BAYES OF GLORY: THE MATH BEHIND SMARTER THINKING

Sitting on her comfortable chair reading this newspaper article, Melony grew frustrated at this incorrect, as she believed it to be, article about the medication safety in Mathopolis. She sets out to prove the error in this article.

She begins by taking notes from her prior knowledge, just from reading the article.

Just then, it strikes her. Melony rushes to apply the Bayes Theorem to solve this problem, which is one of the most important ones in probability theory.

What is the Bayes Theorem?

It is a mathematical formula used to calculate conditional probability for a test result, including the likelihood of a result based on a past result with similar circumstances. It allows us to update prior information to find a final probability and helps with many different interpretations, including inferences on the accuracy of a medical test or statistical observations through models. This theorem can be applied in any scenario as long as you have the required parts of the formula.

Melony hurried to break down the problem into different parts in order to apply this scenario to the formula.

She splits it up into different Post-It Notes, attempting to find the side effect probability for each center that supplied the medications.

Melony goes on to find the probability of the two events occurring simultaneously.

She finally implements the Bayes Theorem and its complement to find the probability of each center’s side effects in an event that they both occur simultaneously.

Melony finally figured it out! She found that through the use of the Bayes Theorem, it can be seen that it wasn’t CureQuest that was at fault, but it was actually HealCo! She quickly got dressed to visit the newspaper company and let them know of her findings.

The next day, she saw a new newspaper article called, “HealCo Caught, CureQuest Cleared!” It featured a tree diagram displaying all of Melony’s work put together.