PROPER (version 1.4.2)

comparePower: Compute the power-related quantities from simulation results

Description

This function take the simulation output from "runSims" function and compute a variety of power-related quantities.

Usage

comparePower(simOutput, alpha.type = c("fdr", "pval"), alpha.nominal=0.1, stratify.by = c("expr", "dispersion"), strata, filter.by = c("none","expr"), strata.filtered = 1, target.by=c("lfc", "effectsize"), delta=0.5)

Arguments

simOutput

The result from "runSims" function.

alpha.type

A string to represent the way to call DE genes. Available options are "fdr" and "pval", for calling DE genes based on FDR or p-values. Default is "fdr".

alpha.nominal

The nomial value for call DE genes. Recommend values are 0.1 when using FDR, and 0.01 for using p-values.

stratify.by

A string to represent the way to stratify genes. Available options are "expr" and "dispersion", for stratifying gene by average expression levels or over-dispersion.

strata

The strata used for stratification.

filter.by

A string to represent the way to filter genes. This is used in conjunction with strata.filtered for gene filtering. Available options are "none" and "expr". "none" stands for no filtering, thus all genes will be considered. "expr" stands for filtering based on average expression levels.

strata.filtered

The strata to be filtered out in computing power-related quantities. Genes fall into these strata will be excluded when computing power-related quantities. See "Details" for more description of gene filtering.

target.by

A string to specify the method to define "biologically important" DE genes. Available options are (1) "lfc": interesting genes are defined by absolute log fold changes. (2) "effectsize": interesting genes are defined by absolute log fold changes divided by the square root of dispersion.

delta

A threshold used for defining "biologically important" genes. Genes with absolute log fold changes (when target.by is "lfc") or effect sizes (when target.by is "effectsize") greater than this value are deemed DE in power calculations. See "Details" for more description.

Value

A list with following fields:

TD, FD, alpha, FDR, power

3D array representing the number of true discoveries, false discoveries, type I error rate, FDR, and power for all simulation settings. The dimension of the arrays are nstrata * N * nsims. Here nstrata is number of specified strata. N is number of different sample sizes settings, and nsims is number of simulations.

alpha.marginal, FDR.marginal, power.marginal

Matrix representing the marginal type I error rate, FDR, and power for all simulation settings. The dimension of the matrices are N * nsims. These are the marginalized (over all strata) values of the stratified quantities.

stratify.by

The input stratify.by.

strata

The input strata.

Nreps

Sample sizes one wants to perform simulation on. This is taken from the simulation options.

target.by

The input method to define "biologically important" DE genes.

delta

The input delta for biologically important genes.

Details

This is the main function to compute various power-related quantities, under stratification and filtering of all genes.

Gene stratification: we advocate to compute and visualize the powers at different stratification of genes. Because of the characteristics of RNA-seq data such as average expression level (counts), powers for calling DE genes are different even when the magnitude of changes are the same. The stratified results will provide a more comprehensive power assessment and better guide the investigators in experimental designs and analysis strategies.

Gene filtering: sometimes it is advisible to filter out some genes (such as the ones with very low count) before DE detection. The filtering option here provides an opportunity to compare the powers before and after filtering.

Define biologically interesting genes: we advocate to compute powers for "biologically interesting genes", because there might be many true DE genes with very low changes which are difficult to detect. In this sense, we are only interested in genes with adequate changes between groups (defined as "biologically interesting"). We provide two options to define biologically interesting genes: by absolute values of log fold changes or effect sizes (absolute values of log fold changes divided by the square root of dispersions). Genes with these quantities over a threshold are deemed intersting, and the power calculation are based on these genes.

See Also

RNAseq.SimOptions.2grp, simRNAseq, runSims

Examples

## Not run: 
# simOptions = RNAseq.SimOptions.2grp()
# ## run a few simulations
# simRes = runSims(Nreps=c(3,5,7), sim.opts=simOptions, nsims=5,
#                  DEmethod="edgeR")
# 
# ## using FDR 0.1 to call DE, then look at power curves and summary
# powers = comparePower(simRes)
# summaryPower(powers)
# par(mfrow=c(2,2))
# plotPower(powers)
# plotPowerTD(powers)
# plotFDR(powers)
# plotFDcost(powers)
# 
# ## filter out the genes with low counts (<10) and redo power calculation
# ## Marginal powers are significantly higher.
# powers = comparePower(simRes, filter.by="expr", strata.filtered=1)
# summaryPower(powers)
# par(mfrow=c(2,2))
# plotPower(powers)
# plotPowerTD(powers)
# plotFDR(powers)
# plotFDcost(powers)
# 
# ## Provide higher threshold for log fold change to define true DE.
# ## This will result in higher power.
# powers2 = comparePower(simRes, delta=2)
# summaryPower(powers2)
# par(mfrow=c(2,2))
# plotPower(powers2)
# plotPowerTD(powers2)
# plotFDR(powers2)
# plotFDcost(powers2)
# 
# ## use effect size to define biologically interesting genes
# powers3 = comparePower(simRes, filter.by="expr", strata.filtered=1,
#                       target.by="effectsize", delta=1)
# summaryPower(powers3)
# par(mfrow=c(2,2))
# plotPower(powers3)
# plotPowerTD(powers3)
# plotFDR(powers3)
# plotFDcost(powers3)
# ## End(Not run)