= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
twanvl comments on Open thread, Nov. 16 - Nov. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (185)
I find "false positive" and "false negative" also a bit confusing, albeit less so than "type I" and "type II" errors. Perhaps because of a programming background, I usually interpret 'false' and 'negative' (and '0') as the same thing. So is a 'false positive' something that is false but is mistaken as positive, or something that is positive (true), but that is mistaken as false (negative)? In other words, does 'false' apply to the postiveness (it is actually negative, but classified as positive), to being classified as positive (it is actually positive, but classified as positive)?
Perhaps we should call false positives "spurious" and false negatives "missed".
Huh. That never occurred to me (even though I spend a lot of my days writing code too).
In case you're expressing actual uncertainty rather than merely what your brain gets confused about, the answer is that a false positive is something that falsely looks positive. Perhaps the best way to put it is different, though: a false positive is a positive result of your test (so it actually is a positive) that doesn't match the underlying reality. Like a "false alarm".