So when the “1 in 2 of us will get cancer” statistic comes up on TV, is it right that us and the person we’re sitting with are wondering who will get it?
That doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but at the same time I can’t explain it.
So does “1 in 2”, “1 in 10” etc mean “2 people sat on a couch, 1 of you is getting cancer”, “look at 10 people in the street and 1 will get cancer”?
EDIT: cheers everyone for your explanations! Colour me informed.
In: Biology
Statistics are measures of groups. So, yes, in a sense given a 1 in 2 chance, for any group of 2 persons one is likely to get the disease. But it is a statistic on a very large group – so there is no guarantee that in small samples.
One way to think about it is using coin flips. 1 in every 2 flips is expected to be heads. But if you flip the coin and it comes up tails, this does not guarantee that the next flip MUST be heads. There is no way to predict individual outcomes with certainty using a group statistic (unless the probability is 0 or 1 ie it will never happen or it will always happen)
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