Assessing models for genetic prediction of complex traits: a comparison of visualization and quantitative methods

BACKGROUND: In silico models have recently been created in order to predict which genetic variants are more likely to contribute to the risk of a complex trait given their functional characteristics. However, there has been no comprehensive review as to which type of predictive accuracy measures and data visualization techniques are most useful for assessing these models. METHODS: We assessed the performance of the models for predicting risk using various methodologies, some of which include: receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, histograms of classification probability, and the novel use of the quantile-quantile plot. These measures have variable interpretability depending on factors such as whether the dataset is balanced in terms of numbers of genetic variants classified as risk variants versus those that are not. RESULTS: We conclude that the area under the curve (AUC) is a suitable starting place, and for models with similar AUCs, violin plots are particularly useful for examining the distribution of the risk scores. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1616-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.