This has nothing to do with normal distributions, as Robert Dawson noted yesterday. The article I cited makes no mention of normal distributions, and I didn't mean to imply that it did.
Rich Strauss At 04:29 AM 11/29/01 +0000, Jerry Dallal wrote: >Rich Strauss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >:>If the trend continues nationwide, this newspaper could someday report >:>that an apparently alarming cluster of cancer cases has arisen in an >:>innocuous normal distribution, and students will be able to explain to >:>their parents what that means. > >: The reporting of cancer clusters already happens on a regular basis, >: including in the NYTimes. An excellent article on "The Cancer-Cluster >: Myth" by Atul Gawande was published in The New Yorker, 8 Feb 99. It was >: reprinted in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing" last year >: (2000, Houghton Mifflin). > >I'd be happy if *anyone* could explain to me what "an apparently >alarming cluster of cancer cases has arisen in an innocuous normal >distribution" means! I *think* there's an unfortunate use of the word >"normal" here, but I can't be sure. =================================================== Richard E. Strauss (806) 742-2719 Biological Sciences (806) 742-2963 Fax Texas Tech University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lubbock, TX 79409-3131 http://www.biol.ttu.edu/Faculty/FacPages/Strauss/Strauss.html =================================================== ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
