On Thomas Bayes’ Theorem

Courtesy: www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

The Theory of Conditional Probability

In probability theory and statistics, Bayes’ theorem (alternatively Thomas Bayes’ law or Bayes’ rule, also written as Bayes’s theorem) describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.

Examples:

For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person’s age.

As another example, imagine there is a drug test that is 98% accurate, meaning 98% of the time it shows a true positive result for someone using the drug and 98% of the time it shows a true negative result for nonusers of the drug. Next, assume 0.5% of people use the drug. If a person selected at random tests positive for the drug, the following calculation can be made to see whether the probability the person is actually a user of the drug.

(0.98 x 0.005) / [(0.98 x 0.005) + ((1 – 0.98) x (1 – 0.005))] = 0.0049 / (0.0049 + 0.0199) = 19.76%

Bayes’ theorem shows that even if a person tested positive in this scenario, it is actually much more likely the person is not a user of the drug.

 Assessment

In finance, Bayes’ theorem can be used to rate the risk of lending money to potential borrowers.

MORE: https://www.coursera.org/lecture/combinatorics/bayes-theorem-sqAyt

Conclusion

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Healthcare Triage: Frequent Lab Testing Isn’t Very Useful

A couple of weeks ago, Mark Cuban got into an interesting debate with much of the health wonk Twitter community (including me) over whether more lab testing is better. It began when he advocated that everyone get quarterly lab testing:

While I’m a fan of Cuban’s Shark Tank, and I respect his business acumen immensely, there are a couple of things wrong with this. It’s worth discussing them in detail. We’re going to do that here today, on Healthcare Triage.

MORE:

For those of you who want to read more, here you go:

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Healthcare Triage: Frequent Lab Testing Isn’t Very Useful

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Conclusion

Your thoughts and comments on this ME-P are appreciated. Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, subscribe to the ME-P. It is fast, free and secure.

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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