Measurement of MIC is indispensable for studying sensitivity of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics. However, it seems that no satisfactory statistical method has been used for the analysis of MIC data, so far.
We presented that the accumulation method and the precise accumulation method were well suited for the data analysis of MIC, showing procedures of calculation with simple examples.
The accumulation method may be far better than so called χ
2 test and some other nonp arametric methods for the analysis of ordered categorical data, in respect to adequate evalu ation of the main effect and error variance.
The precise accumulation method is more fine, as that enables one to test the difference of distribution pattern in addition to the main effect simultaneously.
Those methods of variance analysis, developped by G. TAGUCHI and widely used in the industrial field, will be applicable to analysis of various types of data in clinical medicine as well as MIC data, in the future.
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