Correcting mistakes in predicting distributions.

MOTIVATION

Many applications monitor predictions of a whole range of features for biological datasets, e.g. the fraction of secreted human proteins in the human proteome. Results and error estimates are typically derived from publications.

RESULTS

Here, we present a simple, alternative approximation that uses performance estimates of methods to error-correct the predicted distributions. This approximation uses the confusion matrix (TP true positives, TN true negatives, FP false positives and FN false negatives) describing the performance of the prediction tool for correction. As proof-of-principle, the correction was applied to a two-class (membrane/not) and to a seven-class (localization) prediction.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION

Datasets and a simple JavaScript tool available freely for all users at http://www.rostlab.org/services/distributions.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.