A poem about regression to the mean

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• Format Videos
• Language/s English
• Target Audience Schools, Further education
• EBM Stage 3 - Appraising evidence
• Duration <5 mins
• Difficulty Intermediate

Key Concepts addressed

• 2-3d Fair comparisons with few people or outcome events can be misleading

Details

This is a funny 1-minute poem about regression to the mean, a common statistical phenomenon which often misleads people (www.inkpotamus.com )

Natural variation in the occurrence of an event can mislead us into thinking that an intervention has been effective when it hasn’t.  For example, if a golfer has had a particularly bad round and she changes her grip on the club, she might shoot a better round the next time.  But is this down to the changed grip, or is it just the natural variation in her score?

This is called “regression to the mean”.

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