History
The ROC curve was first used during World War II for the analysis of radar signals before it was employed in signal detection theory. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States army began new research to increase the prediction of correctly detected Japanese aircraft from their radar signals.
In the 1950s, ROC curves were employed in psychophysics to assess human (and occasionally non-human animal) detection of weak signals. In medicine, ROC analysis has been extensively used in the evaluation of diagnostic tests. ROC curves are also used extensively in epidemiology and medical research and are frequently mentioned in conjunction with evidence-based medicine. In radiology, ROC analysis is a common technique to evaluate new radiology techniques. In the social sciences, ROC analysis is often called the ROC Accuracy Ratio, a common technique for judging the accuracy of default probability models.
ROC curves also proved useful for the evaluation of machine learning techniques. The first application of ROC in machine learning was by Spackman who demonstrated the value of ROC curves in comparing and evaluating different classification algorithms.
Read more about this topic: Receiver Operating Characteristic
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