{"id":1002,"date":"2014-11-21T20:54:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T19:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2014-11-14T17:21:22","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:21:22","slug":"statsminiblog-will-rogers-phenomenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2014\/11\/21\/statsminiblog-will-rogers-phenomenon\/","title":{"rendered":"StatsMiniBlog: Will Rogers Phenomenon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20140205-091454.jpg\"<\/a>The American humorist, Will Rogers, was reported to have said (of the migration of folk from Oklahoma to California):<\/p>\n

When the Okies<\/a> left Oklahoma<\/a> and moved to California<\/a>, they raised the average intelligence level in both states<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While this is a deeply unkind comment reinforcing geographical stereotypes, it does a neat job of capturing an epidemological paradox. If you re-define group definitions, you can make both groups averages improve (survival, or IQ) without changing one jot the overall truth. Such a phenomenon must be guarded against when re-defining risk groups, for example on the basis of new diagnostic technologies, and seeing ‘group based’ benefits.<\/p>\n

To take it pictorially:<\/p>\n

If we have two risk groups, and individuals with good (80%), moderate (50%) and poor survival (10%), we can split them like this:<\/p>\n

\"Slide1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The overall survival rate is 50%; the low risk group ~70% and high risk group ~20%.<\/p>\n

If, by better diagnostic technology, we split the orange patients out and plop them in the high risk group this happens:<\/p>\n

\"Slide2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The low risk group improves, now ~80% and high risk group also improves, now 30%. Despite our increasing surival rates in both low and high risk groups, the\u00a0overall survival rate is unchanged at 50%.<\/p>\n

We’ve done nothing.<\/p>\n

The Will Rogers phenomenon is subtle, but real. Beware when reading comparisons across time and between different groups. Is some thing really going on?<\/p>\n

– Archi<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American humorist, Will Rogers, was reported to have said (of the migration of folk from Oklahoma to California): When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states While this is a deeply unkind comment reinforcing geographical stereotypes, it does a neat job of capturing an […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2676],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}