false negative
The term "false negative" is crucial in fields like medicine, statistics, and data analysis, indicating a test result that incorrectly shows the absence of a condition or attribute.
🇺🇸 US Voice:
🇬🇧 UK Voice:
Definition
B2General
(technical)A test result that wrongly indicates something is not present when it actually is.
Example
- The security system had a false negative and failed to detect the intruder.
B2Medicine
(technical)A diagnostic test result that incorrectly shows a person does not have a disease or condition they actually have.
Example
- The patient's cancer was missed due to a false negative in the initial screening.
C1Statistics
(technical)A type II error where a test fails to reject a false null hypothesis, indicating no effect or relationship when there actually is one.
Example
- The study suffered from a false negative, leading researchers to believe the treatment was ineffective.
Similar
Terms that have similar or relatively close meanings to "false negative":
false positivefalse stepfalse alarmfalse bottomfalse flaggedfalse notefalse loannegative crystal