title: A numerical method for allocating microbial isolates to strain types when characterized by typing methods that are not 100% reproducible.
abstract: Many methods for typing microbial strains are not 100% reproducible. This can create problems when deciding whether different groups of isolates are really distinct or represent typing errors or variation of a single strain. Neither hierarchical clustering nor iterative partitioning methods are suited for analysing such data. A novel iterative partitioning method is described which allows for the uncertainty of the typing method in use. Before grouping strains, the maximum dimension of the groups is set based on a previous knowledge of the typing method's reproducibility. Isolates are only allocated to a group if they differ from that group's typical strain type by less than the number of reaction differences required to distinguish between two strains. In a series of Monte Carlo studies the accuracy of strain allocation was found to be very good, even when the two groups were situated close to each other.
authors.affiliation: Public Health Laboratory, Countess of Chester Hospital, UK.
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Hunter
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000302:isolation & purification; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002176:Candida albicans / Q000145:classification; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D008828:Microbiological Techniques / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software