February 2007
Beginner to intermediate
464 pages
16h
English
Suppose "Dr. Art Ary" is planning a small trial to obtain some sound human data on a novel biologic called nissenex, which could reduce percent atheroma volume in patients with atherosclerosis. Even Dr. Ary is skeptical about nissenex, however, giving it a 2% chance of being truly effective: γ = 0.02. Using a reasonable characterization of the infinite data set presuming nissenex is really efficacious, the power for the key hypothesis test is judged to be 0.83 at α = 0.05 and N = 120. Accordingly, the crucial error rates are α* = 0.75 and β* = 0.004. Thus, three out of four significant tests will be misleading.
Does this high α* value imply that the study should not be run? ...
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