Sciencespeaking topic
False positives and false negatives: a test either calls something present that isn't there or misses something that is. Which error is less bad to accept, and is that a scientific choice or a moral one?
— false positives and false negatives (Type I and Type II errors)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- The rich get richer more easily, those with many followers gain more followers, the most-linked website gets more links. The system seems built to reward whoever is already ahead. Is this tendency to give more to the rich a trick of nature, or unavoidable mathematics?
- Why was it such a triumph that Mendeleev, in building the periodic table, could predict the properties of elements not yet discovered?
- Everything in the universe is moving away from everything else, but the galaxies aren't moving through space; space itself is expanding. Can we drift apart from each other without going anywhere?
- There's a physically blind spot in your eye at every moment; where the optic nerve exits, there are no light-sensing cells. But you never notice it, because the brain 'makes up' that gap by looking around it. Of the world you think you see, how much is real and how much is the brain filling in?
- Your body sweats to cool down when it's hot, but you also sweat when you're excited or afraid; the sweat on your palms runs on a separate system driven by emotion, not heat. For our ancestors, 'stress sweat' may have made gripping or fleeing easier. What danger are your sweaty palms before an exam preparing for?