Estimating the Number and Effect Sizes of Non-null Hypotheses

We study the problem of estimating the distribution of effect sizes (the mean of the test statistic under the alternate hypothesis) in a multiple testing setting. Knowing this distribution allows us to calculate the power (type II error) of any experimental design. We show that it is possible to estimate this distribution using an inexpensive pilot experiment, which takes significantly fewer samples than would be required by an experiment that identified the discoveries. Our estimator can be used to guarantee the number of discoveries that will be made using a given experimental design in a future experiment. We prove that this simple and computationally efficient estimator enjoys a number of favorable theoretical properties, and demonstrate its effectiveness on data from a gene knockout experiment on influenza inhibition in Drosophila. Estimating the Number and Effect Sizes of Non-null Hypotheses Our estimator indicates discoveries exist… Which of 10,000 Drosophila genes inhibit virus growth? Option 1 Full Experiment Find all genes that inhibit virus replication by at least 2x, as measured by a fluorescent reporter Replicates: