# Problems with NNT

**URL:** <https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/problems-with-nnt/195>\
**Category:** study interpretation\
**Tags:** effect-measures, nnt, decision-making\
**Created:** [July 24, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/problems-with-nnt/195 "2018-07-24T19:59:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![f2harrell](https://discourse.datamethods.org/user_avatar/discourse.datamethods.org/f2harrell/32/165_2.png) [@f2harrell](https://discourse.datamethods.org/u/f2harrell)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2018, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/problems-with-nnt/195/4 "2018-07-24T20:56:45Z")

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To me, I wouldn’t recommend NNT even for population decisions, but you could get lucky that the average ARR gives you a correct ‘population decision’ (whatever that means) when compared to the more time-consuming examination of risk distributions. And by the time you’ve done the time-consuming analysis to check, you might as well use it anyway.

Other than quaranteens and closing borders when epidemics occur, I can’t think of many population decisions in medicine.

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