HSS 4303 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Myocardial Infarction, Reuptake, Magnesium
27 Sep 2016
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Week 2 database design and interpretation of epidemiologic literature. Continuous: flowing variable that has meaning in between its points (ex: 12. 496834 years old) Categorical: no meaning between the categories (ex: male/female, age group between 20-50: dichotomous: 2 levels (eg: male vs female, trichotomous: 3 levels (eg: short, medium, tall) Example: patient ages 0 to 70 -> over or under 50. This makes the data easier to read and creates meaning (sometimes incorrectly) Nominal (categorical): one state is not of greater value (ex: patient names) Ordinal (categorical): order is important but not distance between them (ex: how much does it hurt from 1-5?) Interval (continuous): zero has no meaning (ex: celcius) Just leave it out (depending on rules of the study) Dob is preferable since it doesn"t change with time. Ex: sin for the government, student number for uottawa. Percentage check: check only 5% of the data and see how much error there is.
