Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/paper-2/5/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2003 Paper 2 5 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Let denote having the disease and a positive result. Assume I am sampled uniformly from the stated population, so . By the law of total probability, . Thus Bayes' theorem givesThe denominator must be positive; otherwise the observed event has zero probability in this model and the conditional probability is undefined. The answer depends on disease prevalence as well as the test's two error rates.
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