Folic Acid and Birth Defects. For several years, evidence had been mounting that folic acid reduces major birth defects. A. Czeizel and I. Dudas of the National Institute of Hygiene in Budapest directed a study that provided the strongest evidence to date. Their results were published in the paper “Prevention of the First Occurrence of Neural-Tube Defects by Periconceptional Vitamin Supplementation” (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327(26), p. 1832). For the study, the doctors enrolled women prior to conception and divided them randomly into two groups. One group, consisting of 2701 women, took daily multivitamins containing 0.8 mg of folic acid; the other group, consisting of 2052 women, received only trace elements. Major birth defects occurred in 35 cases when the women took folic acid and in 47 cases when the women did not. a. At the 1% significance level, do the data provide sufficient evidence to conclude that women who take folic acid are at lesser risk of having children with major birth defects? b. Is this study a designed experiment or an observational study? Explain your answer. c. In view of your answers to parts (a) and (b), could you reasonably conclude that taking folic acid causes a reduction in major birth defects? Explain your answer.
Contingency Table
A contingency table can be defined as the visual representation of the relationship between two or more categorical variables that can be evaluated and registered. It is a categorical version of the scatterplot, which is used to investigate the linear relationship between two variables. A contingency table is indeed a type of frequency distribution table that displays two variables at the same time.
Binomial Distribution
Binomial is an algebraic expression of the sum or the difference of two terms. Before knowing about binomial distribution, we must know about the binomial theorem.
Folic Acid and Birth Defects. For several years, evidence had been mounting that folic acid reduces major birth defects. A. Czeizel and I. Dudas of the National Institute of Hygiene in Budapest directed a study that provided the strongest evidence to date. Their results were published in the paper “Prevention of the First Occurrence of Neural-Tube Defects by Periconceptional Vitamin Supplementation” (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327(26), p. 1832). For the study, the doctors enrolled women prior to conception and divided them randomly into two groups. One group, consisting of 2701 women, took daily multivitamins containing 0.8 mg of folic acid; the other group, consisting of 2052 women, received only trace elements. Major birth defects occurred in 35 cases when the women took folic acid and in 47 cases when the women did not.
a. At the 1% significance level, do the data provide sufficient evidence to conclude that women who take folic acid are at lesser risk of having children with major birth defects?
b. Is this study a designed experiment or an observational study? Explain your answer.
c. In view of your answers to parts (a) and (b), could you reasonably conclude that taking folic acid causes a reduction in major birth defects? Explain your answer.
Trending now
This is a popular solution!
Step by step
Solved in 4 steps
