Question

BEYOND THE NUMBERS 3.18 LEARNING OUTCOMES 4 TO 7 Statistical Significance o in the Media--Part II Section Number ని వాడు, aagumathi sat he camphorous and on the origina book page: ETI Prescription to Pass Drug Safety Tubes Concerns about Safety of vytorin Alex Berenson Su New York Times, July 22, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/ busines/22drught The following is an extract from a New York Times article on vytorin dinical trial, the cholesterol towering drug waarin did not help people with heart valve duase avoid further heart problems but did pear to increase their risk of cancer, scientists vytorin and Zeta, a companions are prescribed each month to almost three million people worldwide and are among the world's top selling medicines, in the Seas which involved nearly 1.900 patients whose heart valves were partially blocked, participants were evesether Worn or a placebo pill that contained no medicine. Scientists hoped that the trial would show that patients taking Wytorin would have a lower risk of needing valve replacement surgery or having heart failure. But the drug did not show those benefits. "No significant diference wis observed between the treatment groups for the combined primary endpoint Terje Pedersen, the principal investigator for the study and a professor medicine at Ulleval University Hospital in Norway, said. The primary endpoint is the result that scientists hope to prove when they conduta However, patients taking Worn in the Seas trial did have a sharply Sigher risk of developing and dying from cancer in the trial 102 patients taking vytorin developed cancer, compared with 67 taking the placebo. Otthon, 19 people taking Vyrin died from their cancer, compared with 23 taking placebo The absolutnumbers of cancer cases were relatively small. But they reached statistical significance ning the odds were less than that they were the result of chance BEYOND THE NUMBERS 118 281

Answer 1

Question 1:

Here we are testing whether the drug vytorin reduces the risk of needing valve replacement or heart failure.

The two outcomes we are comparing are defined as Null and alternate hypothesis below:

Null hypothesis : Patients taking vytorin drug would not have a lower risk of needing valve replacement surgery or heart failure.

Versus

Alternate hypothesis : Patients taking vytorin drug would have a lower risk of needing valve replacement surgery or heart failure

Further, we are also checking whether if taking vytorin increases the chances of cancer or not:

Null hypothesis : Taking vytorin does not increase the chances of cancer

versus

Alternate Hypothesis: Taking vytorin increases the chance of cancer

Question 2:

The percentage of albatross pairs of same sex is being compared with percentage of albatross pairs of different sex when the reader talks about statistical significance.

Statistical significance helps quantify whether a result is likely due to chance or to some factor of interest.

So, in the research the pairs of albatross of same sex and different sex were chosen by the researchers himself, they are not random. Hence, using statistical significance for the percentages of pairs of same sex is wrong here.