Of all actual positives, what proportion did the model identify. High recall means few false negatives - the model finds most of the positive cases.
Recall (sensitivity, true positive rate) measures how well the model finds all positive cases. It answers: "Of everything that was actually positive, how much did we catch?"
Recall formula: Recall = True Positives / (True Positives + False Negatives)
Recall focus:
High recall needed when:
Examples:
Optimise for recall when missing positives is dangerous. Better to investigate false alarms than miss real threats.
We configure AI systems for appropriate recall levels for Australian businesses, especially in safety-critical or high-stakes applications.
"A manufacturing defect detector with 95% recall catches 95 out of 100 defective products - only 5 slip through."