Use the Following Information for Following Questions

question 45

Multiple Choice

Use the following information for following questions:
A group of 500 patients who suffer from hypothyroidism, a condition in which your thyroid does
not produce enough of certain hormones, were asked to participate in a study to determine
the effectiveness of a new medication. The patients were randomly divided into two groups,
one that was given the actual medication, and one that received a placebo pill. The results of
the study are below.
-Can we conclude that the improved symptoms were caused by the new medication?

• A)Yes, this is a controlled experiment.Since a higher percent of patients who took the medication had improved symptoms, we can conclude causation.
• B)Yes, this is a controlled experiment.We can always conclude causation with a controlled experiment.
• C)No, even though this is a controlled experiment, there was no difference between the treatment and control groups, so we cannot conclude causation.
• D)No, even though this is a controlled experiment, there might be a confounding factor since the placebo group had improved symptoms too.

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Definitions:

Conditional Probabilities

Probabilities of events given the occurrence of some other event.

Likelihood Probabilities

The probabilities that reflect the plausibility of different parameter values given the observed data, used in statistical inference.

Posterior Probabilities

The probabilities assigned to outcomes or hypotheses after taking into account known data and a priori probabilities.

Prior Probabilities

Represent the probabilities of different outcomes before any evidence is considered, often used in Bayesian statistics.