Some Statistical Issues in the Analysis of Microarray Data

Abstract

DNA microarray technology provides powerful tools to study expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously. This highly promising technique poses numerous statistical issues in experimental design and data analysis. In this talk, I will present an overview of potential sources of variation in microarray experiments and various procedures to identify differentially expressed genes for sample comparison or classification. Issues in normalization, sample size calculation, and the significance testing approach to identifying differentially expressed genes will be discussed.