Does a serial dilution experiment's model agree with its outcome?

Issue title: Statistical Models and Applications in Biomedicine

Guest editors: Boris Zaslavsky

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Blodgett, Robert J.

Affiliations: Food and Drug Administration, 5100 Paint Branch Parkway, College Park, MD, USA. Tel.: +1 301 436 1836; Fax: +1 301 436 2452; E-mail: [email protected] | Division of Biostatistics, Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, MD, USA

Abstract: Unexpected and unplanned events like lab errors can occur during scientific experiments or measurements. When they occur, a model that ignores them can be very inaccurate. Two diagnostic tools are compared. One is improb which equals the sum of the probabilities of all outcomes as likely as or less likely than the actual outcome. The second is a rarity index which is newer and equals the probability of the actual outcome divided by the probability of the most probable outcome. Serial dilution experiments are the motivating example and will be discussed extensively, although both methods may apply more generally.

Keywords: Goodness of fit, improb, rarity index, order statistics

DOI: 10.3233/MAS-2010-0157

Journal: Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 209-215, 2010