Bellevue Hospital in New York City uses 100.6 °F as the lowest temperature considered to indicate a fever.
What percentage of normal and healthy adults would be considered to have
a fever?
Does this percentage suggest that a cutoff of 100.6 °F is appropriate?
There's one critical piece of information missing here, which is a measure of spread (either the standard deviation or the variance) that will tell you the distribution of the temperature of normal and healthy adults. Without that, you can't work out the answer. Do you have that information?
Okay - I've just found it on your other posting. I'll be back when I've done a few calculations.
And actually the calculations you need to perform are pretty much the same as the ones described in parts 1 and 3 of that question, so there's nothing to add here.
To calculate the percentage of normal and healthy adults considered to have a fever based on the cutoff temperature of 100.6 °F, we need to understand the normal distribution of body temperatures in adults.
1. Data collection: Collect a representative sample of body temperature measurements from a large number of normal and healthy adults. This sample needs to be random and inclusive of different demographics.
2. Calculate the mean and standard deviation: Find the mean (average) body temperature and the standard deviation of the collected data. The mean represents the most common body temperature found in the sample, while the standard deviation measures the variation in temperatures.
3. Determine the cutoff point: With Bellevue Hospital considering 100.6 °F as the cutoff for fever, we need to determine at what temperature the percentage of individuals above it becomes significant.
4. Use statistical analysis: Assuming the distribution of body temperatures in adults follows a normal distribution, you can use statistical analysis (such as the Z-score) to calculate the percentage above the cutoff temperature.
5. Interpretation: Once you have the percentage of individuals above the cutoff, you can determine if it suggests that a cutoff of 100.6 °F is appropriate.
Note: While I cannot provide specific data or results without the sample data, you can perform the statistical analysis using software like Excel, Python, or R. The steps above outline the general process for calculating the desired percentage.