No abstract

Introduction: Benzodiazepines primarily acts on the central nervous system. Most patients are extremely anxious in the pre-operative period. Excessive anxiety adversely influences anaesthetic induction and often leads to functional impairment and poor recovery after surgery.

Abstract.Three methods for locating a record in an ordered file are considered. The keys in the files are chosen from three different statistical distributions and the methods, two of which are taken from the literature and an adapted root finding method, are compared by tabulating information relating to standard statistics for the number of probes.

In the literature goodness‐of‐fit tests for canonical variables are available either in the x space or in the y space, see e.g., Bartlett (1951), Kshirsagar (1971, 1972), Radcliffe (1968), and Williams (1952). Here we present goodness‐of‐fit tests for canonical variables in both the x and y spaces. The results appear as extensions of the results of the above authors.

Although meta-analysis appears to be a useful technique to verify the existence of an effect and to summarize large bodies of literature, there are problems associated with its use and interpretation. Amongst difficulties is the “file drawer problem.” With this problem it is assumed that a certain percentage of studies are not published or are not available to be included in any given meta-analysis. We present a cautionary table to quantify the magnitude of this problem. The table shows that distortions exaggerating the effect size are substantial and that the exaggerations of effects are strongest when the true effect size approaches zero. A meta-analysis could be very misleading were the true effect size close to zero.