TY - JOUR AU - Wright, Marvin N. AU - Ziegler, Andreas AU - König, Inke R. PY - 2016 DA - 2016/03/31 TI - Do little interactions get lost in dark random forests? JO - BMC Bioinformatics SP - 145 VL - 17 IS - 1 AB - Random forests have often been claimed to uncover interaction effects. However, if and how interaction effects can be differentiated from marginal effects remains unclear. In extensive simulation studies, we investigate whether random forest variable importance measures capture or detect gene-gene interactions. With capturing interactions, we define the ability to identify a variable that acts through an interaction with another one, while detection is the ability to identify an interaction effect as such. SN - 1471-2105 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-016-0995-8 DO - 10.1186/s12859-016-0995-8 ID - Wright2016 ER -