What's the difference between confound and puzzle?

Confound


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To mingle and blend, so that different elements can not be distinguished; to confuse.
  • (v. t.) To mistake for another; to identify falsely.
  • (v. t.) To throw into confusion or disorder; to perplex; to strike with amazement; to dismay.
  • (v. t.) To destroy; to ruin; to waste.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Previous studies have not always controlled for socioeconomic status (SES) of mothers or other potential confounders such as gestational age or birthweight of infants.
  • (2) Displacing potencies for dopamine in the nanomolar range are associated with agonist-specific D-3 receptor binding and it is predicted that the component of D-2 binding with high agonist affinity may play a confounding role in many D-3 receptor studies.
  • (3) Frequently, however, only incomplete data on confounders can be obtained from sources such as next-of-kin or co-workers.
  • (4) Among all subgroups, the odds ratios adjusted for pertinent confounders and interactions fluctuated randomly by about 0.9 and showed no consistent trend with increased alcohol consumption.
  • (5) The possibility of applying Signal Detection Theory (SDT) to gustation was investigated by testing the effect of three variables--smoking, signal probability, and food intake (confounded with time of day)--on the taste sensitivity to sucrose of 24 male and 24 female Ss.
  • (6) They also include difficulties peculiar to the condition of mild mental retardation, including the choice of method of classification whether by IQ testing or administratively; the heterogeneous nature of the individuals so characterised; and the confounding effects of social and biological factors and the changes in the implications for the affected individual of the condition, depending on age, sex and environment.
  • (7) Practitioners must be aware of the potential for interactions between (and confounding by) commercially used feed components.
  • (8) A weakness was in not including confounding factors such as social class and the lack of detailed questions on topics.
  • (9) In practice, confounding by factors related to exposure opportunity is common.
  • (10) By using a national sample we ensured that the influence of regional variations in the configuration of long-term care services would not confound estimates of the relative effect of client-related factors.
  • (11) The independent effects of separation and display size, which were confounded in the Sagi and Julesz experiments, were examined.
  • (12) In particular, it is shown that adjustment for a misclassified confounding variable can be greatly improved by using the methods presented.
  • (13) Possible confounding effects of missing data, institutionalization prior to adoption, information given to adoptive parents by the adoption agencies about the child's biological background, historical period, perinatal factors, and selective placement were considered.
  • (14) I argue that (a) the procedures they used to study confounding were suboptimal because multiple measures of depression and catastrophizing were not employed and (b) the distinctiveness of constructs might better be regarded as a continuous rather than all-or-none (having adequate discriminant validity versus being confounded) concept.
  • (15) The observed relation between physical activity and colon cancer was not confounded by dietary intake of calories, fat, or protein, nor was the diet and colon cancer relation confounded by physical activity (odds ratios for calories, protein, and fat in males were 2.40, 2.57, and 2.18, respectively).
  • (16) It is this "multiple system failure" that compounds the effects of large scale events and confounds emergency response.
  • (17) To control for possible confounding variables, the authors repeated the analyses after stratifying by demographic and diagnostic variables that were distributed differently among men and women.
  • (18) Some recent reports implicate marijuana smoking as a cause of cancer of the upper aerodigestive tract, though most of the subjects were exposed to other, possibly confounding, etiologic factors, namely tobacco and alcohol.
  • (19) With the use of the logistic regression method, an adjusted OR was obtained after controlling various confounders.
  • (20) The purpose of this study was to examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption and low birthweight, intrauterine growth retardation, and prematurity, adjusting for multiple confounders.

Puzzle


Definition:

  • (v.) Something which perplexes or embarrasses; especially, a toy or a problem contrived for testing ingenuity; also, something exhibiting marvelous skill in making.
  • (v.) The state of being puzzled; perplexity; as, to be in a puzzle.
  • (v. t.) To perplex; to confuse; to embarrass; to put to a stand; to nonplus.
  • (v. t.) To make intricate; to entangle.
  • (v. t.) To solve by ingenuity, as a puzzle; -- followed by out; as, to puzzle out a mystery.
  • (v. i.) To be bewildered, or perplexed.
  • (v. i.) To work, as at a puzzle; as, to puzzle over a problem.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (2) Our data and the model developed to interpret them in terms of fluctuations provide an explanation of the puzzling sharp reduction of water order near the chain-ordering phase transition.
  • (3) And David Ngog was a pointless signing too – one which puzzled us all.
  • (4) That's so far from how my mind works that I find it puzzling.
  • (5) This latest one continued developer Revolution Software’s run, sending you on the hunt for a stolen painting with puzzles and a well-worked storyline to hold your attention.
  • (6) Unexplained physical distress, when associated with alexithymia, becomes a diagnostic puzzle leading to prolonged investigation, ineffective treatment, and psychiatric referral.
  • (7) This scheme is used to rationalize previously puzzling data about the enzyme mechanism.
  • (8) With wearable computing just around the corner cracking integration with you, and indeed the organic-body, is critical for Apple and a final piece in the puzzle.
  • (9) Leanne Bowden, a mother of three on her way home on the school run, looks puzzled by the inquiry.
  • (10) The treatment of obesity remains a puzzling challenge because long-term maintenance of weight loss--one of the most suitable goals--is rarely achieved with conventional methods.
  • (11) It includes a reference to Banks's puzzling repeated insistence in media interviews that he "did not come up the river in a cabbage boat".
  • (12) In his letter responding to the resignation, the prime minister calls himself “puzzled and disappointed”.
  • (13) A persistent puzzle in our understanding of hemostasis has been the absence of hemorrhagic symptoms in the majority of patients with Hageman trait, the hereditary deficiency of Hageman factor (factor XII).
  • (14) "What was popular then was the puzzle: such qualities as psychological truth or even atmospheric location were secondary to it.
  • (15) A more pronounced decrease was produced by subjects working on puzzles than those working on mental calculation and by subjects working on easy tasks than those working on difficult tasks when the easy preceded the difficult ones.
  • (16) "We find it puzzling that the Department of Health would want a group that is opposed to abortion and provides no sexual health services on its sexual health forum."
  • (17) This MA lag of at least 2 years is consistent with the MA lag previously found on strategic games and puzzles.
  • (18) The boys attempted to solve two different sets of 10 find-a-word puzzles, one set following exposure to solvable puzzles, and one set following exposure to insolvable puzzles.
  • (19) That’s where blaming government failure fits into his ideological jigsaw puzzle.
  • (20) Some hypotheses about the cause of schizophrenia are based on the puzzling tendency for mental illness to affect the same sex when two close relatives become psychiatrically ill. Sex-concordance rates were examined in 71 schizophrenic probands, who had at least one first-degree relative suffering from the same disorder, in order to test this tendency in a population of recently admitted patients.