Random feature baselines provide distributional performance and feature selection benchmarks for clinical and 'omic machine learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ellis, Randall J., Airaud, Audrey, Patel, Chirag J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866912134559956992
author Ellis, Randall J.
Airaud, Audrey
Patel, Chirag J.
author_facet Ellis, Randall J.
Airaud, Audrey
Patel, Chirag J.
contents Identifying predictive features from high-dimensional datasets is a major task in biomedical research. However, it is difficult to determine the robustness of selected features. Here, we investigate the performance of randomly chosen features, what we term "random feature baselines" (RFBs), in the context of disease risk prediction from blood plasma proteomics data in the UK Biobank. We examine two published case studies predicting diagnosis of (1) dementia and (2) hip fracture. RFBs perform similarly to published proteins of interest (using the same number, randomly chosen). We then measure the performance of RFBs for all 607 disease outcomes in the UK Biobank, with various numbers of randomly chosen features, as well as all proteins in the dataset. 114/607 outcomes showed a higher mean AUROC when choosing 5 random features than using all proteins, and the absolute difference in mean AUC was 0.075. 163 outcomes showed a higher mean AUROC when choosing 1000 random features than using all proteins, and the absolute difference in mean AUC was 0.03. Incorporating RFBs should become part of ML practice when feature selection or target discovery is a goal.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_10574
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Random feature baselines provide distributional performance and feature selection benchmarks for clinical and 'omic machine learning
Ellis, Randall J.
Airaud, Audrey
Patel, Chirag J.
Quantitative Methods
Identifying predictive features from high-dimensional datasets is a major task in biomedical research. However, it is difficult to determine the robustness of selected features. Here, we investigate the performance of randomly chosen features, what we term "random feature baselines" (RFBs), in the context of disease risk prediction from blood plasma proteomics data in the UK Biobank. We examine two published case studies predicting diagnosis of (1) dementia and (2) hip fracture. RFBs perform similarly to published proteins of interest (using the same number, randomly chosen). We then measure the performance of RFBs for all 607 disease outcomes in the UK Biobank, with various numbers of randomly chosen features, as well as all proteins in the dataset. 114/607 outcomes showed a higher mean AUROC when choosing 5 random features than using all proteins, and the absolute difference in mean AUC was 0.075. 163 outcomes showed a higher mean AUROC when choosing 1000 random features than using all proteins, and the absolute difference in mean AUC was 0.03. Incorporating RFBs should become part of ML practice when feature selection or target discovery is a goal.
title Random feature baselines provide distributional performance and feature selection benchmarks for clinical and 'omic machine learning
topic Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10574