Bayes, Medical Diagnostics, and Nomograms
What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

Joe Marasco
Barbecue Joe

Modern medicine makes extensive use of high technology. On the other hand, medical decision making is still rather opaque from the patient's point of view. We propose a protocol that uses Bayes' Theorem to incorporate diagnostic tests in a way that can be easily explained to patients. As part of this protocol, we show how nomograms can be used not only to perform the relevant calculations, but to better communicate the process to the patient.

Video:

This talk can be viewed live on the Internet at http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/live/ee380.asx on 11 April between 4:15PM and 5:30PM Pacific time.

The archived video can be accessed following the presentaton at http://ee380.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/videologger.php?target=120411-ee380-300.asx.

Slides:

Download the slides for this presentation in PDF format.

Further Reading:

Marasco, J., Doerfler, R., and Roschier, L. 2011. Doc, What Are My Chances? The UMAP Journal 32 (4): 279-298.

See also the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJS_jskR39k.

and these websites:

• http://www.pynomo.org Leif Roschier's PyNomo software for automating the production of nomograms.
• http://www.comap.com/product/?idx=1332 The UMAP Journal page for the article cited above.
• http://www.modernnomograms.com Additional copies of our nomograms can be obtained through this site, which includes a downloadable version of the article.

After 17 years with Rational Software, Joe Marasco retired in 2003 as a senior vice-president and business-unit manager. From 2005 to 2008, he was President and CEO of Ravenflow, a software startup addressing requirements definition using natural language processing. He holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects (Addison-Wesley, 2005), which has been translated into four languages.

Contact information:

Joe Marasco
1201 Hawkins Way
Pebble Beach, CA 93953
E-mail: joe@barbecuejoe.com
Landline: (831) 250-7162