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By Josh Witten | July 15th 2009 11:14 AM | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Josh Witten

100% of this the rugbyologist's revenue is donated to Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres). A click on one of my articles is a click that helps bring high quality medical care to the... Full Bio

As happens from time to time, Wiley's Non Sequitur comic strip is not only humorous, but also nicely illustrates a scientific point.  And, this one happened to co-occur with my birthday.  Coincidence, I think not.
Non Sequitur for 10 July 2009 by Wiley Miller
In any screening process, it is important to use "weeding out" methods that are appropriate to the relative cost and importance of the next step in the process.  If the next step is cheap and easy, then the screening process does not need to be very rigorous (e.g., American Idol).  If the next step is expensive and difficult (e.g., dating, marriage, and children), then the screening process needs to be more rigorous.  In nerd terms, as the cost of the step following the screening increases, one's toleration of false positives and false negatives decreases.

I wonder what the false positive and false negative rates are for her test?

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