statistic test

Question

[BenHu]

Hello, I am naive to the statistics. for example, MACS2 detects peaks using Poisson distribution, but why does it can output p value? Another example ia RNAseq, some algorithms use NB distribution to model gene expression, and then use Wald test perform differential analysis. Why not directly using t test or other statistic test?

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

The distribution type is meant to capture the expected characteristics of that data.

A p-value reflects the likelihood of the null hypothesis being true for the chosen distribution.

Think of a test as a formula that accounts for various features of the data.

If you google the concepts you will find an extremely wide array of explanations for each.