Maths

n the processed meat industry, food safety and microbiological shelf life issues lend themselves to the use of probability modeling. Our research concentrated on predicting the effectiveness of sodium lactate as an antibotulinal agent in vacuum packaged, uncured and cured turkey breast model systems. In uncured turkey breast containing 1.4% NaCl, 0.3% Na phosphate, and 0–3% Na lactate, the antibotulinal effect of sodium lactate can be predicted using the following model: Days to toxicity = 3.13+0.39(Na lactate)2. Using cured turkey breast with 0.3% Na phosphate, 0.2% sucrose, 0–3% Na lactate, the time to toxicity can be predicted from the following model: Days to toxicity = 1.69+4.88(NaCl)−11.16(Na lactate)+7.23(Na lactate)2. Probability models have also been developed to predict the refrigerated shelf life of specific processed meat products. The usefulness of the predictive modeling for food safety and quality in the food industry

The Probability of Penalizing the Innocent Due to Bad Test Results |

In modern society two-outcome tests are everywhere. They include drug tests, sobriety tests, disease tests, genetic tests, etc.. The outcome of these tests are either positive or negative, yes or no. We like to think these tests are at least 99% accurate, and yet, horror stories of spurious results seem to abound. Take company-wide drug testing, opponents may claim that at least a third of those identified as drug users will actually be innocent. If we assume the test is 99% accurate, this claim sounds ridiculous. But is it? |

To analyze the claim we will "grow" a decision tree. Decision trees are a wonderful little device for analyzing anything with two possible outcomes. Every time we reach the end of a branch and have  two possibilities we simply create a set of two new branches. For our analysis, we will assume that 2% of all employees actually use drugs. This is lower than the general population but keep in mind that a lot of drug users are unemployed....