Coffee
This morning on the CBS news they reported on a piece about an association with drinking coffee and a resistance to dementia. Good News! Us coffee drinkers will not be demented – later in life? Ever? Only in our nineties? Oh wait. She said association. That term has a very specific meaning to statistical studies.
This study was based on the female participants in the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS; n = 86 606 with data from 1980-2023) and male participants from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS; n = 45 215 with data from 1986-2023) who did not have cancer, Parkinson disease, or dementia at study entry (baseline) in the US.
You have got to love those numbers. Health care workers have been drinking coffee for forty-three years. And recording it.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2844764
From JAMA — Conclusions and Relevance: Greater consumption of caffeinated coffee and tea was associated with lower risk of dementia and modestly better cognitive function, with the most pronounced association at moderate intake levels. (I want to say, “Hell yeah!” here.)
Association — Association refers to the general relationship and is normally used for studying relationship between two nominal/categorical/ordinal attributes;
Correlation — whereas correlation refers to a linear relationship between two quantitative attributes. It would not be out of context to mention here that the relationship between two quantitative variables can even be a nonlinear as well such as curvilinear or exponential.
Causation — Causation means that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable.
So, to conclude, not drinking coffee does not cause dementia. It might cause those sleepy “whaat?” looks that teens display in early morning classes but the WL study is incomplete at this time.
I am interested in statistical analysis. The math is attractive to me. I am deficient at recognizing patterns but I do recognize my wakefulness after coffee in the morning.
A shot of whiskey in the evening seems to aid in sleepiness at bedtime too.
Carpe coffee Diem.
Adjunct_Wizard 