EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Qualitative Probability versus Quantitative Probability in Clinical Diagnosis

Tim Chard

Medical Decision Making, 1991, vol. 11, issue 1, 38-41

Abstract: The use of Bayes' theorem as a diagnostic tool in clinical medicine normally requires an input of exact probability estimates. However, humans tend to think in categories ("likely," "unlikely," etc.) rather than in terms of exact probability. A computer simulation of the pre senting features of a case of pelvic infection has been used to compare the effects of quantitative and qualitative probability estimates on the diagnostic accuracy of Bayes' theo rem. For the commoner conditions (prior probability ≥ 0.2) the use of a two- or three-category system is virtually equivalent to the use of exact probability. However, uncommon conditions (prior probability ≤ 0.03) are completely ignored by the qualitative system. It is concluded that the use of simple categories of probability is acceptable for a Bayesian diagnostic system provided that the target conditions have a relatively high prior probability. Key words: Bayes' theorem; quantitative probability; qualitative probability; computer simulation. (Med Decis Making 1991;11:38-41)

Date: 1991
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X9101100106 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:11:y:1991:i:1:p:38-41

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9101100106

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Medical Decision Making
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:11:y:1991:i:1:p:38-41