Listen my dears and you will learn the difference between incidence and prevalence and why effective treatment for a disease may mean that more people have it. Prevalence is the number of people in the population who have a disease. It is computed as Number of people with disease X 1,000 Number in population…
You’d think the ultimate example of simplicity in measurement would be mortality rate. Count up the dead people – they aren’t hard to catch. Divide by the total number of people you had when you started. Done. It’s not super complicated but it is slightly more complicated than that. First of all, how do you…
What’s it like starting a company with your spouse? I get this question fairly often. Several times now, I’ve heard investors say they don’t like to invest in couples, while in the same breath saying that they like to invest in companies with co-founders who have known each other a long time. So … starting…
Our Project Manager, Jessica, made the very insightful comment at lunch the other day, No one cares how hard it was for you to make. When people are looking to buy your product, all they want to know is what it will do for them. That young woman has a bright future in marketing. Unfortunately…
I think descriptive statistics are under-rated. One reason I like Leon Gordis’ Epidemiology book is that he agrees with me. He says that sometimes statistics pass the “inter-ocular test”. That is, they hit you right between the eyes. I’m a big fan of eye-balling statistics and SAS/GRAPH is good for that. Let’s take this example….
After I recommended a business incubator to an acquaintance, one of my co-founders protested, “But I thought you said incubators were useless.” I told her no, I didn’t say incubators were useless. I said they were useless for US at this stage in our company. There are times when the right incubator can be extremely…
Frequently, I hear adults who should know better argue against learning something, whether it is algebra, analysis of variance or learning a programming language. They say, I’m 47 years old and I’ve never used (insert thing I didn’t learn here). Yes, that is true. However, if you had learned it, there is a good chance…
According to the New York Times, 45% of people make New Year’s resolutions and although 54% of them fail, the percentage who succeed (46% , proof that I can subtract and understand the concept of percentages) is more than ten times higher than for those people who say they would like to change but don’t…