Reference no: EM133365051

Question 1: Provide a summary of the article and what you thought was the main purpose of the article. Evaluate whether the article achieved its purpose. Who do you believe is the intended audience of the authors and why? Predict whether your view of the article would be the same as the view of the intended audience? Please explain.

This article goes over probability, as mostly a whole subject, explaining many parts of the concept. The writer begins by giving explanations of what probability is in more general terms and how to find it. Then, they go into details regarding probability theories, such as Bayes' theorem, and distribution charts. The theme regarding all the examples is in the medical field. I believe the main purpose of this article is to give clinical researchers an overview of the subject, should they not have had the teaching in school, or as a refresher for those who haven't dealt with it in a while. This could have been because of a lack of uniformity on statistical analyses, or there were some that were using it incorrectly. I believe my view, strictly from a definition/mathematical standpoint (ie using probability), is the same as the intended audience. However, the intended audience view will be more focused on using it in the medical field, where I wouldn't be using it.

Question 2: Describe in detail one concept which was mentioned in the article which was very easy for you to understand. Why was the concept easy for you to understand? How did the concept relate to what you already knew?

One concept described was the first mention and example of Bayes' Theorem. In the article, it mentions the issue of dealing with the sub-100% certainty of medical tests and getting false results. We are given a formula to explain the theorem and how to apply it. Bayes' theorem tells us how we might get probabilities of an event given other certain, related information. This concept was easy to understand as it was recently gone over in class. Also, the subject of the question, being a medical test, was the same as what was in our quizzes. The work shown in the article and the meaning of the results was recently gone over in class, therefore making it quite easy to understand.

Question 3: Describe in detail three concepts or points raised in the article which were difficult for you to understand or are still difficult for you to understand. Why were the concepts difficult for you to understand? How did you address or resolve the difficulties in understanding the concepts? Provide a specific example of something you did to improve your understanding of the difficult topics in the reading of the article.

Question 4: The point regarding and explaining the binomial distribution is harder for me to understand, and how it differentiates against other distributions. The way that it is explained, as a conversation with the information spread about is a bit harder for me to understand. For me, it is a bit easier to understand if given a step by step mathematical formula to equate what the answer is. Again, this is somewhat of an issue for the normal distribution and the Poisson distribution. They all have the same shape, but yet are different. I am unsure of when you are supposed to use which type of distribution, and to me it seems the article doesn't fully articulate that. To help me understand, I googled each of the distribution types and what they can be used for. This search also led me to some of the work being explained. I am usually better at listening or working through a problem as opposed to reading it.

Question 5: Describe one or more concepts in the article which you found to be particularly helpful. Why did you find the concepts to be helpful? How do the concepts apply to what you are currently reading or have already read in the course? Clearly explain similarities and differences between the article and your eBook readings.

I think that the rules of probability section was especially helpful for me. It helps to lay out the ground rules of probability to me, as I haven't dealt with it before this class. It does so well with a mostly clear way of explaining the rules. Compared to the book, the first rule of probability (being from 0-1) is nearly word for word with the article. For the second rule, the book goes further on to explain the concept of mutually exclusive, rather than calling it disjoint in the article. Rules three and four are mostly similar to the eBook, and they are also worded quite clearly and logically, making it easy for all to understand. It is also interesting that in the article it states that many clinical researchers use conditional probabilities in their work. This relates to how we have used conditional probability for the medical tests in our practice work.

Question 6: Assess whether a manager or business owner would find the article helpful or not helpful. What would you recommend specifically as an alternative reading source for a business owner or manager who could benefit from the knowledge of the concepts mentioned in the article? Be sure to explain the reason for your choice.

I believe that this article would most definitely be helpful for managers and business owners. Though the article does not use business examples, the concepts talked about are very useful for business statistics. Probabilities can help business people to find out likelihoods of people purchasing products through different advertising means or other ways to draw customers in. One such example would be testing and finding out if having the candy at the checkout line is beneficial to sales. Testing could be done to find out the likelihood of someone grabbing a piece of candy before checking out, or other such business decisions. A business person would want to know how likely it is for someone to do certain things that may be beneficial or not to their company, and this article explains much of how those statistics are found. I do not know specifically if there is another article that might specify these concepts under the lens of business, but I would say the likelihood is high.