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In clinical practice, post-test probabilities are often just estimated or even guessed. This is usually acceptable in the finding of a pathognomonic sign or symptom, in which case it is almost certain that the target condition is present; or in the absence of finding a sine qua non sign or symptom, in which case it is almost certain that the target condition is absent.
The positive predictive value (PPV), or precision, is defined as = + = where a "true positive" is the event that the test makes a positive prediction, and the subject has a positive result under the gold standard, and a "false positive" is the event that the test makes a positive prediction, and the subject has a negative result under the gold standard.
In fact, post-test probability, as estimated from the likelihood ratio and pre-test probability, is generally more accurate than if estimated from the positive predictive value of the test, if the tested individual has a different pre-test probability than what is the prevalence of that condition in the population.
A positive result in a test with high specificity can be useful for "ruling in" disease, since the test rarely gives positive results in healthy patients. [5] A test with 100% specificity will recognize all patients without the disease by testing negative, so a positive test result would definitively rule in the presence of the disease. However ...
The false positive rate (FPR) is the proportion of all negatives that still yield positive test outcomes, i.e., the conditional probability of a positive test result given an event that was not present. The false positive rate is equal to the significance level. The specificity of the test is equal to 1 minus the false positive rate.
This combined with the definition of conditional probability results in the above statement. In other words, if someone tests positive, the probability that they are a cannabis user is only 19%—because in this group, only 5% of people are users, and most positives are false positives coming from the remaining 95%.
If we observe a positive test result for a particular individual, we can use Bayesian analysis to update our belief about the probability that the individual has the disease. The updated probability would be a combination of the base rate and the likelihood of the test result given the disease status.
In probability theory, a probability density function (PDF), density function, or density of an absolutely continuous random variable, is a function whose value at any given sample (or point) in the sample space (the set of possible values taken by the random variable) can be interpreted as providing a relative likelihood that the value of the ...