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Thursday, February 10, 2011
Syphilis and Bayes
No, Thomas Bayes did not have syphilis (as far as I know), but…
The title of this article is:
“Test Gets Almost 1 in 5 Syphilis Cases Wrong”
Specifically, there is an 18% false positive rate for this common test.
All pregnant women are urged to get this test. Let’s assume that you are a pregnant woman and you have no reason to think that you have this disease.
The actual rate of infection among pregnant women is small - something like 1 or 2 per 100,000. We’ll call it .002%.
Let’s say that you take this test that has an 18% false positive rate for any pregnant woman who takes it, and it comes back positive.
What are the chances that you have syphilis?
What if you take it again, and it still comes back positive?
The first person to answer these two questions correctly will win a free copy of the THT 2011 Annual! I would love it if some of the regulars for whom these questions are easy to recuse themselves. If you already have a copy you might want to recuse yourself as well, or at least wait until you think that someone else has already won (and then you can simply agree with them).
Good luck!
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