Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests

In an interesting and quite exhaustive review on Random Forests (RF) methodology in bioinformatics Touw et al. address—among other topics—the problem of the detection of interactions between variables based on RF methodology. We feel that some important statistical concepts, such as ‘interaction’, ‘...

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Main Authors:	Boulesteix, Anne-Laure, Janitza, Silke, Hapfelmeier, Alexander, Van Steen, Kristel, Strobl, Carolin
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford University Press 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4364067/

id	pubmed-4364067
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-43640672015-03-25 Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests Boulesteix, Anne-Laure Janitza, Silke Hapfelmeier, Alexander Van Steen, Kristel Strobl, Carolin Papers In an interesting and quite exhaustive review on Random Forests (RF) methodology in bioinformatics Touw et al. address—among other topics—the problem of the detection of interactions between variables based on RF methodology. We feel that some important statistical concepts, such as ‘interaction’, ‘conditional dependence’ or ‘correlation’, are sometimes employed inconsistently in the bioinformatics literature in general and in the literature on RF in particular. In this letter to the Editor, we aim to clarify some of the central statistical concepts and point out some confusing interpretations concerning RF given by Touw et al. and other authors. Oxford University Press 2015-03 2014-04-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4364067/ /pubmed/24723569 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbu012 Text en © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Boulesteix, Anne-Laure Janitza, Silke Hapfelmeier, Alexander Van Steen, Kristel Strobl, Carolin
spellingShingle	Boulesteix, Anne-Laure Janitza, Silke Hapfelmeier, Alexander Van Steen, Kristel Strobl, Carolin Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
author_facet	Boulesteix, Anne-Laure Janitza, Silke Hapfelmeier, Alexander Van Steen, Kristel Strobl, Carolin
author_sort	Boulesteix, Anne-Laure
title	Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
title_short	Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
title_full	Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
title_fullStr	Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
title_full_unstemmed	Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests
title_sort	letter to the editor: on the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on random forests
description	In an interesting and quite exhaustive review on Random Forests (RF) methodology in bioinformatics Touw et al. address—among other topics—the problem of the detection of interactions between variables based on RF methodology. We feel that some important statistical concepts, such as ‘interaction’, ‘conditional dependence’ or ‘correlation’, are sometimes employed inconsistently in the bioinformatics literature in general and in the literature on RF in particular. In this letter to the Editor, we aim to clarify some of the central statistical concepts and point out some confusing interpretations concerning RF given by Touw et al. and other authors.
publisher	Oxford University Press
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4364067/
_version_	1613200138508959744

Letter to the Editor: On the term ‘interaction’ and related phrases in the literature on Random Forests

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