STATISTICAL METHODS FOR ANALYZING CANCER MORTALITY

Abstract

Cancer is responsible for about 25% of alldeaths in the world. A large number of cancer cases arenever reported especially in the third-world countries.Cancer is directly caused by the uncontrollable growth anddivision of abnormal cells in the human body. Many internal(inherited mutations, hormones, etc.) and external (tobacco,chemicals, radiation, etc.) factors have been found to belinked to the increased probability of cancer incidence.Statistical analysis can often facilitate the need tounderstand certain trends in cancer mortality. In this study,the linear regression model was used to predict the futurecancer trends and the analysis-of-variance method was usedto find the effects of race and age on the probability ofdeveloping cancer. The results indicate that cancer isincreasing at a steady rate every year in the United Statesand both age and race are significant factors responsible forthe increase.Index Terms ⎯  Cancer, mortality, linear regression,analysis-of- variance.