5 ms·

A graph in the article is captioned: > A study of nearly 4,000 non-smoking women found that the share of Asian American women who developed lung cancer was mor

by ahepp 2y ago

A graph in the article is captioned: > A study of nearly 4,000 non-smoking women found that the share of Asian American women who developed lung cancer was more than twice that of white women. And then proceeds to list "53.4%" for Asian. Are we to believe that in a sample of "nearly 4,000 non-smoking women", over half of the Asian American women developed lung cancer? Elsewhere in the article it is said that > Among Asian American women who have lung cancer, more than 50% have never smoked" Those seem like completely different things to me...

x0x0 2y ago
I think what it means, and the graph is unclear, is that of the A-A women who developed lung cancer, 53% don't smoke. It's P(non-smoking | lung cancer, ethnicity)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ahepp 2y ago
  I think your interpretation is correct, but I'm not convinced it's just a matter of ambiguity. It looks to me like the caption on the graph is stating something that simply isn't true.
  - alphairys 2y ago
    You're right on the graph. The graph in the article is very misleading, especially the N=4000 non-smokers. If you look the table in the source paper, 53.4% of 296 Asian American Female (Single Group) lung-cancer patients are non-smokers. Also, share of lung-cancer patients being non-smoker vs. smoker being higher in Asian american females, does not necessarily mean they're more likely to get lung-cancer. This assumes the non-smoking vs. smoking population is the same in teh general population, which it isn't.
- erehweb 2y ago
  Correct, looking at the original document https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/ - search for 53.4 in that
jncfhnb 2y ago
It is saying that 53.4% of the non smoking women that developed cancer in the study were Asian. It is a dumb stat to chart without contextualizing that Asians were 15.92% of the entire study population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/table/T1/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/table/T...
- ahepp 2y ago
  My interpretation of the underlying study is that 53.4% of the asian women who developed cancer in the study were nonsmokers, which I believe is subtly different from what you said. But I think what NBC wrote on the graph is pretty unambiguous, that 53.4% of nonsmoking asian women in the study developed cancer. They titled the graph "Lung cancer among nonsmokers, by race" when it should really be "Nonsmoking among Lung Cancers, by race". Or do you think between the title, caption, and data, their chart is presented in a way that can be argued is correct? It doesn't seem like it to me.
  - lupire 2y ago
    It's a lost cause. No one labels charts correctly when presenting complex conditionals breakdowns. It's impossible to cram the proper grammar into the brief titles.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Well your interpretation is not correct as you can validate because I posted the source table for you. 53.4% is the share of non smoking women who got lung cancer in the study that were Asian.
    - ahepp 2y ago
      Actually, I did use the table you posted to validate my interpretation was correct before I posted it. Searching for the string "53.4" will direct you to the following: female incident lung cancer cases smoking status total never ever unknown Asian | 296 (7.7) 158 (53.4) 103 (34.8) 35 (11.8)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by ahepp 2y ago

x0x0 2y ago

I think what it means, and the graph is unclear, is that of the A-A women who developed lung cancer, 53% don't smoke. It's P(non-smoking | lung cancer, ethnicity)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ahepp 2y ago
I think your interpretation is correct, but I'm not convinced it's just a matter of ambiguity. It looks to me like the caption on the graph is stating something that simply isn't true.
- alphairys 2y ago
  You're right on the graph. The graph in the article is very misleading, especially the N=4000 non-smokers. If you look the table in the source paper, 53.4% of 296 Asian American Female (Single Group) lung-cancer patients are non-smokers. Also, share of lung-cancer patients being non-smoker vs. smoker being higher in Asian american females, does not necessarily mean they're more likely to get lung-cancer. This assumes the non-smoking vs. smoking population is the same in teh general population, which it isn't.
erehweb 2y ago
Correct, looking at the original document https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/ - search for 53.4 in that

jncfhnb 2y ago

It is saying that 53.4% of the non smoking women that developed cancer in the study were Asian. It is a dumb stat to chart without contextualizing that Asians were 15.92% of the entire study population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/table/T1/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/table/T...

ahepp 2y ago
My interpretation of the underlying study is that 53.4% of the asian women who developed cancer in the study were nonsmokers, which I believe is subtly different from what you said. But I think what NBC wrote on the graph is pretty unambiguous, that 53.4% of nonsmoking asian women in the study developed cancer. They titled the graph "Lung cancer among nonsmokers, by race" when it should really be "Nonsmoking among Lung Cancers, by race". Or do you think between the title, caption, and data, their chart is presented in a way that can be argued is correct? It doesn't seem like it to me.
- lupire 2y ago
  It's a lost cause. No one labels charts correctly when presenting complex conditionals breakdowns. It's impossible to cram the proper grammar into the brief titles.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Well your interpretation is not correct as you can validate because I posted the source table for you. 53.4% is the share of non smoking women who got lung cancer in the study that were Asian.
  - ahepp 2y ago
    Actually, I did use the table you posted to validate my interpretation was correct before I posted it. Searching for the string "53.4" will direct you to the following: female incident lung cancer cases smoking status total never ever unknown Asian | 296 (7.7) 158 (53.4) 103 (34.8) 35 (11.8)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]