Application of the ROC curve to microarray data

Steve Simon

2005-05-26

[StATS]: Application of the ROC curve to microarray data (May 26, 2005).

Life is full of surprises. When I was looking at whether the software package R could compute and analyze Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves, I found out that there is an application of ROC curves for microarray data. Apparently, the positive false discovery rate can be conceived of in a diagnostic testing format as relating to the positive predictive value. I have not had time to read all the details, but there is a nice paper on this at

At the same time, I also found a nice paper talking about some of the problems with supervised learning:

Oh, and here’s another interesting paper about modifications to the Biplot:

When will I ever have time to read all this stuff?

By the way, my search for ROC stuff was sparked by a person who was interested in free software. R will do the trick, but it is a large program that takes a lot of time to learn. Some other choices are documented at:

You can find an earlier version of this page on my website.