Data Visualization and Data Summary

Patients in a clinic or geographic area are very heterogeneous. Therefore, the distribution of patient factors will not have a normal distribution. Generally, the distribution will have a heavy tail since every patient population will have those extreme patients who need extraordinary care; there will be more patients who need considerable care than those whose treatment can be discontinued early. Thus, unlike the normal distribution assumption, distributions of patient populations will not be symmetric. Therefore, great care must be used when considering a model that assumes normality, or even symmetry. We will look at alternative methods of analysis and visualization that do not depend upon the assumption of normality.