This morning I finished watching this, then I went and got my New York Times fix, where I found this. The two are connected because Hilary Mason's talk gave me a nice little reminder of the counterintuitive Bayes' Theorem, and the idea to use it to see if the Times has any base in casting doubts over the good name of the city's fine corps of bedbug-sniffing dogs.

The answer is that it depends. If the infestation rate in New York City is 5% rather than the 10% that The Daily News claims, and if the dogs' accuracy in the field is 95% rather than the hoped-for 98%, then really, if you live in one of the typical New York apartments and a dog says you have bedbugs, you might as well flip a coin. As hard as that may be to believe, that's how the numbers work out. When the actual infestation rate is low, a 95% accuracy rate is pretty limiting.

Here's my Stata code:


capture prog drop findBedbugs
program findBedbugs

version 10

args bir_prb bsd_prb

// legend of the variable names in this program
local bir "reported NYC bedbug infestation rate"
local bsd "bedbug sniffing dog"
local nhu "NYC housing units in 2009"
local prb "probability"
local num "number"

// Bayes' theorem: p(A|B)=p(B|A)*p(A)/p(B)
// P(A) is the true infestation rate -- bir_prb.
// P(B) is the detected infestation rate (both true and false positives) -- bsd_prb.
// P(B|A) is the dog's accuracy rate.
// P(A|B) is the probability of a true positive.

// data sources
// for bir_prb=.1 (10% infestation rate):
// http://bit.ly/ckMGzx
// for nhu_num=8,017,263 (over 8 million housing units) in NYC:
// http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html
// for bsd_prb=.98 (the dogs' accuracy rate is 98%):
// http://bit.ly/apbldH

// collected values
local nhu_num  8017263

// some formatting
local bsdr: di %2.0f 100*bsd_prb' "%"
local bsdw: di %2.0f 100*(1-bsd_prb') "%"
local ir:   di %2.0f 100*bir_prb' "%"

// some labels
local DS "Total possible cases where the dog"
local DR "DS' is right (bsdr' of infested units)"
local DW "DS' is wrong (bsdw' of units not infested)"
local TP "P(you really have bedbugs when this dog says so)"

// some calculations
local DR_num=bsd_prb'*bir_prb'*nhu_num'         // true positives
local DW_num=(1-bsd_prb')*(1-bir_prb')*nhu_num' // false positives
local I_num=nhu_num'*bir_prb'                    // number of infestations
local npi=.98*I_num'/(DR_num'+DW_num')          // net P(infestation)

// show this on screen
local col 75
di ""
di "The infestation rate is ir' and the dog is bsdr' accurate."
di "Total number of housing units in NYC: " _col(col') %12.0fc nhu_num'
di "Infested units: " _col(col') %12.0fc I_num'
di "DR': "           _col(col') %12.0fc DR_num'
di "DW': "           _col(col') %12.0fc DW_num'
di ""
di "TP': "           %4.2fc npi'*100 "%"

end


And here's what you get when you run this, first with a 10% infestation rate and 98% dog accuracy, and then with a 5% infestation rate and a 95% dog accuracy:


. findBedbugs .1 .98

The infestation rate is 10% and the dog is 98% accurate.
Total number of housing units in NYC:                                        8,017,263
Infested units:                                                                801,726
Total possible cases where the dog is right (98% of infested units):           785,692
Total possible cases where the dog is wrong ( 2% of units not infested):       144,311

P(you really have bedbugs when this dog says so): 84.48%

. findBedbugs .05 .95

The infestation rate is  5% and the dog is 95% accurate.
Total number of housing units in NYC:                                        8,017,263
Infested units:                                                                400,863
Total possible cases where the dog is right (95% of infested units):           380,820
Total possible cases where the dog is wrong ( 5% of units not infested):       380,820

P(you really have bedbugs when this dog says so): 51.58%


The point is that this low probability of having bedbugs when the dog says so is a function of both how bad the problem is, and how accurate the dog is. The 10% infestation rate expectation comes from a Daily News poll. The 95% accuracy rate comes from a clinical trial. It's hard to say which is more trustworthy. It's possible that dogs perform worse in the field than they do in the lab. It's also possible that the poll suffers from non-response bias.

Plus, if you live in a less-infested neighborhood (and you can tell from here) your chance that you're wasting your money if you hire a sniffer dog increases greatly. That's not the dog's fault.