny babies in our count. Babies in the 6-ounce range, that kind of baby. (I'm citing this from memory, so I've probably got the exact figures wrong.) Yes, we have a higher infant mortality rate than other developed countries. But we are also saving many more very premature babies than they are. My other favorite baby statistic is that apparently Hispanic mothers, who tend to give birth at home, have lower infant mortality rates than other groups...... I stumbled across that stat one day and didn't know what to make of it; my sense was that epidemiologists don't know what to make of it, either. (Again, I'm writing from memory. I could have this wrong.) -- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2005
I've gotta check into that Hispanic-mothers figure! -- CarolynJohnston - 04 Aug 2005
Yeah -- whether you call the event a "miscarriage" or "infant mortality" affects the numbers dramatically! -- StephanieO - 04 Aug 2005
the low birth-weight paradox
Statistics is a really tricky tool, easy to lie with and easy to misunderstand: but how it sharpens your thinking. When I was looking around online, I came across the following mind-bender on Wikipedia, called the low birth-weight paradox. Babies weighing less than 2500 gms at birth are said to have a low birth weight (remember that figure). Low birth weight babies in a given population have a higher mortality rate than normal babies. Smoking mothers are more likely to have low birth weight babies, and children of smoking mothers are more likely to die at birth. No surprise there either. However, low birth weight babies of smoking mothers have a lower mortality rate than low birth weight babies of non-smoking mothers. How can this be? The reason is the arbitrary choice of cut-off (2500 gms) for the definition of low birth-weight babies. Smoking causes the overall distribution of birth weights of babies to decrease, pushing more otherwise healthy babies into the low birth weight category. If we move the cut-off downward, to agree with the average decrease in birth weight for babies of smoking mothers, we find that (as expected) the death rate of babies below the new cutoff for smoking mothers is higher than the same rate for non-smokers. And, speaking of apparent statistical paradoxes, does anybody remember the big flap about Marilyn Vos Savant and the Monte Hall game? Does anybody want to? I love that one.low birth weight paradox (& Monty Hall)
Monty Hall, part 2
Monty Hall, part 3
false positives
false positives, part 2
Doug Sundseth on Monty Hall
John Kay: We are likely to get probability wrong (subscription only)
Monty Hall diagram from Curious Incident
probability question from Saxon 8/7
Back to main page.
Comments
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Look here for syntax help.
I have to pack & get out of here, but I remember not understanding the Monte Hall game! Your posts have been SO helpful. The low birth rate example is an important one. From time to time op-ed columnists will write these outraged columns about how every other country on the planet has a lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. and how here we are super-rich and we can't even muster up the health care to save babies, blah-blah-blah. Well, it turns out we include incredibly tiny babies in our count. Babies in the 6-ounce range, that kind of baby. (I'm citing this from memory, so I've probably got the exact figures wrong.) Yes, we have a higher infant mortality rate than other developed countries. But we are also saving many more very premature babies than they are. My other favorite baby statistic is that apparently Hispanic mothers, who tend to give birth at home, have lower infant mortality rates than other groups...... I stumbled across that stat one day and didn't know what to make of it; my sense was that epidemiologists don't know what to make of it, either. (Again, I'm writing from memory. I could have this wrong.) -- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2005
I've gotta check into that Hispanic-mothers figure! -- CarolynJohnston - 04 Aug 2005
Yeah -- whether you call the event a "miscarriage" or "infant mortality" affects the numbers dramatically! -- StephanieO - 04 Aug 2005
| WebLogForm | |
|---|---|
| Title: | the low birth-weight paradox |
| TopicType: | WebLog |
| SubjectArea: | StatisticsAbuse |
| LogDate: | 200508040019 |