Simultaneous inference allows for the exploration of data while deciding on criteria for proclaiming discoveries. It was recently proved that all admissible post hoc inference methods for the true... Show moreSimultaneous inference allows for the exploration of data while deciding on criteria for proclaiming discoveries. It was recently proved that all admissible post hoc inference methods for the true discoveries must employ closed testing. In this paper, we investigate efficient closed testing with local tests of a special form: thresholding a function of sums of test scores for the individual hypotheses. Under this special design, we propose a new statistic that quantifies the cost of multiplicity adjustments, and we develop fast (mostly linear-time) algorithms for post hoc inference. Paired with recent advances in global null tests based on generalized means, our work instantiates a series of simultaneous inference methods that can handle many dependence structures and signal compositions. We provide guidance on the method choices via theoretical investigation of the conservativeness and sensitivity for different local tests, as well as simulations that find analogous behavior for local tests and full closed testing. Show less
We consider the class of all multiple testing methods controlling tail probabilities of the false discovery proportion, either for one random set or simultaneously for many such sets. This class... Show moreWe consider the class of all multiple testing methods controlling tail probabilities of the false discovery proportion, either for one random set or simultaneously for many such sets. This class encompasses methods controlling familywise error rate, generalized familywise error rate, false discovery exceedance, joint error rate, simultaneous control of all false discovery proportions, and others, as well as gene set testing in genomics and cluster inference in neuroimaging. We show that all such methods are either equivalent to a closed testing procedure, or are uniformly improved by one. Moreover, we show that a closed testing method is admissible if and only if all its local tests are admissible. This implies that, when designing methods, it is sufficient to restrict attention to closed testing. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of this design principle by obtaining more informative inferences from the method of higher criticism, and by constructing a uniform improvement of a recently proposed method. Show less
