Does Eating Ice Cream Lead to Drowning? Not If You Understand Confounding

<p>Suppose you&rsquo;re an epidemiologist at a local health department in a resort town. The town council just had a person give testimony that ice cream leads to drowning, and they have the data to prove it. They pulled 700 random records from the local ice cream shop over the last five years, and they cross-checked with drownings. According to the data, the odds of drowning given that a person ate ice cream are 4.7, and the odds of drowning given that a person did not eat ice cream are 1.7. The odds ratio is 2.7, meaning the odds of drowning if you ate ice cream are 2.7 times the odds of drowning if you did not eat ice cream.</p> <p><a href="https://epiren.medium.com/does-eating-ice-cream-lead-to-drowning-not-if-you-understand-confounding-10c6ec5fb8a7"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>