Introduction: Colon cancer is one of the most common malignancies in America. According to the American Cancer Society, blacks have lower survival rate than whites. Many previous studies suggested that it is because blacks were more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage. Hence, it is crucial to determine factors that are associated with colon cancer stage at diagnosis.
Objectives: The objectives of this study are twofold: 1)To compare logistic regression modeling to Random Forests classification with respect to variables selected and classification accuracy; and 2) To evaluate the factors related to colon cancer stage at diagnosis in a population based study. Many studies have compared
Classification and Regression Trees (CART) to logistic regression and found that they have very similar power with respect to the proportion correctly classified and the variables selected. This study extends previous methodological research by comparing the Random Forests classification techniques to logistic regression modeling using a relatively small and incomplete dataset. Methods and Materials: The data used in this research were from National Cancer Institute Black/White Cancer Survival Study which had 960 cases of invasive colon cancer. Stage at diagnosis was used as the dependent variable for fitting logistic regression models and Random Forests Classification to multiple potential explanatory variables, which included some missing data. Results: Odds ratio (blacks vs. whites) decreased from 1.628 (95%CI: 1.068-2.481) to 1.515 (95% CI: 0.920-2.493) after adjustment was made for patient delay in diagnosis, occupation, histology and grade of tumor. Race became no longer important after these variables were entered in the Random Forests. These four variables were identified as the most important variables associated with racial disparity in colon cancer stage at diagnosis in both logistic regression and Random Forests. The correct
classification rate was 47.9% using logistic regression and was 33.9% using Random Forests. Conclusion: 1). Logistic regression and Random Forests had very similar power in variable selection. 2). Logistic regression had higher classification accuracy than Random Forests with respect to overall correct classification rate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04122006-102254 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Creators | Geng, Ming |
| Contributors | Edmund M. Ricci, Carol K. Redmond, Sati Mazumdar |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04122006-102254/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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