the.com/false positive
the test that cried wolf.
means a result that says 'yes, this is a problem' when actually nothing's wrong.
from emerged from statistics and medical testing in the early 1900s, formalized alongside hypothesis testing as 'type I error' — the more human name stuck because everyone's had one.
opposite errorfalse negative misses the real thing entirely
spam filtersmain source of daily false positives for most people
covid testingrare events make false positives outnumber true ones
security systemstoo many triggers and humans stop trusting alarms