The Diagnostic Process with Special Reference to Errors

An analysis is made of the losses due to errors in the diagnostic process. The basic assumption is that the doctor should try to maximize expected utility, where the utility allows both for the health of the patient and for »costs« of various kinds. This assumption leads to the view that in general the doctor should make use of a diagnostic search tree. Owing to the difficulty of estimating utilities and of back-tracking in a large tree it is convenient for him to use substitutes for utility, called quasi-utilities, such as mean information transfer or expected weight of evidence. After listing a number of such quasi-utilities, the effect on their expectations due to error is considered. The losses can be larger than might have been supposed. Much of the analysis could also be applied to scientific problems other than to medical diagnosis.

[1]  D. Cox,et al.  The analysis of binary data , 1971 .

[2]  I. J. Good,et al.  Some statistical methods in machine intelligence research , 1970 .

[3]  I. J. Good,et al.  The estimation of the implicit utilities of medical consultants , 1970 .

[4]  L. Lusted.  Perception of the roentgen image: applications of signal detectability theory. , 1969, Radiologic clinics of North America.

[5]  W. Kissick.  Introduction to Medical Decision making , 1969 .

[6]  I. Good,et al.  Utility of a Distribution , 1968, Nature.

[7]  I. Good.  Corroboration, Explanation, Evolving Probability, Simplicity and a Sharpened Razor , 1968, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[8]  N. Grew.  Cosmologia sacra : or, A discourse of the universe as it is the creature and kingdom of God , 1968 .

[9]  S. F. Buck,et al.  Models for Use in Investigating the Risk of Mortality from Lung Cancer and Bronchitis , 1967 .

[10]  I. J. Good,et al.  How to Estimate Probabilities , 1966 .

[11]  D. A. Franklin,et al.  CONSTRUCTION OF A MODEL FOR COMPUTER-ASSISTED DIAGNOSIS: APPLICATION TO THE PROBLEM OF NON-TOXIC GOITRE , 1966 .

[12]  G. Wagner,et al.  [Bibliography on the topic "The role of error in medicine; Quality control as a task of medical dokumentation"]. , 1964, Methods of Information in Medicine.

[13]  I. Good.  Maximum Entropy for Hypothesis Formulation, Especially for Multidimensional Contingency Tables , 1963 .

[14]  D. Hillman.  The probability of induction , 1963 .

[15]  I. Good.  How Rational Should a Manager be , 1962 .

[16]  D. Kerridge.  Inaccuracy and Inference , 1961 .

[17]  I. Good.  Weight of Evidence, Corroboration, Explanatory Power, Information and the Utility of Experiments , 1960 .

[18]  Arthur L. Samuel,et al.  Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers , 1967, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[19]  Allen Newell,et al.  Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity , 1958, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[20]  E. Jaynes.  Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics , 1957 .

[21]  Irving John Good,et al.  The Surprise Index for the Multivariate Normal Distribution , 1956 .

[22]  D. Lindley.  On a Measure of the Information Provided by an Experiment , 1956 .

[23]  I. Good,et al.  THE NUMBER OF NEW SPECIES, AND THE INCREASE IN POPULATION COVERAGE, WHEN A SAMPLE IS INCREASED , 1956 .

[24]  Irving John Good,et al.  Some Terminology and Notation in Information Theory , 1956 .

[25]  J. Yerushalmy,et al.  Reliability of chest radiography in the diagnosis of pulmonary lesions. , 1955, American journal of surgery.

[26]  Philip M. Woodward,et al.  Probability and Information Theory with Applications to Radar , 1954 .

[27]  I. Good.  THE POPULATION FREQUENCIES OF SPECIES AND THE ESTIMATION OF POPULATION PARAMETERS , 1953 .

[28]  Lee J. Cronbach,et al.  A CONSIDERATION OF INFORMATION THEORY AND UTILITY THEORY AS TOOLS FOR PSYCHOMETRIC PROBLEMS , 1953 .

[29]  L. Stein,et al.  Probability and the Weighing of Evidence , 1950 .

[30]  H. Jeffreys.  An invariant form for the prior probability in estimation problems , 1946, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.