Final answer:
Statistical data are used to determine the probability of sickness or disability, often involving hypothesis testing to compare sample data against known population parameters or to estimate prevalence rates.
Step-by-step explanation:
To analyze the probability of a sickness or disability in a population, statisticians use statistical data from various studies.
For instance, in a hypothesis test to determine whether survey participants are representative of the nationwide population with a disease, we compare the surveyed percentages with the national percentages for each age group.
A significant difference at the 5 percent level would suggest that the sample may not represent the nationwide data accurately.
In another example, when an insurance company aims to identify the proportion of doctors involved in malpractice lawsuits, they randomly select a sample and use it to estimate the parameter for the population.
Similarly, the prevalence of a disease reflects the proportion of a population affected by the disease at a given time and can inform about the overall healthcare burden.
In hypothesis testing, we formulate null and alternative hypotheses to determine whether there’s evidence to support a specific claim about the population based on the sample data.