Points of Significance: Statistics versus machine learning

To compare traditional statistics to ML approaches, we'll use a simulation of the expression of 40 genes in two phenotypes ( /). Mean gene expression will differ between phenotypes, but we'll set up the simulation so that the mean difference for the first 30 genes is not related to phenotype. The last ten genes will be dysregulated, with systematic differences in mean expression between phenotypes. To achieve this, we assign each gene an average log expression that is the same for both phenotypes. The dysregulated genes (31–40, labeled A–J) have their mean expression perturbed in the phenotype (Figure 1a).