4 ms·
I missed absolute numbers. Talk for example about false positives in airport security. An error rate of 'only 0.01%' looks pretty good at first. But if you put
by seven 16y ago
I missed absolute numbers.
Talk for example about false positives in airport security. An error rate of 'only 0.01%' looks pretty good at first. But if you put in the actual numbers, you see a very different image.
Airport Frankfurt had about 50 million passengers in 2009. An false positive rate of 0.01% would cause trouble for 5000 people. Each day about 13 people would be falsely accused.
- confuzatron 16y agoTo be honest, I don't think that's a big deal - 'false positives', whatever those might be in the case of backscatter machines, can be easily caught at the second stage - a pat-down. The bigger issue is blindly forcing everyone to effectively strip naked for the authorities before they are allowed to board a plane.
- seven 16y agoAgree, but actually I was not thinking about backscatter machines. I had biometric passports in mind while writing... and people missing flights as a consequence.
- viggity 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem