recent ny times blurb on mammogram math-
interesting and informative-
some of the meat (? veggies ?)-
To see why, let’s suppose 100,000 screenings for this cancer are conducted. Of these, how many are positive? On average, 500 of these 100,000 people (0.5 percent of 100,000) will have cancer, and so, since 95 percent of these 500 people will test positive, we will have, on average, 475 positive tests (.95 x 500). Of the 99,500 people without cancer, 1 percent will test positive for a total of 995 false-positive tests (.01 x 99,500 = 995). Thus of the total of 1,470 positive tests (995 + 475 = 1,470), most of them (995) will be false positives, and so the probability of having this cancer given that you tested positive for it is only 475/1,470, or about 32 percent!
for full text-
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/magaz ... nted=print
happy new year-
merry kwanza-
rich
mammogram math
-
John Leary
- Hardcore Co-op Volunteer
- Posts: 559
- Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2007 7:32 pm
- Location: Metuchen
- Contact:
Rich, I edited your posting text so it would show up properly.
Apparently, the way you used the "url" tag in your posting confused the messageboard software completely. Never seen this before. All I had to do was remove the tag and your text came right through. Which is fine, because the messageboard software automatically recognizes URL's in our entries and turns them into links.
Apparently, the way you used the "url" tag in your posting confused the messageboard software completely. Never seen this before. All I had to do was remove the tag and your text came right through. Which is fine, because the messageboard software automatically recognizes URL's in our entries and turns them into links.