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Record W1712125628 · doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7359.334/a

Different sex ratios at birth in Europe and North America

2002· letter· en· W1712125628 on OpenAlexaffabout
Adam Jacobs

Bibliographic record

VenueBMJ · 2002
Typeletter
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicDemographic Trends and Gender Preferences
Canadian institutionsYork University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsDemographySex ratioStatistical significanceContext (archaeology)PopulationGeographySignificance testingMathematicsStatisticsSociologyArchaeology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

# Does it matter? {#article-title-2} EDITOR—Grech et al seem to confuse statistical significance with practical significance.1 They found highly significant differences in sex ratios among the regions they studied not because of large differences in the sex ratios but because of their large sample sizes. In any case, the use of significance testing in this context is questionable: the purpose of significance testing is to make inferences about a population from a sample, and here whole populations are being studied. What is the population about which Grech et al are trying to make inferences? In all regions that Grech et al studied I would expect 51 boys out of every 100 live births. Dodifferences in sex ratio at the third decimal place and beyond really have any practical significance? 1. ↵1. Grech V, 2. Savona-Ventura C, 3. Vassallo-Agius P .Unexplained differences in sex ratios at birth in Europe and North America.BMJ2002; 324:1010–1011. (27 April.) [OpenUrl][1][FREE Full Text][2] # Latitude has important role {#article-title-4} EDITOR—In their ecological study of 27 countries Grech et al reported a higher male to female ratio at birth for southern Europe than for central and Nordic Europe.1 A reversed latitudinal relation emerged for North America, with Mexico and the United States yielding lower sex ratios than any European country; Canada's sex ratio (although not stated) … [1]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DBMJ%26rft.stitle%253DBMJ%26rft.issn%253D0007-1447%26rft.aulast%253DGrech%26rft.auinit1%253DV.%26rft.volume%253D324%26rft.issue%253D7344%26rft.spage%253D1010%26rft.epage%253D1011%26rft.atitle%253DResearch%2Bpointers%253A%2BUnexplained%2Bdifferences%2Bin%2Bsex%2Bratios%2Bat%2Bbirth%2Bin%2BEurope%2Band%2BNorth%2BAmerica%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1136%252Fbmj.324.7344.1010%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F11976243%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/ijlink?linkType=FULL&journalCode=bmj&resid=324/7344/1010&atom=%2Fbmj%2F325%2F7359%2F334.2.atom

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Commentary · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.415
Threshold uncertainty score0.995

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.051
GPT teacher head0.284
Teacher spread0.233 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreCommentary

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations26
Published2002
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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