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Cited by 281

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Proportionality: A Valid Alternative to Correlation for Relative Data

Open access
Lovell, David, Pawlowsky-Glahn, Vera, Egozcue, Juan José, Marguerat, Samuel, Bähler, Jürg·2015·PLOS Computational Biology

Abstract

In the life sciences, many measurement methods yield only the relative abundances of different components in a sample. With such relative-or compositional-data, differential expression needs careful interpretation, and correlation-a statistical workhorse for analyzing pairwise relationships-is an inappropriate measure of association. Using yeast gene expression data we show how correlation can be misleading and present proportionality as a valid alternative for relative data. We show how the strength of proportionality between two variables can be meaningfully and interpretably described by a new statistic ϕ which can be used instead of correlation as the basis of familiar analyses and visualisation methods, including co-expression networks and clustered heatmaps. While the main aim of this study is to present proportionality as a means to analyse relative data, it also raises intriguing questions about the molecular mechanisms underlying the proportional regulation of a range of yeast genes.

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Metadata

Authors
Lovell, D., Pawlowsky-Glahn, V., Egozcue, J. J., Marguerat, S., & Bähler, J.
Venue
PLOS Computational Biology
Published
2015-03-16
Volume
11
Issue
3
Pages
e1004075
ISSN
  • 1553-734X (ISSN-L)
  • 1553-7358
OpenAlex
W2112408821
Cited by
281
References
6
FWCI
9.26
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Proportionality: A Valid Alternative to Correlation for Relative Data. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004075
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Lovell, D., Pawlowsky-Glahn, V., Egozcue, J. J., Marguerat, S., & Bähler, J. (2015). Proportionality: A Valid Alternative to Correlation for Relative Data. PLOS Computational Biology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004075

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