Bayes’ Rule for Clinicians: An Introduction

Bayes’ Rule for Clinicians: An Introduction

Bayes' Rule is a way of calculating conditional probabilities. It is difficult to find an explanation of its relevance that is both mathematically comprehensive and easily accessible to all readers. This article tries to fill that void, by laying out the nature of Bayes' Rule and its implications for clinicians in a way that assumes little or no background in probability theory. It builds on Me...

An introduction for clinicians

An axiomatic characterization of Bayes' Rule

This paper provides an axiomatic characterization of Bayes’ Rule that is widely used for updating beliefs. Bayes’ Rule is viewed as a revision rule. Consider an agent whose belief about a set of states is characterized by a point in a unit simplex of appropriate dimension. Now new information emerges that rules out the possible occurrence of some of the states. The revision rule then assigns ne...

Mendelian randomisation in cardiovascular research: an introduction for clinicians

Understanding the causal role of biomarkers in cardiovascular and other diseases is crucial in order to find effective approaches (including pharmacological therapies) for disease treatment and prevention. Classical observational studies provide naïve estimates of the likely role of biomarkers in disease development; however, such studies are prone to bias. This has direct relevance for drug de...

MicroRNAs in cardiovascular disease: an introduction for clinicians

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding, RNA molecules approximately 22 nucleotides in length which act as post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression. Individual miRNAs have been shown to regulate the expression of multiple genes. Conversely, the expression of individual genes can be regulated by multiple miRNAs. Consequently, since their discovery just over 20 years ago, miRNAs have b...