When normal electrocardiogram is not normal?

The normal composite electrocardiogram.

The normal electrocardiogram.

O NE of the most difficult tasks which confronts the w orker in the life sciences is to define a normal. The difficulty is compounded when the measurement to be made is affected by many variables which differ in importance from time to time. These remarks apply to the electrocardiographer, and to the normal electrocardiogram. Some variables which affect the electrocardiogram are quite well know...

Puberty: when is it normal?

C lassically, the normal chronological age for pubertal onset is between 8 and 13 years in girls and 9 and 14 years in boys based on data from epidemiological studies from the 60’s (1). However, the age limit for pubertal timing is still a challenge (2,3). It is well known that puberty is a complex and multi factorial process that involves genetic, metabolic, socio economic, nutritional and eth...

Rape: when the exam is normal.

In this case report we present the sexual assault of a stuporous victim by a suspect who videotaped their encounter. We review the role of substance use and exam findings and discuss both victim and suspect factors that may lead to a negative examination of the victim.

Assessing when a sample is mostly normal

The use of trimming procedures constitutes a natural approach to robustifying statistical methods. This is the case of goodness-of-fit tests based on a distance, which can be modified by choosing trimmed versions of the distributions minimizing that distance. In this paper we consider the L2-Wasserstein distance and introduce the trimming methodology for assessing when a data sample can be cons...