Bayesian statistics may inform public policy better than significant odds ratios

Interpretation of Genetic Association Studies: Markers with Replicated Highly Significant Odds Ratios May Be Poor Classifiers

Recent successful discoveries of potentially causal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for complex diseases hold great promise, and commercialization of genomics in personalized medicine has already begun. The hope is that genetic testing will benefit patients and their families, and encourage positive lifestyle changes and guide clinical decisions. However, for many complex diseases, it is...

Measuring Population Happiness to Inform Public Policy

This paper shows how the measurement of population happiness can inform public policy. In this context happiness refers to mood happiness, commonly referred to as Subjective Wellbeing (SWB). The essential character of SWB is that it is normally positive. It is held to be positive by a management system called SWB Homeostasis. If this management system fails, due to the balance of challenges to ...

Making sense of odds and odds ratios.

Odds and odds ratios are hard for many clinicians to understand. Odds are the probability of an event occurring divided by the probability of the event not occurring. An odds ratio is the odds of the event in one group, for example, those exposed to a drug, divided by the odds in another group not exposed. Odds ratios always exaggerate the true relative risk to some degree. When the probability...

Mischievous Odds Ratios

Climate statistics and public policy

The main lines of evidence for climate change are outlined. Alternative explanations to increased greenhouse gas concentrations are described. After discussing some statistical issues, attribution approaches are briefly described. Policy issues dealing with mitigation and adaptation are mentioned.