Baggerley et al.'s test (Beta-binomial)

Baggerley et al.'s test [Baggerly et al., 2003] compares the proportions of counts in a group of samples against those of another group of samples, and is suited to cases where replicates are available in the groups. The samples are given different weights depending on their sizes (total counts). The weights are obtained by assuming a Beta distribution on the proportions in a group, and estimating these, along with the proportion of a binomial distribution, by the method of moments. The result is a weighted t-type test statistic.

When Baggerley's test is run on an experiment four columns will be added to the experiment table for each pair of groups that are analyzed. The 'Weighted proportions difference' column contains the difference between the mean of the weighted proportions across the samples assigned to group 2 and the mean of the weighted proportions across the samples assigned to group 1. The 'Weighted proportions fold change' column tells you how many times bigger the mean of the weighted proportions in group 2 is relative to that of group 1. If the mean of the weighted proportions in group 2 is bigger than that in group 1 this value is the mean of the weighted proportions in group 2 divided by that in group 1. If the mean of the weighted proportions in group 2 is smaller than that in group 1 the fold change is the mean of the weighted proportions in group 1 divided by that in group 2 with a negative sign. The 'Test statistic' column holds that value of the test statistic, and the 'P-value' holds the two-sided p-value for the test. Up to two more columns may be added if the options to calculate Bonferroni and FDR corrected p-values were chosen (see 30.6.4).