Correlating risk factors

Cards (13)

When did the rate of lung cancer increase ?
1930s it increased sharply and scientist could not explain this
Why could scientist not carry out the experiments to see what caused lung cancer ?
it would be unethical
What did scientist do instead ?
they looked at peoples lifestyles habits to see if they could link any with lung cancer
What is epidemiology?
studying the patterns to determine risk factors
They noticed that lung cancer is more common in cigarette smoker than non-smokers
What did the scientist do after finding that out ?
they looking to see if there was a correlation between lung cancer and smoking
What did the scientist do then ?
they plotted a scatter graph
What is a positive correlation ?
a relationship between two variables that tend to move in the same direction
A correlation does not prove a cause
How do cigarettes smoking could cause cancer ?
carcinogens ; chemicals which damage DNA
What is sampling ?
observing a group of peoples lifestyle
What is biased sampling ?
taking a sample from a only one town and drawing a conclusion for the whole country because their air might be polluted where as another town in the country isnt
How to avoid a bias sample?
take a large sample as possible and must be random