full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Peter Donnelly: How juries are fooled by statistics

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Why do we care about that? Well, there are lots of reasons. The most pressing one is that we want to understand how some differences make some people seutpsilcbe to one disease — type-2 diabetes, for example — and other differences make people more susceptible to heart disease, or stroke, or autism and so on. That's one big project. There's a second big pcrojet, recently fnedud by the Wellcome Trust in this country, involving very large studies — thousands of individuals, with each of eight different diseases, common diseases like type-1 and type-2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, bipolar desisae and so on — to try and understand the genetics. To try and understand what it is about genetic differences that causes the diseases. Why do we want to do that? Because we understand very little about most human diseases. We don't know what causes them. And if we can get in at the bttoom and uatdnsrned the genetics, we'll have a window on the way the disease wkros, and a whole new way about thinking about disease therapies and preventative treatment and so on. So that's, as I said, the little drveoisin on my main love.

Open Cloze


Why do we care about that? Well, there are lots of reasons. The most pressing one is that we want to understand how some differences make some people ___________ to one disease — type-2 diabetes, for example — and other differences make people more susceptible to heart disease, or stroke, or autism and so on. That's one big project. There's a second big _______, recently ______ by the Wellcome Trust in this country, involving very large studies — thousands of individuals, with each of eight different diseases, common diseases like type-1 and type-2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, bipolar _______ and so on — to try and understand the genetics. To try and understand what it is about genetic differences that causes the diseases. Why do we want to do that? Because we understand very little about most human diseases. We don't know what causes them. And if we can get in at the ______ and __________ the genetics, we'll have a window on the way the disease _____, and a whole new way about thinking about disease therapies and preventative treatment and so on. So that's, as I said, the little _________ on my main love.

Solution


  1. susceptible
  2. works
  3. diversion
  4. understand
  5. bottom
  6. funded
  7. project
  8. disease

Original Text


Why do we care about that? Well, there are lots of reasons. The most pressing one is that we want to understand how some differences make some people susceptible to one disease — type-2 diabetes, for example — and other differences make people more susceptible to heart disease, or stroke, or autism and so on. That's one big project. There's a second big project, recently funded by the Wellcome Trust in this country, involving very large studies — thousands of individuals, with each of eight different diseases, common diseases like type-1 and type-2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, bipolar disease and so on — to try and understand the genetics. To try and understand what it is about genetic differences that causes the diseases. Why do we want to do that? Because we understand very little about most human diseases. We don't know what causes them. And if we can get in at the bottom and understand the genetics, we'll have a window on the way the disease works, and a whole new way about thinking about disease therapies and preventative treatment and so on. So that's, as I said, the little diversion on my main love.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
average number 6
human genome 3
cot death 3
sally clark 3
logical error 3
daunting experience 2
sarah thought 2
modern genetics 2
genome project 2
test positive 2
risk factors 2
build bridges 2
misrepresented evidence 2
people argued 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
human genome project 2

Important Words


  1. autism
  2. big
  3. bipolar
  4. bottom
  5. care
  6. common
  7. coronary
  8. country
  9. diabetes
  10. differences
  11. disease
  12. diseases
  13. diversion
  14. funded
  15. genetic
  16. genetics
  17. heart
  18. human
  19. individuals
  20. involving
  21. large
  22. lots
  23. love
  24. main
  25. people
  26. pressing
  27. preventative
  28. project
  29. reasons
  30. stroke
  31. studies
  32. susceptible
  33. therapies
  34. thinking
  35. thousands
  36. treatment
  37. trust
  38. understand
  39. wellcome
  40. window
  41. works