IO WEB PRO

Contact Ibrahim via WhatsApp
Contact Ibrahim via WhatsApp
Chat with Ibrahim on WhatApp now!

Understanding True Positive, True Negative, False Positive & False Negative

June 12, 2022

Do you have difficulty differentiating between true positive, true negative, false positive and false negative? Well, let me walk you through all 4 with a simple instance.

HERE IS A SIMPLE ILLUSTRATION

Let's say there is a spreading disease called the Bad Syndrome (BS). Taking a population sample, every individual is either sick with the disease or healthy (not neither, not both).

Ibrahims diagram illustrating true and false positive as well as true and false negative

Being the genius you are, you created a system to test for the BS disease. so every individual would either test positive for the BS disease or negative (not neither, not both).

Ideally, all sick people should equal all who test positive for the disease but the world is not perfect.

So, when someone tests POSITIVE for BS and TRULY has the BS disease, that's true positive (meaning that the positive test is true).

when someone tests POSITIVE for BS but does NOT have the BS, that's a false alarm which is false positive (meaning that the positive test is wrong).

When someone tests NEGATIVE for BS and TRULY does NOT have the BS, that's true negative (meaning the negative test is true).

When someone tests NEGATIVE for BS but does HAVE the BS in reality, that's false negative (meaning the negative test is wrong).

Easy! isn't it?

Hello! My name is Ibrahim and I specialize in developing exceptional web, mobile apps and AI solutions for businesses.

...Or connect with me via

let me know what you think in the comments 👇🏾

Hello! My name is Ibrahim and I specialize in developing exceptional web, mobile apps and AI solutions for businesses.

...Or connect with me via