National Cancer Institute Data

From the dataset, information about the rate of lung and bronchus cancer diagnosis of different races per 100,000 people from the year 2000 to 2015 is shown. The races include the American Indian/ Alaska Native, Asian/ Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic and whites. All the races consist of Hispanics. An analysis is done that aims to capture measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion of the dataset. The measures of central tendency include mean, mode and median while the measures of variation are the variance, standard deviation and range of the data.

The means measure the average number of lung and bronchus cancer diagnosis per 100,000 people that have been recorded from 2000 to 2015. Hispanics recorded a lower mean of 31.49 while the blacks recorded the highest mean with 70. The rest of the races, which include American Indians, Asians and whites had means of 43.28, 38.51 and 62.73. Moreover, not all the races had a modal number, only Asian, Hispanic and the whites have similar rates that reoccur and the values are 36.6, 34.1 and 65.8. The median rate for each race is 43.85, 38.9, 71.4, 32.1 and 64.55 respectively.

The variance, which is essentially the average of squared differences of the rates from the mean rates of each variable is measured. The variances for each race is shown in the table below. Asian/ Pacific Islander race has the lowest variance of 5.68 indicating very little deviation of the yearly individual rates from the mean rate while the blacks have higher variance of 45.43 indicating a high variation to the mean rate. The standard deviation for each variable is directly proportional to the variances as it is a square root of the same. The range of the variables show difference between the maximum values and the minimum values in each race variable. Asian race has the lowest range of 7.8 while the black race has the highest race of 21.6.

Table 1 Table showing the analysis of the lung and bronchus data diagnosis 

From analyzed descriptive statistics above, we notice that blacks generally had the highest rate of diagnosis of lung and bronchus cancer. However, the variation of yearly diagnosis is quite high with the data showing a gradual decrease in rate of diagnosis among all races with the exception of one, the American Indian. The American Indian race experienced a 6.7% increase in diagnosis rate between 2014 and 2015. Hispanics generally have a lower rate of diagnosis, with variation of values between years not being too large. While more effort needs to be made to ensure early diagnosis of the cancer and ensuring better the chances of survival for each individual race, there is a lot more that needs to be done to cater for those already diagnosed. Investment in cancer infrastructure as well as human capital needs to consider the rate of diagnosis of different races and be made proportionally to the rate of diagnosis. In this case, areas with blacks will take the lead followed by areas that have whites, then American Indian race, Asians and lastly Hispanics. In mixed population areas, a model needs to be considered that can ensure that all the races in the metropolitan area are catered for. Moreover, the sudden increase in rate of diagnosis among the American Indians need also to looked at and more research done so as to establish the cause.

References

National Cancer Institute (2018) Lung and bronchus cancer. Retrieved from Janary 8, 2019 from https://seer.cancer.gov/explorer/application.php?site=47&data_type=1&graph_type=2&compareBy=race&chk_sex_1=1&chk_race_5=5&chk_race_4=4&chk_race_3=3&chk_race_6=6&chk_race_2=2&chk_age_range_1=1&chk_data_type_1=1&advopt_precision=1&advopt_display=1&showDataFor=sex_1_and_age_range_1_and_data_type_1 

How to calculate Standard Deviation, Mean, Variance Statistics, Excel. (2009). Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efdRmGqCYBk 

Ahn, S., & Fessler, J. A. (2003). Standard errors of mean, variance, and standard deviation estimators.  EECS Department, The University of Michigan , 1-2.