Definitions
Imagine a study evaluating a new test that screens people for a disease. Each person taking the test either has or does not have the disease. The test outcome can be positive (predicting that the person has the disease) or negative (predicting that the person does not have the disease). The test results for each subject may or may not match the subject's actual status. In that setting:
- True positive: Sick people correctly diagnosed as sick
- False positive: Healthy people incorrectly identified as sick
- True negative: Healthy people correctly identified as healthy
- False negative: Sick people incorrectly identified as healthy.
In general, Positive = identified and negative = rejected. Therefore:
- True positive = correctly identified
- False positive = incorrectly identified
- True negative = correctly rejected
- False negative = incorrectly rejected
Read more about this topic: Sensitivity And Specificity
Famous quotes containing the word definitions:
“The loosening, for some people, of rigid role definitions for men and women has shown that dads can be great at calming babies—if they take the time and make the effort to learn how. It’s that time and effort that not only teaches the dad how to calm the babies, but also turns him into a parent, just as the time and effort the mother puts into the babies turns her into a parent.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)