I think you mean "fathom" I doubt you'd measure success exclusively by the number of false positives but you'd also need to factor in the impact of a false pos

I think you mean "fathom" I doubt you'd measure success exclusively by the number of false positives but you'd also need to factor in the impact of a false positive. For eg: There was an x-ray machine [1] with a software bug that would accidentally deliver a dose 100 times the intended dose. I'm sure the machine operated correctly thousands of times however there were "at least 6 accidents" and 3 deaths (worst case scenario). One would not say that this system works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25