Consider the four possibilities and their probabilities.
has disease and tests positive:
(0.02)x(0.997)= 0.0199
has disease but tests negative:
(0.02)x(0.003)= 0.0001
has no disease and tests negative:
(0.98)x(0.95) = 0.9310
has no disease but tests positive:
(0.98)x(0.05) = 0.0490
Note the probabilities they add up to 1.000, as they should.
The answer to the first question (positive test probability) is
0.0199 + 0.0490 = 0.0689
The answer to the second question is:
0.0490/(0.0199+0.0490)= 0.7112
This is a rather large ratio of "false positives" and comes about because the disease is rare (2% of population) and there are many more false positives than "true" positives
This is a statistics problem.
A laboratory test for the detection of a certain disease give a positive result 5 percent of the time for people who do not have the disease. The test gives a negative result 0.3 percent of the time for people who have the disease. Large-scale studies have shown that the disease occurs in about 2 percent of the population.
What is the probability that a person selected at random would test positive for this disease?
For this one, I got 0.0194, so 1.94% but I wasn’t sure if the answer is correct.
What is the probability that a person selected at random who test positive for the disease does not have the disease?
This one was confusing to me… I got 0.71637, or 71.637% but I doubt this is right. Please help!
3 answers
That makes perfect sense. Thank you very much.
hey, we just did this problem in class today...this is from the ap stats 1197 free response prep...the first question's ans. is 0.06894 and the second ques.'s ans. is 0.710763
1 answer