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2012 AMC 10B Problem 18

Problem 18 of 25IntermediateCounting & Probability

Suppose that one of every 500500 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%2\% false positive rate. In other words, for such people, 98%98\% of the time the test will turn out negative, but 2%2\% of the time the test will turn out positive and will incorrectly indicate that the person has the disease. Let pp 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?p?

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Solution

Among 500500 people, about 11 person has the disease and tests positive. Of the remaining 499499 people, about 2%2\% test falsely positive, which is about 1010 people. So among about 1111 positive tests, only about 11 is a true positive. The probability is closest to 111\dfrac1{11}. Thus, C is the correct answer.

More practice

Concepts: conditional probability · Bayes’ Theorem

Problem text and solution from the LIVE past-contest archive. See also the AoPS wiki page for community solutions.