To continue: Age, ethnicity, diet, and many other things affect the likelihood of developing breast cancer.
Makes no difference. Even when these are accounted for, chance predicts these "surprising" results, and
human nature predicts that they will be confounded with causality.
For another example, assume that on average, each square mile of the earth's surface is
struck by one meteor of a certain size each year. How many square miles of the earth's surface
will be hit by no meteors at all, and how many will be hit by more than 5?
Click on 1 in the "m (expected occurrences per trial)" box and on 200,000,000
[square miles of the earth's surface] in the "Number of Trials". Then click the COMPUTE button.
The answer is that
73,575,888 square miles will escape bombardment totally, while 731,969 square miles
will be hit five or more times. (200,000,000 - 199,268,031, the number of square miles
hit 4 or fewer times.)
Finally, please note that when a 1 or zero is shown in the cumulative probability or expected trials field, it does not mean exactly zero or 1, just that the number is closer to zero or 1
than any number that can be displayed in the space available without resorting to floating point notation.
©Copyright 1997, 2006 Chuck Anesi all rights reserved