How to decide whether small samples comply with an equidistribution

dc.creatorPoeschel, Thorsten
dc.creatorFreund, Jan A.
dc.date2002-05-10
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T02:45:25Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T02:45:25Z
dc.descriptionThe decision whether a measured distribution complies with an equidistribution is a central element of many biostatistical methods. High throughput differential expression measurements, for instance, necessitate to judge possible over-representation of genes. The reliability of this judgement, however, is strongly affected when rarely expressed genes are pooled. We propose a method that can be applied to frequency ranked distributions and that yields a simple but efficient criterion to assess the hypothesis of equiprobable expression levels. By applying our technique to surrogate data we exemplify how the decision criterion can differentiate between a true equidistribution and a triangular distribution. The distinction succeeds even for small sample sizes where standard tests of significance (e.g. chi^2) fail. Our method will have a major impact on several problems of computational biology where rare events baffle a reliable assessment of frequency distributions.
dc.description7 pages, 8 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0205225
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0205225
dc.identifierBioSystems, Vol. 69, 63-72 (2003)
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/19291
dc.subjectDisordered Systems and Neural Networks
dc.subjectQuantitative Methods
dc.titleHow to decide whether small samples comply with an equidistribution
dc.typetext

Files

Collections