For the sake of argument, let us say one out of every million people is a terrorist (an overestimate). Let us also imagine there exists a machine that can determine whether someone is a terrorist with 99.9 percent accuracy.
What are the odds an individual tested is a terrorist? 0.1 percent chance right?
So the 99.9 percent accurate test will give you the wrong answer 99.9 percent of the time. This is what is known as the false positive paradox, and it completely dismantles any possible justification for the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of our phone calls and emails.
She worked behind enemy lines—and was captured by the Soviets. But the U.S. never properly gave her full credit for her heroism. After seven decades, that may be about to change.
The mathematicians Wei Zhang, Xinwen Zhu, Zhiwei Yun and Xinyi Yuan. OLENA SHMAHALO/QUANTA MAGAZINEhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/25/joseph-curl-christmastime-george-w-bush-was-santa-/
I started covering the newly elected president in 2000, when I was in my 30s. Back then, as a reporter for The Washington Times, we went everywhere the president went. If he went to Charlotte, North Carolina, to give a 30-minute speech on an airport tarmac, we went. Up at 4 a.m., an hourlong commute to Andrews Air Force Base, in place on the ground hours before POTUS landed, and there for hours and hours after he left — sometimes right through the evening news so network reporters could file live from the site.We also went with the president to Texas every summer — often for a month — and every winter, too, over the holidays.
But here’s the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never.
After a few years, I asked a low-level White House staffer why.
I still remember what she said….
