MATH225 All Weeks Discussions Latest 2020 January

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 1 Discussion

Basic Statistics Data Used in Everyday Life

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

OpenStax Textbook: Chapter 1

Lesson 1 Reading

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

Present two different types of data, or variables, used in the health field. Examples could be blood pressure, temperature, pH, pain rating scales, pulse oximetry, % hematocrit, minute respiration, gender, age, ethnicity, etc.

Classify each of your variables as qualitative or quantitative and explain why they fall into the category that you chose.

Also, classify each of the variables as to their level of measurement--nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio--and justify your classifications.

Which type of sampling could you use to gather your data? (stratified, cluster, systematic, and convenience sampling)

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

Your responses to other students can explain additional analyses that could be done with the variables they selected. Consider confounding variables, discrete or continuous data, the effects of outliers, etc.

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 2 Discussion

Graphing and Describing Data in Everyday Life

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

OpenStax Book: Chapter 2—Section 2.1

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

Suppose that you have two sets of data to work with. The first set is a list of all the injuries that were seen in a clinic in a month's time. The second set contains data on the number of minutes that each patient spent in the waiting room of a doctor's office. You can make assumptions about other information or variables that are included in each data set.

For each data set, propose your idea of how best to represent the key information. To organize your data would you choose to use a frequency table, a cumulative frequency table, or a relative frequency table? Why?

What type of graph would you use to display the organized data from each frequency distribution? What would be shown on each of the axes for each graph?

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

Consider how different distributions might affect the different graphs. How might other variables affect the graphs? How could graphs be made to be biased? If a graph were biased, how might you change it to guard against that bias?

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 3 Discussion

Measures of Central Tendency and Variation

Understanding descriptive statistics, their measures of center and their variability, helps form the foundation of statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics tell us how frequently an observation occurs, what is considered average, and how far data in our sample deviate from being average. With these statistics, we are able to provide a summary of characteristics from both large and small datasets. Measures of central tendency and variability provide valuable information on their own, and form the cornerstone of the quantitative structures that we build in our research studies.

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

OpenStax Textbook: Chapter 2

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

For this Discussion, you will examine central tendency and variability in terms of pulse rate.

Find and record the pulse rate of 10 different people where you work. Tell us a little about the population from which you drew your data. Describe your findings in terms of central tendency and variability.

Consider using some of the following to help you form your initial discussion post:

What are your measures of central tendency (i.e., mean, median, and mode)? Which might be the better measure for central tendency and why?

What is the standard deviation of your data? How variable are the data (range)?

Are there any outliers? Investigate possible reasons for these outliers, and things that might limit them if further study were to be carried out.

What are some variables that should be considered in discussing your measures of central tendency and variation? Is there any skewness in your measured data?

How would you describe this data (i.e. what insights did you gain from this data)?

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 4 Discussion

Probability

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

OpenStax Textbook: Chapter 2, 3

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

Probability plays a major role in the medical community. Diagnoses are based on probabilities. They are really questions or "what if's", and are answered by the probability that the treatment will be the best for the ailment.

Let's look at probability in terms of both the real world and the medical community.

Survey 30 people to find out if they are left-handed or right-handed, and use the following chart to create a contingency table with the information.

Left handed Right handed Total Female Male Total

Answer the following questions about the information in your contingency table:

If a person is randomly selected from the survey participants, what is the probability that the person will be left-handed?

If you randomly choose a female from the people you surveyed, what is the probability that she is left-handed?

What is the odds ratio of choosing a left-handed female?

What is the relative risk of choosing a left-handed female?

Example

Green	Blue	Total
Cats	40 (A)	20 (B)	60 (A+B)
Dogs	30 (C)	40 (D)	70 (C+D)
Total	70 (A+C)	60 (B+D)	130 (A+B+C+D)

 

Probability of Green - (A+C)/(A+B+C+D): 70/130 = 54%

Probability of Green Cat - A/(A+B): 40/60 = 67%

Odds Ratio of Green Cat - (A/B)/(C/D) or AD/BC: (40*40)/(20*30) = 1600/600 = 2.67%

Relative Risk of Green Cat - [A/(A+C)]/[B/(B+D)]: (40/70)/(20/60) = 17.14%

Skim through at least one of the following articles on left-handed vs. right-handed people from the Chamberlain Library. Answer the following question: How do the probabilities and percentages for your study compare to those in the study you read?

https://search-proquest-com.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org/nahs/docview/211689160/DB2AB8D1E63B4638PQ/4?accountid=147674 (Links to an external site.)

https://search-proquest-com.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org/nahs/docview/1326739712/DB2AB8D1E63B4638PQ/10?accountid=147674 (Links to an external site.)

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

 

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 5 Discussion

The Normal Distribution

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

OpenStax Textbook: Chapter 2, 6, 7

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

Many variables in medicine follow a normal distribution where there are approximately an equal number of values below the mean as above the mean. Describe two variables that you work with that would probably follow a normal distribution. Also note which of the two variables would be likely to have a larger standard deviation and why.

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 6 Discussion

Confidence Intervals

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 8

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Confidence Intervals

In everyday terms, a confidence interval is the range of values around a sample statistic (such as mean or proportion) within which clinicians can expect to get the same results if they repeat the study protocol or intervention, including measuring the same outcomes the same ways. As you ask yourself, "Will I get the same results if I use this research?", you must address the precision of study findings, which is determined by the Confidence Interval. If the CI around the sample statistic is narrow, you can be confident you will get close to the same results if you implement the same research in your practice.

Consider the following example. Suppose that you did a systematic review of studies on the effect of tai chi exercise on sleep quality, and you found that tai chi affected sleep quality in older people. If, according to your study, you found the lower boundary of the CI to be .49, the study statistic to be 0.87, and the upper boundary to be 1.25, this would mean that each end limit is 0.38 from the sample statistic, which is a relatively narrow CI.

(UB + LB)/2 = Statistic [(1.25 + .49)/2 = .87]

Keep in mind that a mean difference of 0 indicates there is no difference; this CI does not contain 0. Therefore, the sample statistic is statistically significant and unlikely to occur by chance.

Because this was a systematic review, and tai chi exercise has been established from the studies you assessed as helping people sleep, based on the sample statistics and the CI, clinicians could now use your study and confidently include tai chi exercises among possible recommendations for patients who have difficulty sleeping.

Now you can apply your knowledge of CIs to create your own studies and make wise decisions about whether to base your patient care on a particular research finding.

Initial Post Instructions

Thinking of the many variables tracked by hospitals and doctors' offices, confidence intervals could be created for population parameters (such as means or proportions) that were calculated from many of them. Choose a topic of study that is tracked (or that you would like to see tracked) from your place of work. Discuss the variable and parameter (mean or proportion) you chose, and explain why you would use these to create an interval that captures the true value of the parameter of patients with 95% confidence.

Consider the following:

How would changing the confidence interval to 90% or 99% affect the study? Which of these values (90%, 95%, or 99%) would best suit the confidence level according to the type of study chosen? How might the study findings be presented to those in charge in an attempt to affect change at the workplace?

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 7 Discussion

Hypothesis Testing

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 9

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

Describe a hypothesis test study that would help your work or conclusions in some way. Describe what variable would be tested and what would be your guess of the value of that variable. Then include how the result, if the null were rejected or not, might change your conclusions or actions in some way.

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.

 

MATH225 Statistical Reasoning for the Health Sciences

Week 8 Discussion

Correlation and Regression

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 13

Lesson

Minimum of 1 scholarly source

In your reference for this assignment, be sure to include both your text/class materials AND your outside reading(s).

Initial Post Instructions

If a regression analysis was to be completed on body mass index (BMI), what could be an independent variable in that analysis? Why? If we could, what other independent variables should be included in the analysis? What statistic(s) would show the value of that regression in understanding BMI?

Alternatively, find an article that uses regression analysis to study a medical concern. In that study, what was the dependent variable and what were the independent variable(s)? Further, how would you use this study to highlight the difference between correlations and causation?

Follow-Up Post Instructions

Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.