Token Swap Contingency Tables in Three Dimensions: Paradigm for Biomedical Data Analysis.
Grover M. Hutchins ; Department of Pathology, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions; Lawrence A. Brown ; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Service, Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System; Department of Pathology, University of Maryland Medical System; G. William Moore ; Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center;
Content:
Contingency tables are commonly used for organizing frequency data on biomedical databases. Classical statistical methods applied to contingency tables include chisquare and Fisher exact methods, based upon squared-normal and binomial distributions. In the token swap method, patients, or tokens, in the contingency table are randomly swapped, to determine whether observed data deviate from a preset null hypothesis.
Technology:
Perl programming language, theory of statistics.
Design:
The simplest contingency table is a rectangular table, consisting of four cells, two rows by two columns, that measures association between row and column variables in a misclassification space. The null hypothesis predicts expected values for each cell; tokens are randomly swapped until they match observed values. More generally, a three-dimensional contingency table has rows, columns, and depths, representing a variable for ultimate biomedical outcome.
Results:
The two- and three-dimensional token swap methods satisfy the Neyman-Pearson condition for power of the alternative hypothesis. Unlike classical methods, the token swap method supports a range of null hypotheses, including those with zero cell totals.
Conclusion:
The present model extends the range of existing contingency table analysis to incorporate additional clinicopathologic information, and to explore customized null hypotheses.
