Simply Statistics A statistics blog by Rafa Irizarry, Roger Peng, and Jeff Leek

Caffo + Ninjas = Awesome

Our colleague Brian Caffo and his team of statistics ninjas won the “Imaging-Based Diagnostic Classification Contest” as part of the ADHD 200 Global Competition. From the prize citation:

The method developed by the team from Johns Hopkins University excelled in its specificity, or its ability to identify typically developing children (TDC) without falsely classifying them as ADHD-positive. They correctly classified 94% of TDC, showing that a diagnostic imaging methodology can be developed with a very low risk of false positives, a fantastic result. Their method was not as effective in terms of sensitivity, or its ability to identify true positive ADHD diagnoses. They only identified 21% of cases; however, among those cases, they discerned the subtypes of ADHD with 89.47% accuracy. Other teams demonstrated that there is ample room to improve sensitivity scores. 

Congratulations to Brian and his team!