AI Snips
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Bayes Rule Explains Horses Versus Zebras
- Bayesian reasoning updates beliefs by combining priors, likelihood, and the commonness of evidence.
- Neglecting base rates leads to over-diagnosing rare explanations like zebras.
Drug Use Clue Changed Diagnosis
- Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts missing a patient's drug use until seeing him with a known dealer and then testing for HIV.
- The later test confirmed HIV and changed treatment, showing how new observations alter priors.
Use Frequencies To Understand Tests
- Reframe probability problems as frequencies to make Bayes' rule intuitive and avoid base-rate neglect.
- Visualizing true and false positives helps people compute post-test probabilities correctly.