[GenABEL-dev] Precision and scientific notation in ProbABEL

L.C. Karssen lennart at karssen.org
Sun Aug 18 23:20:38 CEST 2013


On 08/17/2013 10:38 AM, Yurii Aulchenko wrote:
> As a general rule I am for using scientific notation and 4 to 6
> significant digits (e.g. 0.123456E-20). This may be my FORTRAN
> background though :)

That seems too precise, given that most imput dosages/probabilities are
known to ~3 or 4 digits and I don't think that many phenotypes will be
measured more precisely.

> 
> What if we decide to put say p-values in the outputs? Does the output
> automatically switch to sci notation in this case? 

For p-values I would definitely go for scientific notation. We can turn
the on/off per output column (as each column is coded as a stringstream).


Lennart.

> 
> YA
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 12:03 PM, L.C. Karssen <lennart at karssen.org
> <mailto:lennart at karssen.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Thanks for the input Nicola, I've set the output to 6 significant
>     digits, although it seems that the cout function (used for printing)
>     sometimes "eats" a trailing zero.
> 
> 
>     Best,
> 
>     Lennart.
> 
> 
>     On 30-07-13 10:33, Nicola Pirastu wrote:
>     > Dear Lennart,
>     >
>     > I think that switching to scientific notation is not really
>     necessary and could lead to a little of loss in precision unless of
>     course you still
>     > use 6 significant digits which will translate in just a reduction
>     of 0 in the values.
>     > So if for example we were to choose scientific notation with 3
>     significant digits, although this would not affect very much the
>     final results we could be asked to submit more and
>     > would not be able to comply.
>     > So to summarize I think that if it does not have any effect on
>     performance of ProbABEL 6 significant digits without scientific
>     notation is fine.
>     >
>     > Best
>     >
>     > Nicola
>     >
>     >
>     > Dr. Nicola Pirastu PhD
>     > Research Fellow
>     > Medical Sciences, Chirurgical and Health Department
>     > University of Trieste
>     > Medical Genetics
>     > IRCCS Burlo Garofolo
>     > Via dell'Istria 65/1
>     > 34137 Italy
>     > tel. +390403785539
>     >
>     > Il giorno 30/lug/2013, alle ore 09:32, "L.C. Karssen"
>     <lennart at karssen.org <mailto:lennart at karssen.org>> ha scritto:
>     >
>     >> Dear list,
>     >>
>     >> I'm finalising version 0.4.0 of ProbABEL and there are two things I'd
>     >> like your opinion on:
>     >>
>     >> 1) with what precision should we print the betas, standard errors and
>     >> Chi^2 values to the output files?
>     >>
>     >> 2) Should we use scientific notation in the output (for betas,
>     standard
>     >> errors and Chi^2)?
>     >>
>     >> In ProbABEL v0.3.0 and earlier output was simply sent to cout without
>     >> any explicit formatting. In practice this lead usually to 6
>     significant
>     >> digits, but sometimes less. My proposal is to fix the precision at 6
>     >> significant digits.
>     >>
>     >> Regarding item 2): most of the betas I see are in the range between 0
>     >> and 10, although in case of no effect beta's can be of the order of
>     >> 1e-2, 1e-3. All in all, I don't think switching to scientific
>     notation
>     >> will improve the output.
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> What are your opinions?
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> Thanks,
>     >>
>     >> Lennart.
>     >> --
>     >> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>     >> L.C. Karssen
>     >> Utrecht
>     >> The Netherlands
>     >>
>     >> lennart at karssen.org <mailto:lennart at karssen.org>
>     >> http://blog.karssen.org
>     >>
>     >> Stuur mij aub geen Word of Powerpoint bestanden!
>     >> Zie http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.nl.html
>     >> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>     >>
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> 
>     --
>     -----------------------------------------------------------------
>     L.C. Karssen
>     Utrecht
>     The Netherlands
> 
>     lennart at karssen.org <mailto:lennart at karssen.org>
>     http://blog.karssen.org
> 
>     Stuur mij aub geen Word of Powerpoint bestanden!
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> 
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Yurii S. Aulchenko
> 
> [ LinkedIn <http://nl.linkedin.com/in/yuriiaulchenko> ] [ Twitter
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-- 
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
L.C. Karssen
Utrecht
The Netherlands

lennart at karssen.org
http://blog.karssen.org
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

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