Estimating the occurrence of false positives and false negatives in microarray studies by approximating and partitioning the empirical distribution of p-values.

The occurrence of false positives and false negatives in a microarray analysis could be easily estimated if the distribution of p-values were approximated and then expressed as a mixture of null and alternative densities. Essentially any distribution of p-values can be expressed as such a mixture by extracting a uniform density from it. The occurrence of false positives and false negatives in a microarray analysis could be easily estimated if the distribution of p-values were approximated and then expressed as a mixture of null and alternative densities. Essentially any distribution of p-values can be expressed as such a mixture by extracting a uniform density from it. An S-plus function library is available from http://www.stjuderesearch.org/statistics.