Tag: smoking

The Policygenius Life Insurance Price Index March 2022

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.policygenius.com/life-insurance/life-insurance-price-index/march-2022/

Excerpt:

Smokers and nonsmokers alike saw minor increases in life insurance prices from February to March. The biggest increase in average monthly premiums, of 3.26%, was seen by 25-year-old smokers buying $250,000 in coverage, and only amounts to $1.08 more a month. Most other demographics saw price increases that were less than 1%.

The minor pricing changes shouldn’t have much impact on consumers’ wallets, especially as insurers continue to compete for business. Although people buying life insurance in March may be paying a few cents more on average, most insurers are implementing pricing changes to win business rather than repel it.

Publication Date: 3 Mar 2022

Publication Site: Policygenius

Table 2 fallacy and stepwise regression

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://towardsdatascience.com/table-2-fallacy-and-stepwise-regression-smoking-research-on-covid-19-hits-some-familiar-stumbling-615cf2e28c82

Excerpt:

One problem may be the way we teach statistics to data scientists and public health professionals. Multivariable regression is often mistaken for a silver bullet that magically controls away confounding for all variables at once, as long as no confounder is left out. This is what statisticians call the “Table 2 fallacy,” because the adjusted effect sizes in a multivariable model are so often reported in Table 2. Many medical professionals learn to read research articles critically for understanding without ever having been introduced to the Table 2 fallacy.

Confounding is often taught as a purely mathematical concept, but that misses the point. Throwing a large set of variously interrelated variables into a big stepwise regression model might be expected to work, if all you know about confounding is that you should “never leave a confounder out” of your analysis.

Author(s): Savanna Reid

Publication Date: 14 February 2021

Publication Site: towards data science