> his lab predicted 75 percent of suicide attempts and 87 percent of suicide-related events in the week before they occurred
But what is the false positive rate? I could predict 100% of the worlds suicides a week in advance if I just predict that everyone will commit suicide next week. Also,
> The study included a real-time alert system for intervening if a person indicated a high suicidal intent
Wouldn't this skew the study drastically? "Here you go. Push this button if you're absolutely going to commit suicide". I'm sure that isn't how the alert system worked, but it seems like you'd definitely get a lot higher rate of "suicide attempts" if the participants of the study know it's going to get the attention of the clinic to intervene.
alt Hacker News
Kind of? But not really.
> his lab predicted 75 percent of suicide attempts and 87 percent of suicide-related events in the week before they occurred
But what is the false positive rate? I could predict 100% of the worlds suicides a week in advance if I just predict that everyone will commit suicide next week. Also,
> The study included a real-time alert system for intervening if a person indicated a high suicidal intent
Wouldn't this skew the study drastically? "Here you go. Push this button if you're absolutely going to commit suicide". I'm sure that isn't how the alert system worked, but it seems like you'd definitely get a lot higher rate of "suicide attempts" if the participants of the study know it's going to get the attention of the clinic to intervene.