Base Rate Fallacy
A concept in statistics and cognitive bias research referring to the tendency to ignore prior probabilities (base rates) and over-rely on specific evidence when estimating probabilities. In scenarios where targets are sparse, this causes high-accuracy systems to still generate large numbers of false positives.
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The base rate fallacy points out that when targets are extremely rare, even a highly accurate system may produce a large proportion of false alarms among its alerts.
In a facial recognition system with 99.9% accuracy, if there are only 10 real targets among 1 million people, approximately 99% of the roughly 1,010 alerts generated would be false positives.
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The base rate fallacy points out that when targets are extremely rare, even a highly accurate system may produce a large proportion of false alarms among its alerts.
50%UnverifiedIn a facial recognition system with 99.9% accuracy, if there are only 10 real targets among 1 million people, approximately 99% of the roughly 1,010 alerts generated would be false positives.
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