
Multiple comparisons 499
Gene significance level
Number of genes
0.01 0.05 0.1 0.15
10 < 1 < 1 1 1.5
20 < 1 1 2 3
50
< 1 2.5 5 7.5
100 1 5 10 15
500 5 25 50 75
1000
10 50 100 150
5000 50 250 500 750
10000 100 500 1000 1500
TABLE 16.4: The expected number of false positives for a given gene
significance level and size of the array if no correction for multiple comparison
is performed.
small array with 5,000 genes on which the gene-level analysis is p e rformed at
0.05 significance level is expected to produce about 250 false positives mixed
up with whatever true po sitives there are in the given condition. For such
numbers, performing alternative assays in order