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'Specificity and Sensitivity' are new words that are now going to enter the public consciousness with regards to testing. Before Iraq War 2, in 2003, absolutel
by jariel 7y ago
'Specificity and Sensitivity' are new words that are now going to enter the public consciousness with regards to testing.
Before Iraq War 2, in 2003, absolutely nobody knew the difference between a 'Shia' or 'Sunni' Muslim, and then it became more common knowledge.
It's neat to see how these events shape awareness.
Now every time a Nurse does a test, people will ask "What's the specificity?!" which can be a good or bad thing.
- s1t5 7y agoSpecificity and sensitivity feel really poorly chosen and difficult to remember. You could swap their definitions and the names of the terms would make just as much sense. I much prefer true positive rate and true negative rate.
- jariel 7y agoYes, they are terrible terms for general usage! Unfortunately, we don't choose our terminology from a public communications perspective. But it's obviously understandable why this is in hindsight. I don't think people really need to have this level of detail nailed down anyhow, at this level, we'll have to just trust the system.
- zajio1am 7y agoSeems to me like pretty intuitive terms. If the test is not sensitive enough, it may miss some cases and have false negatives. If the test is not specific enough, it may be triggered by something different and have false positives.
- vikramkr 7y agoThose named could be confusing to. True positive rate = .95 could be interpreted as, if you get a positive result, that's a 5% chance of a false positive, when the percent chance of the test being a false positive given a positive result is actually a function of the true positive percentage in the population and not innate to the test.
- s1t5 7y agoThat kind of confusion has nothing to do with the terms though, it just requires a deeper understanding of the process and the statistics around it.