Odds Ratio

Odds Ratio

Imagine you're studying patients with a certain disease. When we talk about odds ratio, we're looking at how likely something is to happen in one group of patients compared to another.

Let's say we're studying smoking and lung cancer. If the odds ratio is 1, it means smoking doesn't really affect the chance of getting lung cancer. But if it's more than 1, it means smokers are more likely to get lung cancer compared to non-smokers. And if it's less than 1, it suggests non-smokers might actually have a lower chance of getting lung cancer compared to smokers.

So, odds ratio helps us understand how strongly different factors are linked to certain diseases.