University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > MRC Biostatistics Unit Seminars > Signal Identification for Rare and Weak Features: Higher Criticism or False Discovery Rates

  Browse A-Z

Log in

University Account External (via Google)

šŸ” Log In

Information on

Subscribing to talksdetails Finding a talkdetails Adding a talkdetails Disseminating talksdetails Help and Documentationdetails

ā„¹ļø Information

Signal Identification for Rare and Weak Features: Higher Criticism or False Discovery Rates

Download to your calendar using vCal

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Jack Bowden .

Signal identification in large-dimensional settings is a challenging problem in biostatistics, even more so if is the signal is very weak. For this purpose the method of “higher criticism” (HC) has recently been powerfully advocated and shown to be highly effective for determining appropriate decision thresholds. On the other hand, many omics studies now routinely employ a variant of the “false discovery rate” (FDR) for screening for interesting features. In my talk, I will compare signal identification using the HC and FDR approaches, with the aim to provide a better understanding of HC as well as offering a simple explanation for HCā€™s favorable performance. After a non-technical introduction to both the HC and FDR approaches, I will derive the ideal thresholds corresponding to the HC and FDR criteria and explore their mutual relationships. Subsequently, it can be established that in a rare-weak setting there is a near identity between the HC and a simple FDR threshold. As a result, the decision threshold obtained by the frequentist HC approach is given a natural Bayesian interpretation. This is joint work with Bernd Klaus, EMBL Heidelberg.

This talk is part of the MRC Biostatistics Unit Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.

Other lists

Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Meeting Room 5 (LG, Central building) Room GS15 at the William Gates Building and on Zoom: https://cl-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/4361570789?pwd=Nkl2T3ZLaTZwRm05bzRTOUUxY3Q4QT09&from=addon Glanville Lecture

Other talks

Cooperation as a Laboratory of Being Christopher Cowie on the epistemology of assessing biosignature claims Cambridge AI in Medicine Seminar - July 2026 Title to be confirmed Nature and law CPH IRC and PHI
 

Ā© 2006-2025 Talks.cam, University of Cambridge. Contact Us | Help and Documentation | Privacy and Publicity