Question

Suppose that one of every $500$ people in a certain population has a particular disease, which displays no symptoms. A blood test is available for screening for this disease. For a person who has this disease, the test always turns out positive.

For a person who does not have the disease, however, there is a $2\%$ false positive rate. In other words, for such people, $98\%$ of the time the test will turn out negative, but $2\%$ of the time the test will turn out positive and will incorrectly indicate that the person has the disease.

Let $p$ be the probability that a person who is chosen at random from this population and gets a positive test result actually has the disease. Which of the following is closest to $p?$

$\dfrac{1}{98}$

$\dfrac{1}{9}$

$\dfrac{1}{11}$

$\dfrac{49}{99}$

$\dfrac{98}{99}$

Solution:

Among $500$ people, about $1$ person has the disease and tests positive. Of the remaining $499$ people, about $2\%$ test falsely positive, which is about $10$ people.

So among about $11$ positive tests, only about $1$ is a true positive. The probability is closest to $\dfrac1{11}$ .

Thus, C is the correct answer.

2012 AMC 10B Problem 18

Solution:

Problem 18 in Other Years