Poll: Accuracy of Test Interpretation

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:

Hmm, sounded like it was trying to be a real-world case to me. A hypothetical example would have been worded without reference to medicine.
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Paul, you're totally correct, it was was trying to be a real-world case. Wrath even claimed it was worded the same as in a study given to doctors:

Point 1: The question, as I presented it, is the same question that was used in research with doctors.
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He maintained this lie until I forced him to retract it by demonstrating that he had no evidence to back it up,
 
It's not a lie. I couldn't find a study that used that question. It was how the issue was originally presented to me.

It was an invalid claim, since I couldn't support it. I retracted it and admitted I'm an idiot.

You're still a liar, steve, for repeating Rolfe's claims even once you'd been informed they were incorrect. Well, either a liar or a fool, or a lying fool, it's not clear.
 
Ceptimus has made clear that the question is a perfectly viable one.

Which reminds me...

[clears throat]

The correct answer to the question was the 10% option. The actual value is very close to 9%.

Congratulations to everyone who was honest enough to put down what they actually thought, even if it turned out to be wrong.

Thank you.
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
It's not a lie. I couldn't find a study that used that question. It was how the issue was originally presented to me.

It was an invalid claim, since I couldn't support it. I retracted it and admitted I'm an idiot.

You're still a liar, steve, for repeating Rolfe's claims even once you'd been informed they were incorrect. Well, either a liar or a fool, or a lying fool, it's not clear.
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Ah Wrath, you've finally managed to respond to my posts, at the fifth time of asking. You don't like people pointing out the truth about your lies do you? You're a coward as well as a liar.

I've already had to point out to you twice in this thread that you do not know the meaning of the word liar. Let's try one more time and please pay attention this time. Everything I've posted in this thread had been posted with a belief in its veracity. Therefore, I am not a liar. The same, sadly, cannot be said for you. Once again, you are a liar. I have caught you out in your lies, deal with it.

You are a sad little troll, even the homeopaths think so.
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
Ceptimus has made clear that the question is a perfectly viable one.

{snip]
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Oh dear, another factual inaccuracy, Wrath. In the TRSOTTTWND Ceptimus wrote:

You have to make the assumption or it is not solvable. That is why I made it.
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You see Wrath you have to make an assumption - a point you have consistently denied. Another point you fail to realize is that in a real study (ie not an imaginary one you dreamt up) there would not be a multiple choice answer (I realize that is the only way to conduct a poll, but that is not the point). In a real study some of the subjects could well decide that the question isn't solvable. I made the assumption and got the correct answer but the only way I could make sure that I had made the correct assumption was to check whether my answer was in the poll options. In a real study that option would not be available.

'Accuracy' is not a defined term in this area. The assumption that needs to be made is 'what the hell does accuracy mean?' You misremembered the question and as a result it was ill phrased. This is why in all the real studies (including the ones in the review articles you linked to) the term 'accuracy' is striking by its absence.
 
Conveniently leaving out the later bits where ceptimus is convinced there's no problem.

It's been explained over and over again that presenting a universal accuracy for the test means only one thing.
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
Conveniently leaving out the later bits where ceptimus is convinced there's no problem.

It's been explained over and over again that presenting a universal accuracy for the test means only one thing.
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Oh yeah, a really well worded question when even Ceptimus, who's superb at solving puzzles, wasn't convinced at first that no statistical assumption needed to be made. How long do you think they give the subjects to answer these questions (not that any subjects have ever been asked the question you asked?) Five minutes? A day? A week??!!? And I still assert that an assumption of what the term 'accuracy' means would need to be made.

Accuracy is a meaningless term in this case. Meaningless.

Even you admitted:

In hindsight, the question would have been less open to misunderstanding if it had been worded differently
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Even though you had earlier claimed:

It wasn't even a poor choice of terminology
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Oh dear, Wrath, consistency really isn't your strong point, is it?

I also notice that for the sixth time of asking you've failed to defend your assertion that I'm a liar. Somewhat telling, I feel.

btw Even the homeopaths think you're a complete troll and have deleted your thread. That didn't really work out for you now, did it?
 
How is (number of correct responses)/(total number of responses) meaningless?

You don't have a position. You just keep repeating false claims in the hopes that the repetition will make them sound valid.

'Bye.
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
How is (number of correct responses)/(total number of responses) meaningless?

You don't have a position. You just keep repeating false claims in the hopes that the repetition will make them sound valid.

'Bye.
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Yeah, see ya Wrath, you run away from the truth. Just in case you are still looking in, I'll try and explain it one more time for you.

Of course (number of correct responses)/(total number of responses) means something. It means, er, the number of correct responses divided by the total number of responses. But accuracy, in this context, does not mean the number of correct responses divided by the total number of responses. In this context, it means nothing.

You never said '(number of correct responses)/(total number of responses)' in your question, you said accuracy. .None of the published studies used this term.

The reason I repeat my (true) claims is that you fail, time and time again, to deal with them. Speaking of which, seven times now you have failed to defend your assertion that I'm a liar. Time and time again you lie, evade questions and contradict yourself. You think that if you evade my questions long enough, I will stop asking them. As with so many other things, you are wrong.

You have no meaningful answers to my questions. You are a sad little troll.


Edited for clarity
 
It also seems to be being conveniently forgotten that the definition of 'accuracy' seems not to be unique, remember the alternative one: TP/(TP+FP)? That seems, to the extent you can trust the internet for anything, to have been put forward by a statistician as a reasonable alternative measure that fulfills the commosense notion of 'accuracy' in the appropriate context.

Remember the other link which said that accuracy is the global subjective interpretation placed on the usual group of parameters: sens, spec, NPV, PPV.

We've seen WotS assert that his definition is the only one, but this is not supported by simple insertion of the words sensitivity, specificity and accuracy into Google to see what others say on the subject.
 
Don't know if i missed it but did WoS have anything to say about Huntsmans' post on the previous page of this thread ?

An elementary mistake would surely destroy WoS's own claims to be knowledgable about statistics, using WoS's own logic.


Hmm talking about accuracy, whats this?

http://bell.mma.edu/~jbouch/Glossary/Precision.html

Accuracy and precision, used to desribe test results, but not binary test results!
 
I responded on the previous page. Not only made a post about it, but fixed the original message (with a short blurb stating what I'd done).

Furthermore, that site certainly doesn't say that accuracy cannot be used with binary tests. But we don't consider distance from the goal, just whether the result was correct or not.

If you don't know anything about statistics, shouldn't you be keeping your mouth shut? It seems you're more likely to embarass yourself than make any kind of intelligent point.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
It also seems to be being conveniently forgotten that the definition of 'accuracy' seems not to be unique, remember the alternative one: TP/(TP+FP)? That seems, to the extent you can trust the internet for anything, to have been put forward by a statistician as a reasonable alternative measure that fulfills the commosense notion of 'accuracy' in the appropriate context.
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Except that the relative proportions of true positives and false positives will depend on the specific sample population, so that formula does not give universally applicable results.

We've been over this before.
 
If you read what i am saying, you will note that i am not actually arguing numbers with you, i am arguing about their application, which i do know enough about.

Accuracy was the wrong term to use. End of story.

Now you made a mistake, if you apply your own rules you are now ignorant about statistics. Perhaps Huntsman should spend a page of this thread gloating about it. Maybe i should start a poll to confirm that you are ignorant, or would it only show that i am ignorant? Difficult one.
 
But accuracy wasn't the wrong term to use. ceptimus established that several pages ago.

The meaning used is the simplest definition of 'accuracy' there is. It's not specialized for certain kinds of tests, or for continuous values - it's rudimentary.

You don't seem to know anything about mathematics, and you're just looking for an error you can use against me, so you pick up one of the arguments that you think sounds plausible and attack me with it.

Keep trying. Maybe one day you'll find one that works! :)
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
But accuracy wasn't the wrong term to use. ceptimus established that several pages ago.

The meaning used is the simplest definition of 'accuracy' there is. It's not specialized for certain kinds of tests, or for continuous values - it's rudimentary.

You don't seem to know anything about mathematics, and you're just looking for an error you can use against me, so you pick up one of the arguments that you think sounds plausible and attack me with it.

Keep trying. Maybe one day you'll find one that works! :)
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It is fortunate then that i am not discussing the maths of the situation isn't it. I understand that in defined circumstances a value, that you have defined as accuracy, can provide you with the sensitivity and specificity of a test. However the term accuracy has another usage in describing medical test results

The question was about a medical test.
The term accuracy is not used to describe this type of medical test.
Thus the term was used wrongly.

You don't seem to know much about practical application of statistics in the real world. Unfortunatly in the real world clear unambiguous information is required, not hypotheticals, so that people such as myself who do not understand the complexities of statistics can actually use statistics to understand the value of results. :con2:
 
Oh, really? What other meaning can 'accuracy' have than the degree of error in the results?

And why exactly does this extremely basic mathematical concept not apply to a test merely because it's medical? It's all just math.
 
Ok well how about you show me a couple of medical tests which produce a pos/neg answer that are described only using the value of accuracy ?

Also perhaps you can explain why sensitivity and specificity are important for medical tests and the different uses of high sensitivity and high specificity tests. Its not a hard question, and i'm not trying to catch you out, i'm curious as to whether or not you are aware of how the values are used.
 
Accuracy in the sense I've used it rarely appears on test results precisely because it generally can't be applied in an absolute sense.

That doesn't mean that the concept is invalidated, or that the term can't be applied at all. It requires knowledge of whether the test is correct, which generally is lacking - OR, that the test's error won't change from situation to situation, which is uncommon.
 
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