Talk:2545: Bayes' Theorem

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 08:00, 24 November 2021 by 172.70.85.155 (talk) (Undo revision 221271 by Genuvenue (talk))
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I don't know if the latest (nearly!) global change back to "affected" in the example was intentional or just a cut'n'paste of historical wordings whilst making other tweaks, but I'm not going to go through and change to "infected" a third time (first time, collided with an edit conflict, and so cancelled and worked again on that, albeit with at least one new typo). Yes, in general, being affected or not is correct, but with "affect/effect" confusion (for some) and elsewhere described as "afflicted with" and (still in at least one place) "infected" the example works as well or even better with infections rather than affectations. I was also tempted to change "performant" as not everyone will know exactly what it means, but was stuck for a good substitute ("efficacious" is close, but probably doesn't help a great deal). 172.70.90.211 09:50, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I would expect the <1-in-1000 sorts of numbers relevant to the comic to apply to genetic conditions and cancer, not to infections. We don't screen wide swathes of asymptomatic population for infections. Even now with all the testing for COVID-19, the positivity rate is above 1%.

This is the second comic to reference Bayes' Theorem: https://xkcd.com/1236/. Is that worth mentioning in the explanation? I'm a newbie!172.70.34.191 21:32, 23 November 2021 (UTC) Actually, I forgot this one too: https://xkcd.com/1132/ 172.70.34.191 21:35, 23 November 2021 (UTC)