THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Chance v Skill

Glove-slap: James.  It’s got a great calculator that you can use for anything.

Note that chance does not mean without cause. Every death has a cause, but sometimes these come together more often in certain places at certain times in ways that have nothing to do with anything we know or that can currently be known about the patient or the surgeon.

Does all this mean that every hospital mortality rate is pure chance? Of course not. There can be what’s called special-cause variation - in contrast to the common-cause variation in our calculator. Special-cause variation is when something like surgical skill is the real reason for 15 deaths. The big problem - bigger than many people think - is how to tell the difference.