Wolfy wrote:
>...The numbers still added up. They were still real. But they were
>lies in that they did not represent the real "truth".
Well, that is one reason that people need to know what the terms mean:
Mean (average)
Median (middle)
Mode (most common)
When a person knows those (and a bit more sure helps, but those are the
first things to learn) it becomes easier to know when the results might
not say quite what they ***seem*** to say if the distribution and
method of collection are given. Often in vet studies (as opposed to
political sampling) those ARE given.
What took me by surprise -- and the focus of my post -- was that the
person did not know or even suspect that "mean" was a math term. The
individual thought that it meant something like "miserly and bad" so
the meaning of the sentence about recurrence was completely
misunderstood and that misunderstanding had a negative effect on the
medical choices made till it was clarified.
Hence, the very short math lesson with pointers to friendly places to
learn more sent 2 days ago.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/http://ferrethealth.org/archive/http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.htmlhttp://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/http://www.ferretcongress.org/http://www.trifl.org/index.shtmlhttp://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
[Posted in FML 5845]
