Tom Tucker, a robust 50-year-old executive living in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, has been diagnosed by a University of Minnesota internist as having a decaying liver. Although he is otherwise healthy, Tucker’s liver problem could prove fatal if left untreated. Firm research data are not yet available to predict the likelihood of survival for a man of Tucker’s age and condition without surgery. However, based on her own experience and recent medical journal articles, the internist tells him that if he elects to avoid surgical treatment of the liver problem, chances of survival will be approximately as follows: only a 60% chance of living 1 year, a 20% chance of surviving for 2 years, a 10% chance for 5 years, and a 10% chance of living to age 58. She places his probability of survival beyond age 58 without a liver transplant to be extremely low. The transplant operation, however, is a serious surgical procedure. Five percent of patients die during the operation or its recovery stage, with an additional 45% dying during the first year. Twenty percent survive for 5 years, 13% survive for 10 years, and 8%, 5%, and 4% survive, respectively, for 15, 20, and 25 years. Discussion Questions: a. What is the EMV in terms of years if Tucker decided not to have surgery? [ Select ] ["5.95", "3.34", "2.3", "1.56"] b. What is the EMV in terms of years if Tucker decided to have the surgery? [ Select ] ["4.56", "2.30", "5.95", "7.50"] c. Do you think that Tucker should select the transplant operation? [ Select ] ["Yes", "Possibly", "No", "Can not determine"]
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
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