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Re: st: Speed of ROC analysis


From   Roger Newson <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Speed of ROC analysis
Date   Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:34:38 +0100

At 14:57 14/07/03 -0400, James Shaw wrote:
Dear Statalist:

Has anyone developed faster versions of roctab or roccomp (using DeLong et
al.'s estimated standard errors)?  The versions available in Stata 8 (as
well as in earlier versions of Stata) run very slowly when used with large
samples (e.g., 500-1000 observations).  For example, in simulations I have
been performing, it generally takes about 24 hours to complete 1000
repetitions of roccomp in samples consisting of 1000 observations each.  I
suspect the problem is related to the fact that all possible pairwise
comparisons are being made between scores for true-positive and
true-negative subjects.

I think James's problem is indeed that the calculation of the ROC curve uses loops over observations. This is definitely a problem with my -somersd- package, downloadable from SSC, which calculates Somers' D, which is related to the ROC area by the formula D=2A-1 (where D is Somers' D and A is the ROC area). I plan in the long run to write a successor package to -somersd- using plugins, but this is not expected to happen immediately. I think ROC curve calculation might equally be improved by using plugins, but I don't know if StataCorp plan to do this soon.

More about the -somersd- package, and its connection with ROC areas, can be found in a Stata Journal article (Newson, 2002). A pre-publication draft of this article can be downloaded from my website at

http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson

which is accessible either using a browser or using the Stata -net- command.

Roger

References

Newson R. Parameters behind "nonparametric" statistics: Kendall's tau, Somers' D and median differences. The Stata Journal 2002; 2(1):45-64.


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
5th Floor, Capital House
42 Weston Street
London SE1 3QD
United Kingdom

Tel: 020 7848 6648 International +44 20 7848 6648
Fax: 020 7848 6620 International +44 20 7848 6620
or 020 7848 6605 International +44 20 7848 6605
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson

Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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