학술논문

A powerful rank-based correction to multiple testing under positive dependency
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Subject
Statistics - Methodology
Mathematics - Statistics Theory
Statistics - Machine Learning
Language
Abstract
We develop a novel multiple hypothesis testing correction with family-wise error rate (FWER) control that efficiently exploits positive dependencies between potentially correlated statistical hypothesis tests. Our proposed algorithm $\texttt{max-rank}$ is conceptually straight-forward, relying on the use of a $\max$-operator in the rank domain of computed test statistics. We compare our approach to the frequently employed Bonferroni correction, theoretically and empirically demonstrating its superiority over Bonferroni in the case of existing positive dependency, and its equivalence otherwise. Our advantage over Bonferroni increases as the number of tests rises, and we maintain high statistical power whilst ensuring FWER control. We specifically frame our algorithm in the context of parallel permutation testing, a scenario that arises in our primary application of conformal prediction, a recently popularized approach for quantifying uncertainty in complex predictive settings.
Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures; Note: We have been made aware of our proposal being highly related and/or identical to the Westfall-Young multiple testing procedure - we are currently investigating this connection