FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Question on SPOT program
View Single Post
Old May 13, 2009 | 12:59 am
  #153  
tsadude1
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 576
Originally Posted by Mr. Gel-pack
Sorry.

Wikipedia lays out a nice example here for bowel cancer, but 2 years of TSA's BDO program would have something like:

TP=1266 FP=158,000

FN=???? and TN=1,460,000,000

if you care about druggies, and

TP=<1 FP=160,000

FN=<1? TN=1,460,000,000


...if you care about terrorists.

The fractions are so close to zero or 100% that it is nearly impossible to tell if you are making things better or worse. Including druggies, ID thieves, liars, tax evaders, and speeders is what one would have to do to keep the testers from dying of boredom.
I'm tracking what you're saying, but what I do not understand is how can a concept that has never been used on such massive scale for such a short time be deemed a positive or a negative? The highlighted sentence may be closer to the mark than you think.
tsadude1 is offline