title: Manipulating measurement scales in medical statistical analysis and data mining: A review of methodologies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  selecting the correct statistical test and data mining method depends highly on the measurement scale of data, type of variables, and purpose of the analysis. Different measurement scales are studied in details and statistical comparison, modeling, and data mining methods are studied based upon using several medical examples. We have presented two ordinal-variables clustering examples, as more challenging variable in analysis, using Wisconsin Breast Cancer Data (WBCD).
  a breast cancer database of nine 10-level ordinal variables for 683 patients was analyzed by two ordinal-scale clustering methods. The performance of the clustering methods was assessed by comparison with the gold standard groups of malignant and benign cases that had been identified by clinical tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  the sensitivity and accuracy of the two clustering methods were 98% and 96%, respectively. Their specificity was comparable.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  by using appropriate clustering algorithm based on the measurement scale of the variables in the study, high performance is granted. Moreover, descriptive and inferential statistics in addition to modeling approach must be selected based on the scale of the variables.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, the University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Hamid Reza
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Marateb
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Health School, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Marjan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mansourian
authors.affiliation: School of Nutrition and Food Science, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Peyman
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Adibi
authors.affiliation: UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN GÖTTINGEN, GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITÄT, Department of Neurorehabilitation Engineering, Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology Göttingen, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Farina
keywords: Biostatistics; breast cancer; cluster analysis; data mining; research design