I have a question its a probability based question.
A medical report shows that the carriers of a particular disease during winter months constitute 2% of the population.
Lisa has developed a blood test which is 90% accurate in detecting both presence and absence of the disease in a person. Show that the probability of a false positive result (i.e that a non-carrier is incorrectly identified as being a carrier) is 0.098. Given a person gets a positive result, what is the probability that t he person is a non-carrier?
Pr(a randomly selected result is false positive) = Pr(The person tested was a non-carrier)×Pr(The test failed (which is 10% regardless of whether the person is a carrier or not)) = 0.98 × 0.1 = 0.098.Show that the probability of a false positive result (i.e that a non-carrier is incorrectly identified as being a carrier) is 0.098.
Bayes' theorem tells us thatGiven a person gets a positive result, what is the probability that t he person is a non-carrier?
FIRST PART:
Pr(a randomly selected result is false positive) = Pr(The person tested was a non-carrier)×Pr(The test failed (which is 10% regardless of whether the person is a carrier or not)) = 0.98 × 0.1 = 0.098.
SECOND PART:
Bayes' theorem tells us that
.
For the purposes of our question,
A = the event that a person is a non-carrier
B = the event that a person gets a positive result.
Then we have:
Pr(B|A) = Pr(positive result | person is non-carrier) = 0.098 (from the first part),
Pr(A) = Pr(person is non-carrier) = 0.98,
Pr(B) = Pr(person gets a positive result) = Pr(person is a carrier)×Pr(positive result | person is carrier) + Pr(non-carrier)×Pr(positive result | non-carrier) = 0.02×0.9 + 0.98×0.1 = 0.116.
Plugging these in, our answer is .
So if you get a positive result, there's actually about an 82.8% chance you don't have the disease!
The results for probability questions always go against my intuition. that's such a large % of not carrying it when the prob. was 0.098 of being false positiveFIRST PART:
Pr(a randomly selected result is false positive) = Pr(The person tested was a non-carrier)×Pr(The test failed (which is 10% regardless of whether the person is a carrier or not)) = 0.98 × 0.1 = 0.098.
SECOND PART:
Bayes' theorem tells us that
.
For the purposes of our question,
A = the event that a person is a non-carrier
B = the event that a person gets a positive result.
Then we have:
Pr(B|A) = Pr(positive result | person is non-carrier) = 0.098 (from the first part),
Pr(A) = Pr(person is non-carrier) = 0.98,
Pr(B) = Pr(person gets a positive result) = Pr(person is a carrier)×Pr(positive result | person is carrier) + Pr(non-carrier)×Pr(positive result | non-carrier) = 0.02×0.9 + 0.98×0.1 = 0.116.
Plugging these in, our answer is .
So if you get a positive result, there's actually about an 82.8% chance you don't have the disease!
Usually the percentage they give is the probability the test will be correct, i.e. 0.9 chance that it gives positive given the person is a carrier, and 0.9 chance it gives negative given the person is a non-carrier.My thinking was the 90% positive result implied that it could be for it being the combination of both carrier and non-carrier combined. In your calculation you have used 0.90 for it being a positive result given its a carrier
If you haven't already, you should check out the Monty Hall Problem (famous probability problem)!The results for probability questions always go against my intuition. that's such a large % of not carrying it when the prob. was 0.098 of being false positive
Marilyn vos Savant (famed for holding the Guinness World Record for highest IQ, before that record was discontinued) got a probability Q wrong on her regular column.Another fascinating problem in Probability is known as the the Birthday Problem (or Birthday Paradox). It may seem rather counter-intuitive at first, but it essentially computes the probability of a pair of persons sharing the same birthday given a set of people in a room. The mind-blowing thing about it is that there only needs to exist a group of 70 people in a room to obtain a 99.9% chance of any pair sharing the same birthday, whilst you must have a group of 366 (or 367) people for there to exists a 100% chance of any pair sharing the same birthday. Interesting stuff! In some way, this shows that humans as a species tend to have a relatively poor probabilistic sense, in that we can't necessarily make fairly accurate predictions about the possibilities of events that can occur, possibly due to the effect of past experiences which cloud our ability to make these correct judgements. So, the mathematics we devise to represent and work with these probabilities helps us compute these chances in a more well-defined manner.
Marilyn vos Savant (famed for holding the Guinness World Record for highest IQ, before that record was discontinued) got a probability Q wrong on her regular column.
And new question:
Bae's theorem ?But that violates Bayes' Theorem? Here's a specific example related to medical testing: http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/philpsych/inevitableillusion3.pdf
But I think Bayes' Theorem and conditional probability are not in the course.