this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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The meme is talking about a common probability error that surveys have shown even doctors are prone to making.

Why you're probably ok:

The rarity of the disease far exceeds the error rate of the positive test. Meaning, the disease occurs in 1 out of a million people, so if you are tested at random and show positive, you only have a 1 out of 30,000 chance (the 3% false-positive rate) of being the the 1 person who truly has the disease.

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[–] themaninblack@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I have been thinking about this for a while.

Would this actually diminish the false positive rate for the test? Would it just be more likely to get a true positive back?

Or maybe would the false negative result be less likely?

Does it depend on the sample group that was measured to get the accuracy statistics? If the sample group was random then does that actually make a difference?

Doing my head in