The Effectiveness of the MGK Measure against the Odds Ratio in the Epidemiological Study

Abstract

In epidemiology, the rule of association is used to determine the factors at the origin of diseases; implicative statistical analysis is thus a necessary tool in epidemiology too. Epidemiologists have more often chosen the so-called odds ratio measure in their studies of the quantification of the implicit link between an exposure and disease. In order to obtain good results, we need to be sure that the odds ratio measure is really the most relevant measure available. Therefore, it is necessary to study the mathematical properties of the odds ratio. This paper proposes a comparative study of the behaviour and mathematical properties of the odds ratio measure, the measure of Guillaume–Khenchaff (MGK), and the normalised odd-ratio measure. We have chosen the MGK measure because the literature considers it to be a good measure for extracting implicit association rules according to its mathematical properties. The result in this paper concerns only the study of probabilistic data.