# Muwtipwe comparisons probwem

(Redirected from Simuwtaneous inference)
An exampwe of data produced by data dredging, apparentwy showing a cwose wink between de wetters in de winning word used in a spewwing bee competition and de number of peopwe in de United States kiwwed by venomous spiders. The cwear simiwarity in trends is a coincidence. If many data series are compared, simiwarwy convincing but coincidentaw data may be obtained.

In statistics, de muwtipwe comparisons, muwtipwicity or muwtipwe testing probwem occurs when one considers a set of statisticaw inferences simuwtaneouswy[1] or infers a subset of parameters sewected based on de observed vawues.[2] In certain fiewds it is known as de wook-ewsewhere effect.

The more inferences are made, de more wikewy erroneous inferences are to occur. Severaw statisticaw techniqwes have been devewoped to prevent dis from happening, awwowing significance wevews for singwe and muwtipwe comparisons to be directwy compared. These techniqwes generawwy reqwire a stricter significance dreshowd for individuaw comparisons, so as to compensate for de number of inferences being made.

## History

The interest in de probwem of muwtipwe comparisons began in de 1950s wif de work of Tukey and Scheffé. Oder medods, such as de cwosed testing procedure (Marcus et aw., 1976) and de Howm–Bonferroni medod (1979), water emerged. In 1995, work on de fawse discovery rate began, uh-hah-hah-hah. In 1996, de first conference on muwtipwe comparisons took pwace in Israew. This was fowwowed by conferences around de worwd, usuawwy taking pwace about every two years.[3]

## Definition

Muwtipwe comparisons arise when a statisticaw anawysis invowves muwtipwe statisticaw tests, each of which has a potentiaw to produce a "discovery." Faiwure to compensate for muwtipwe comparisons can have important reaw-worwd conseqwences, as iwwustrated by de fowwowing exampwes:

• Suppose de treatment is a new way of teaching writing to students, and de controw is de standard way of teaching writing. Students in de two groups can be compared in terms of grammar, spewwing, organization, content, and so on, uh-hah-hah-hah. As more attributes are compared, it becomes increasingwy wikewy dat de treatment and controw groups wiww appear to differ on at weast one attribute due to random sampwing error awone.
• Suppose we consider de efficacy of a drug in terms of de reduction of any one of a number of disease symptoms. As more symptoms are considered, it becomes increasingwy wikewy dat de drug wiww appear to be an improvement over existing drugs in terms of at weast one symptom.

In bof exampwes, as de number of comparisons increases, it becomes more wikewy dat de groups being compared wiww appear to differ in terms of at weast one attribute. Our confidence dat a resuwt wiww generawize to independent data shouwd generawwy be weaker if it is observed as part of an anawysis dat invowves muwtipwe comparisons, rader dan an anawysis dat invowves onwy a singwe comparison, uh-hah-hah-hah.

For exampwe, if one test is performed at de 5% wevew and de corresponding nuww hypodesis is true, dere is onwy a 5% chance of incorrectwy rejecting de nuww hypodesis. However, if 100 tests are conducted and aww corresponding nuww hypodeses are true, de expected number of incorrect rejections (awso known as fawse positives or Type I errors) is 5. If de tests are statisticawwy independent from each oder, de probabiwity of at weast one incorrect rejection is 99.4%.

The muwtipwe comparisons probwem awso appwies to confidence intervaws. A singwe confidence intervaw wif a 95% coverage probabiwity wevew wiww contain de popuwation parameter in 95% of experiments. However, if one considers 100 confidence intervaws simuwtaneouswy, each wif 95% coverage probabiwity, de expected number of non-covering intervaws is 5. If de intervaws are statisticawwy independent from each oder, de probabiwity dat at weast one intervaw does not contain de popuwation parameter is 99.4%.

Techniqwes have been devewoped to prevent de infwation of fawse positive rates and non-coverage rates dat occur wif muwtipwe statisticaw tests.

### Cwassification of muwtipwe hypodesis tests

The fowwowing tabwe defines de possibwe outcomes when testing muwtipwe nuww hypodeses. Suppose we have a number m of nuww hypodeses, denoted by: H1H2, ..., Hm. Using a statisticaw test, we reject de nuww hypodesis if de test is decwared significant. We do not reject de nuww hypodesis if de test is non-significant. Summing each type of outcome over aww Hi  yiewds de fowwowing random variabwes:

Nuww hypodesis is true (H0) Awternative hypodesis is true (HA) Totaw
Test is decwared significant ${\dispwaystywe V}$ ${\dispwaystywe S}$ ${\dispwaystywe R}$
Test is decwared non-significant ${\dispwaystywe U}$ ${\dispwaystywe T}$ ${\dispwaystywe m-R}$
Totaw ${\dispwaystywe m_{0}}$ ${\dispwaystywe m-m_{0}}$ ${\dispwaystywe m}$
• ${\dispwaystywe m}$ is de totaw number hypodeses tested
• ${\dispwaystywe m_{0}}$ is de number of true nuww hypodeses, an unknown parameter
• ${\dispwaystywe m-m_{0}}$ is de number of true awternative hypodeses
• ${\dispwaystywe V}$ is de number of fawse positives (Type I error) (awso cawwed "fawse discoveries")
• ${\dispwaystywe S}$ is de number of true positives (awso cawwed "true discoveries")
• ${\dispwaystywe T}$ is de number of fawse negatives (Type II error)
• ${\dispwaystywe U}$ is de number of true negatives
• ${\dispwaystywe R=V+S}$ is de number of rejected nuww hypodeses (awso cawwed "discoveries", eider true or fawse)

In ${\dispwaystywe m}$ hypodesis tests of which ${\dispwaystywe m_{0}}$ are true nuww hypodeses, ${\dispwaystywe R}$ is an observabwe random variabwe, and ${\dispwaystywe S}$, ${\dispwaystywe T}$, ${\dispwaystywe U}$, and ${\dispwaystywe V}$ are unobservabwe random variabwes.

## Controwwing procedures

If m independent comparisons are performed, de famiwy-wise error rate (FWER), is given by

${\dispwaystywe {\bar {\awpha }}=1-\weft(1-\awpha _{\{{\text{per comparison}}\}}\right)^{m}.}$

Hence, unwess de tests are perfectwy positivewy dependent (i.e., identicaw), ${\dispwaystywe {\bar {\awpha }}}$ increases as de number of comparisons increases. If we do not assume dat de comparisons are independent, den we can stiww say:

${\dispwaystywe {\bar {\awpha }}\weq m\cdot \awpha _{\{{\text{per comparison}}\}},}$

which fowwows from Boowe's ineqwawity. Exampwe: ${\dispwaystywe 0.2649=1-(1-.05)^{6}\weq .05\times 6=0.3}$

There are different ways to assure dat de famiwy-wise error rate is at most ${\dispwaystywe {\bar {\awpha }}}$. The most conservative medod, which is free of dependence and distributionaw assumptions, is de Bonferroni correction ${\dispwaystywe \awpha _{\madrm {\{per\ comparison\}} }={\bar {\awpha }}/m}$.

A marginawwy wess conservative correction can be obtained by sowving de eqwation for de famiwy-wise error rate of ${\dispwaystywe m}$ independent comparisons for ${\dispwaystywe \awpha _{\madrm {\{per\ comparison\}} }}$. This yiewds ${\dispwaystywe \awpha _{\{{\text{per comparison}}\}}=1-{(1-{\bar {\awpha }})}^{1/m}}$, which is known as de Šidák correction. Anoder procedure is de Howm–Bonferroni medod, which uniformwy dewivers more power dan de simpwe Bonferroni correction, by testing onwy de wowest p-vawue (${\dispwaystywe i=1}$) against de strictest criterion, and de higher p-vawues (${\dispwaystywe i>1}$) against progressivewy wess strict criteria.[4] ${\dispwaystywe \awpha _{\madrm {\{per\ comparison\}} }={\bar {\awpha }}/(m-i+1)}$.

Muwtipwe testing correction refers to re-cawcuwating probabiwities obtained from a statisticaw test which was repeated muwtipwe times. In order to retain a prescribed famiwy-wise error rate α in an anawysis invowving more dan one comparison, de error rate for each comparison must be more stringent dan α. Boowe's ineqwawity impwies dat if each of m tests is performed to have type I error rate α/m, de totaw error rate wiww not exceed α. This is cawwed de Bonferroni correction, and is one of de most commonwy used approaches for muwtipwe comparisons.

In some situations, de Bonferroni correction is substantiawwy conservative, i.e., de actuaw famiwy-wise error rate is much wess dan de prescribed wevew α. This occurs when de test statistics are highwy dependent (in de extreme case where de tests are perfectwy dependent, de famiwy-wise error rate wif no muwtipwe comparisons adjustment and de per-test error rates are identicaw). For exampwe, in fMRI anawysis,[5][6] tests are done on over 100,000 voxews in de brain, uh-hah-hah-hah. The Bonferroni medod wouwd reqwire p-vawues to be smawwer dan .05/100000 to decware significance. Since adjacent voxews tend to be highwy correwated, dis dreshowd is generawwy too stringent.

Because simpwe techniqwes such as de Bonferroni medod can be conservative, dere has been a great deaw of attention paid to devewoping better techniqwes, such dat de overaww rate of fawse positives can be maintained widout excessivewy infwating de rate of fawse negatives. Such medods can be divided into generaw categories:

• Medods where totaw awpha can be proved to never exceed 0.05 (or some oder chosen vawue) under any conditions. These medods provide "strong" controw against Type I error, in aww conditions incwuding a partiawwy correct nuww hypodesis.
• Medods where totaw awpha can be proved not to exceed 0.05 except under certain defined conditions.
• Medods which rewy on an omnibus test before proceeding to muwtipwe comparisons. Typicawwy dese medods reqwire a significant ANOVA, MANOVA, or Tukey's range test. These medods generawwy provide onwy "weak" controw of Type I error, except for certain numbers of hypodeses.
• Empiricaw medods, which controw de proportion of Type I errors adaptivewy, utiwizing correwation and distribution characteristics of de observed data.

The advent of computerized resampwing medods, such as bootstrapping and Monte Carwo simuwations, has given rise to many techniqwes in de watter category. In some cases where exhaustive permutation resampwing is performed, dese tests provide exact, strong controw of Type I error rates; in oder cases, such as bootstrap sampwing, dey provide onwy approximate controw.

## Large-scawe muwtipwe testing

Traditionaw medods for muwtipwe comparisons adjustments focus on correcting for modest numbers of comparisons, often in an anawysis of variance. A different set of techniqwes have been devewoped for "warge-scawe muwtipwe testing", in which dousands or even greater numbers of tests are performed. For exampwe, in genomics, when using technowogies such as microarrays, expression wevews of tens of dousands of genes can be measured, and genotypes for miwwions of genetic markers can be measured. Particuwarwy in de fiewd of genetic association studies, dere has been a serious probwem wif non-repwication — a resuwt being strongwy statisticawwy significant in one study but faiwing to be repwicated in a fowwow-up study. Such non-repwication can have many causes, but it is widewy considered dat faiwure to fuwwy account for de conseqwences of making muwtipwe comparisons is one of de causes.[7]

In different branches of science, muwtipwe testing is handwed in different ways. It has been argued dat if statisticaw tests are onwy performed when dere is a strong basis for expecting de resuwt to be true, muwtipwe comparisons adjustments are not necessary.[8] It has awso been argued dat use of muwtipwe testing corrections is an inefficient way to perform empiricaw research, since muwtipwe testing adjustments controw fawse positives at de potentiaw expense of many more fawse negatives. On de oder hand, it has been argued dat advances in measurement and information technowogy have made it far easier to generate warge datasets for expworatory anawysis, often weading to de testing of warge numbers of hypodeses wif no prior basis for expecting many of de hypodeses to be true. In dis situation, very high fawse positive rates are expected unwess muwtipwe comparisons adjustments are made.

For warge-scawe testing probwems where de goaw is to provide definitive resuwts, de famiwywise error rate remains de most accepted parameter for ascribing significance wevews to statisticaw tests. Awternativewy, if a study is viewed as expworatory, or if significant resuwts can be easiwy re-tested in an independent study, controw of de fawse discovery rate (FDR)[9][10][11] is often preferred. The FDR, woosewy defined as de expected proportion of fawse positives among aww significant tests, awwows researchers to identify a set of "candidate positives" dat can be more rigorouswy evawuated in a fowwow-up study.[12]

The practice of trying many unadjusted comparisons in de hope of finding a significant one is a known probwem, wheder appwied unintentionawwy or dewiberatewy, is sometimes cawwed "p-hacking."[13][14]

### Assessing wheder any awternative hypodeses are true

A normaw qwantiwe pwot for a simuwated set of test statistics dat have been standardized to be Z-scores under de nuww hypodesis. The departure of de upper taiw of de distribution from de expected trend awong de diagonaw is due to de presence of substantiawwy more warge test statistic vawues dan wouwd be expected if aww nuww hypodeses were true. The red point corresponds to de fourf wargest observed test statistic, which is 3.13, versus an expected vawue of 2.06. The bwue point corresponds to de fiff smawwest test statistic, which is -1.75, versus an expected vawue of -1.96. The graph suggests dat it is unwikewy dat aww de nuww hypodeses are true, and dat most or aww instances of a true awternative hypodesis resuwt from deviations in de positive direction, uh-hah-hah-hah.

A basic qwestion faced at de outset of anawyzing a warge set of testing resuwts is wheder dere is evidence dat any of de awternative hypodeses are true.[citation needed] One simpwe meta-test dat can be appwied when it is assumed dat de tests are independent of each oder is to use de Poisson distribution as a modew for de number of significant resuwts at a given wevew α dat wouwd be found when aww nuww hypodeses are true.[citation needed] If de observed number of positives is substantiawwy greater dan what shouwd be expected, dis suggests dat dere are wikewy to be some true positives among de significant resuwts.[citation needed] For exampwe, if 1000 independent tests are performed, each at wevew α = 0.05, we expect 50 significant tests to occur when aww nuww hypodeses are true.[citation needed] Based on de Poisson distribution wif mean 50, de probabiwity of observing more dan 61 significant tests is wess dan 0.05, so if more dan 61 significant resuwts are observed, it is very wikewy dat some of dem correspond to situations where de awternative hypodesis howds.[citation needed] A drawback of dis approach is dat it over-states de evidence dat some of de awternative hypodeses are true when de test statistics are positivewy correwated, which commonwy occurs in practice.[citation needed]. On de oder hand, de approach remains vawid even in de presence of correwation among de test statistics, as wong as de Poisson distribution can be shown to provide a good approximation for de number of significant resuwts. This scenario arises, for instance, when mining significant freqwent itemsets from transactionaw datasets. Furdermore, a carefuw two stage anawysis can bound de FDR at a pre-specified wevew.[15]

Anoder common approach dat can be used in situations where de test statistics can be standardized to Z-scores is to make a normaw qwantiwe pwot of de test statistics. If de observed qwantiwes are markedwy more dispersed dan de normaw qwantiwes, dis suggests dat some of de significant resuwts may be true positives.[citation needed]

## See awso

Key concepts
Generaw medods of awpha adjustment for muwtipwe comparisons
Rewated concepts

## References

1. ^ Miwwer, R.G. (1981). Simuwtaneous Statisticaw Inference 2nd Ed. Springer Verwag New York. ISBN 0-387-90548-0.
2. ^ Benjamini, Y. (2010). "Simuwtaneous and sewective inference: Current successes and future chawwenges". Biometricaw Journaw. 52 (6): 708–721. PMID 21154895. doi:10.1002/bimj.200900299.
3. ^ [1]
4. ^ Aickin, M; Genswer, H (May 1996). "Adjusting for muwtipwe testing when reporting research resuwts: de Bonferroni vs Howm medods". Am J Pubwic Heawf. 86 (5): 726–728. PMC . PMID 8629727. doi:10.2105/ajph.86.5.726.
5. ^ Logan, B. R.; Rowe, D. B. (2004). "An evawuation of dreshowding techniqwes in fMRI anawysis". NeuroImage. 22 (1): 95–108. PMID 15110000. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.12.047.
6. ^ Logan, B. R.; Gewiazkova, M. P.; Rowe, D. B. (2008). "An evawuation of spatiaw dreshowding techniqwes in fMRI anawysis". Human Brain Mapping. 29 (12): 1379–1389. PMID 18064589. doi:10.1002/hbm.20471.
7. ^ Qu, Hui-Qi; Tien, Matdew; Powychronakos, Constantin (2010-10-01). "Statisticaw significance in genetic association studies". Cwinicaw and Investigative Medicine. Medecine Cwiniqwe et Experimentawe. 33 (5): E266–E270. ISSN 0147-958X. PMC . PMID 20926032.
8. ^ Rodman, Kennef J. (1990). "No Adjustments Are Needed for Muwtipwe Comparisons". Epidemiowogy. Lippincott Wiwwiams & Wiwkins. 1 (1): 43–46. JSTOR 20065622. PMID 2081237. doi:10.1097/00001648-199001000-00010.
9. ^ Benjamini, Yoav; Hochberg, Yosef (1995). "Controwwing de fawse discovery rate: a practicaw and powerfuw approach to muwtipwe testing". Journaw of de Royaw Statisticaw Society, Series B. 57 (1): 125–133. JSTOR 2346101.
10. ^ Storey, JD; Tibshirani, Robert (2003). "Statisticaw significance for genome-wide studies". PNAS. 100 (16): 9440–9445. JSTOR 3144228. PMC . PMID 12883005. doi:10.1073/pnas.1530509100.
11. ^ Efron, Bradwey; Tibshirani, Robert; Storey, John D.; Tusher, Virginia (2001). "Empiricaw Bayes anawysis of a microarray experiment". Journaw of de American Statisticaw Association. 96 (456): 1151–1160. JSTOR 3085878. doi:10.1198/016214501753382129.
12. ^ Nobwe, Wiwwiam S. (2009-12-01). "How does muwtipwe testing correction work?". Nature Biotechnowogy. 27 (12): 1135–1137. ISSN 1087-0156. PMC . PMID 20010596. doi:10.1038/nbt1209-1135.
13. ^ Young, S. S., Karr, A. (2011). "Deming, data and observationaw studies" (PDF). Significance. 8 (3).
14. ^ Smif, G. D., Shah, E. (2002). "Data dredging, bias, or confounding". BMJ. 325 (7378): 1437–1438. PMC . PMID 12493654. doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7378.1437.
15. ^ Kirsch, A; Mitzenmacher, M; Pietracaprina, A; Pucci, G; Upfaw, E; Vandin, F (June 2012). "An Efficient Rigorous Approach for Identifying Statisticawwy Significant Freqwent Itemsets". Journaw of de ACM. 59 (3): 12:1–12:22. doi:10.1145/2220357.2220359.
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 36, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.8798758387565613, "perplexity": 29340.31793698284}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187827853.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20171024014937-20171024034937-00863.warc.gz"}