Taken literally, this makes it sound like an insanely inaccurate algorithm. Here's my algorithm for predicting whether someone will commit suicide: always say t

Taken literally, this makes it sound like an insanely inaccurate algorithm. Here's my algorithm for predicting whether someone will commit suicide: always say they won't. Since the suicide rate in the US is around 13 per 100,000, my algorithm is >99% accurate! But more seriously, assuming they are using some more meaningful measure, for things with such low baseline incidence, you kinda need quite high accuracy of you don't want to be completely swamped with false positives.