Augmentation Procedures for Control of the Generalized Family-Wise Error Rate and Tail Probabilities for the Proportion of False Positives

Mark J. van der Laan, Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
Sandrine Dudoit, Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
Katherine S. Pollard, University of California, Santa Cruz

Abstract

This article shows that any single-step or stepwise multiple testing procedure (asymptotically) controlling the family-wise error rate (FWER) can be augmented into procedures that (asymptotically) control tail probabilities for the number of false positives and the proportion of false positives among the rejected hypotheses. Specifically, given any procedure that (asymptotically) controls the FWER at level alpha, we propose simple augmentation procedures that provide (asymptotic) level-alpha control of: (i) the generalized family-wise error rate, i.e., the tail probability, gFWER(k), that the number of Type I errors exceeds a user-supplied integer k, and (ii) the tail probability, TPPFP(q), that the proportion of Type I errors among the rejected hypotheses exceeds a user-supplied value 0