THE RESULTS ARE IN – DID THE NUMBER OF POSITIVES IN LOCAL CORONA VIRUS TESTING CONFIRM THE PREDICTION?
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The results from the first COVID-19 sample group in my county are now on the Florida Department of Health website. In my first paper, I used the binomial distribution to predict with 94% confidence that one or more of the first 15 people in my county to be tested would return positive. Link to earlier paper.
So how well did I do?
The Florida Department of Health just reported that of the 17 people who received tests, 1 case returned positive for COVID-19.
The Prediction Confirmed
That is not the end of the story. The 99% confidence interval indicated that the true but unknown percentage of people who are being screened and then tested positive would be in the range of 15% to 20%. That suggested 2 or 3 cases out of 15 would be positive.
SINCE WE ONLY OBSERVED 1 POSITIVE (6% OF THE SAMPLE), DOES THAT PROVE THAT THE LOCAL SAMPLE GROUP IS SOMEHOW DIFFERENT THAN THE STATEWIDE POPULATION?
We left in suspense until the local sample group large enough to run a test of proportions. As a minimum, the n *p (sample size times the percent positives) should be greater than 5. If the proportion of positives in our local county population remains at 6%, we will have to wait until 85 people are tested. If the proportion of positives increases toward the statewide level, then we only need about 29 samples to perform the test.
