One true story about Bayes’ Theorem that grabbed me when I read it:
My most memorable encounter with the Reverend Bayes came one Friday afternoon in 1989, when my doctor told me by telephone that the chances were 999 out of 1,000 that I’d be dead within a decade. He added, “I’m really sorry,” as if he had some patients to whom he would say he is sorry but not mean it.
The author went on to explain that he and his wife had applied for life insurance and had been rejected on the ground that he had apparently tested “positive” for HIV.
I’m reminded that a good portion of the LW community wasn’t born in 1989. From what I personally remember about that year, I suggest that this news must have been devastating. For one thing, as I recall, homosexuality was much more heavily stigmatized in general society than it is now. Also, AIDS (in the popular perception) represented a sentence of death by agonizingly slow torture—I remember hearing about a friend of a colleague who spent months gagging on the growths on his tongue, to name only one of his afflictions. Antiviral treatment was on the way, but nobody knew that in 1989.
The author describes his receipt of this news dryly, but at the time, it must have been as if he had been told: “You’re going to die in agony, prolonged over the course of months, if not years. I don’t know or care how you got it, but I and everyone else in the world will assume it’s because you’ve been cheating on your wife with homosexual prostitutes. Oh, you should let her know that you’ve probably infected her, too, dooming her to your horrible disgusting fate. Have a nice day!”
Later on, it turned out to have been a simple mistake—the test was a false positive, and the 999 out of 1,000 figure had been based on a lack of understanding about Bayes’ Theorem.
One true story about Bayes’ Theorem that grabbed me when I read it:
The author went on to explain that he and his wife had applied for life insurance and had been rejected on the ground that he had apparently tested “positive” for HIV.
I’m reminded that a good portion of the LW community wasn’t born in 1989. From what I personally remember about that year, I suggest that this news must have been devastating. For one thing, as I recall, homosexuality was much more heavily stigmatized in general society than it is now. Also, AIDS (in the popular perception) represented a sentence of death by agonizingly slow torture—I remember hearing about a friend of a colleague who spent months gagging on the growths on his tongue, to name only one of his afflictions. Antiviral treatment was on the way, but nobody knew that in 1989.
The author describes his receipt of this news dryly, but at the time, it must have been as if he had been told: “You’re going to die in agony, prolonged over the course of months, if not years. I don’t know or care how you got it, but I and everyone else in the world will assume it’s because you’ve been cheating on your wife with homosexual prostitutes. Oh, you should let her know that you’ve probably infected her, too, dooming her to your horrible disgusting fate. Have a nice day!”
Later on, it turned out to have been a simple mistake—the test was a false positive, and the 999 out of 1,000 figure had been based on a lack of understanding about Bayes’ Theorem.