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.html http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 5845]