Statistics

David Poncelow — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 21:43:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about statistics this past week. This cancer I’ve got is pretty uncommon, so I keep digging to try to find how uncommon it is, how unlikely that I ended up with this. The best I’ve found so far came from a study that my surgeon gave me a copy of. It’s a thirty year study, covering around 400,000 breast cancer cases. Of those, about 2000 are men, 22 under 35.

I also keep looking for statistics on my ‘chances’. I’ve found everywhere from 67% to 85% for my cancer and my stage. I’ve found graphs, charts, and mortality data. I’ve read many, many reports and study abstracts, and I’ve distilled it all down to what that data means to me.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Statistics are wonderful things. When data is complex they allow us to find patterns and make intelligent decisions with incomplete data. Sometimes a graph or a table of aggregated data makes something obvious that never would have been otherwise. But that’s the key word - aggregated. This time, it’s just me.

When we read a book, we don’t look at likelihoods and chances. In a whodunnit we don’t try to calculate the odds that it was the butler, and when a character gets sick, we don’t try to figure out his chances. We may get agitated, scared or tense, but we wait for the story to unfold. By myself, I’m not a statistic. But I do have a story.

Numbers just can’t summarize me or describe this situation. They can’t tell the whole story. They don’t include my attitude, my health, my willingness and ability to heal. They can’t describe this particular cancer, my environment, all the people supporting me. It doesn’t matter if statistics say that I have an 85% chance- like it or not, there are plenty of stories in both sides of that number. Numbers can’t tell me what’s going to happen.

But trying to know what will happen is precisely why I find myself so obsessed with these statistics. When the doubt and fear descend, we cleave to whatever we can to try to reassure ourselves. Fortune tellers, throwing bones, ouija boards- all exist because we want to know what can’t be known, we want to have a glimpse into the future so that we don’t have to worry. We can obsess over statistics in the same sort of superstitious way. We know that a coin has even chances of coming up heads or tails, but the quarter that’s flipping through the air will come down only one way, and we have no idea of knowing which.

It’s reassuring for me to realize this - focussing on statistics reduces the way I view myself to a bunch of digits that don’t really apply to anything. Thinking of my experiences as a story that unfolds re-humanizes them, makes them real. There isn’t much room in a bunch of percentages for real life- for hope, disappointment, joy, humor. There is just doubt, and from that doubt, fear. I have no desire to suspend my joyful life for only uncertainty and anticipation.

I contribute to statistics, they don’t contribute to me. Aspects of my story can be abstracted, summarized and aggregated to find patterns that help scientists and doctors learn about this disease, but they don’t rule my fate. Whatever happens won’t be affected by the most recent study I can find with the most data. For me to know, I’m just going to have to be patient and let this story unfold.

Z80 - The Diagnosis Is Not Consistent With The Gender of the Patient: Tag statistics

Statistics