A basic course in statistics will inform you of why a 99.99% accurate test should be looked at with skepticism when diagnosing a rare disease. Yet we see the fancy 9s and think somehow this many 9s is enough.

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ziofill 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but that’s not what we are talking about

	▲	ulrikrasmussen an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Diagnosis of rare diseases is a subset of "true" statements, no?

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elendilm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Really? Laws of probability works against your argument.

Such a basic course in statistics needs to be scrutinized.

	▲	californical an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Every breath you take, there is a 99.99% chance that everything is normal, and a 0.01% chance that you breathe mild acid which horribly burns and causes a massive coughing fit. It probably don’t cause long term damage unless that breath happened to be more important than normal, like while driving right as a child runs into the road. Would you act differently knowing that you had one of these occasional acid breaths? Even if it only happened once per day on average (0.001%)