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# False Discovery Rates, FDR, clearly explained

**[StatQuest with Josh Starmer](https://daily.dev/sources/statquest)** · 18 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A clear explanation of False Discovery Rates (FDR) and the Benjamini-Hochberg method, motivated by the problem of multiple testing in genomics. When comparing 10,000 genes simultaneously, a 5% significance threshold yields ~500 false positives. The video explains how P-values distribute uniformly under the null hypothesis versus skewing toward zero when a true effect exists, then walks through the Benjamini-Hochberg algorithm step-by-step: rank P-values, compute adjusted values as min(previous adjusted P, current P × total tests / rank), and use an FDR threshold of 0.05 to ensure fewer than 5% of significant results are false positives.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3nlGfSyHV0>

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Tags: [#statistics](https://daily.dev/tags/statistics), [#biotech](https://daily.dev/tags/biotech)

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