Since the optimum models in the ANN predicted the response values with the highest accuracy and without major concerns for statistical issues and uncertainty, the ANN technique is suggested for monitoring SOC in the forest.
Importantly, however, it is possible to formally account for statistical issues by combining the exact aggregation conditions that we present below with methodological tools that have been presented in alternative revealed preference contexts.
On the conference call, Gold, the Dendreon chief executive, said the results of the study were "unambiguous" even after the company tried to adjust for potential statistical issues.
We would like to thank to Professor Makbule Aydin, Assoc.Professor Elif Ozkok, of DETAE of Istanbul University and Dr. Kerem Atalar, of King's College London, UK for their support and their valuable comments to the manuscript and Professor Nurhan Ince, of the Biostatistics Department of the School of Medicine of Istanbul University, for advising on statistical issues.
The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/14/260/prepub wouldulikeike to acknowledge Professor Michael Cullen who initially raised the issues regarding hazard ratios, Professor Lucinda Billingham for discussions regarding the statistical issues, and Suzanne Freeman for exploratory survival plot modeling.
We want to thank Keyvan Mirbakhsh, Knud Jønsson, and Anna-Lena Troedsson for practical support at the laboratory, Steve Farris for consultation in some statistical issues, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript.
Cluster randomized trials and trials whose primary outcomes were survival were excluded because 1) the statistical issues for these are different to those in individually randomized and for non-survival outcomes and 2) we wanted to compare our results to a previous review (see below).
We thank Michael Höhle for the helpful consultancy in statistical issues and Janina Breidenbach for her help with Regiograph.
Although the basic statistical issues for performing meta-analysis are well described in the literature, there are remaining methodological issues.
It is the first in a series of 4 educational papers on statistical issues for RCTs, which will also include statistical controversies in RCT reporting and interpretation, the fundamentals of design for RCTs, and statistical challenges in the design and monitoring of RCTs.
We would also like to express our gratitude to Max Bruchmann and Stefan Schmuckle for their advice on statistical issues.
