Proportionality: a valid alternative to correlation for relative data.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Lovell D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4361748 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Proportionality: a valid alternative to correlation for relative data.
Lovell David D Pawlowsky-Glahn Vera V Egozcue Juan José JJ Marguerat Samuel S Bähler Jürg J
PLoS computational biology 20150316 3
In the life sciences, many measurement methods yield only the relative abundances of different components in a sample. With such relative-or compositional-data, differential expression needs careful interpretation, and correlation-a statistical workhorse for analyzing pairwise relationships-is an inappropriate measure of association. Using yeast gene expression data we show how correlation can be misleading and present proportionality as a valid alternative for relative data. We show how the str ...[more]
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