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A special case: Disease ratesA common use of this type of reasoning is in epidemiology, the study of the distribution of disease in a population. Base rates are often used to calculate the likelihood of dying from a specific disease.According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, in any given year, about 910,000 Americans (almost one million) die from cardiovascular disease (diseases of the heart and blood vessels). Because there are about 250 million Americans, we can say that the base rate of death from cardiovascular disease in the American population is about 1/250, or 0.4%. That means the likelihood of any one individual dying from cardiovascular disease in a particular year is about half of 1%. |