In the shoot-em-up crime novel "Hard Eight" by J. Evanovich, at one point our heroine says,
"I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you're bent over about the color, don't leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want."
Clearly, most of us would rather pick balls out of a bag, than grab for possums, Tb infected or not. In view of the teeth on the possums of my acquaintance, I think I will happily abstract from possums to balls in the bag, and I hope Guy is willing, also :)
Cheers,
Jay
Guy Forrester wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Many thanks for all your replies concerning CIs on proportions in finite populations. People recommended the hypergeometric distribution (the method I used) and a BUGS approach (I don't have the BUGS programming skills). The problem is well covered in the literature, I didn't make the connection between possums with Tb and coloured balls in urns!
>
> best wishes
>
> Guy
>
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--
Jay Warner
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