Shuffled prediction questions

[BioHazard Dragon]

Hi,

just wanting some clarification of the purpose generating shuffled predictions function. 

Not clear on why a second set of tables with different abundances per sample is generated, and how it is used in the analysis workflow.

Also, how do you select the number of random replicates to generate?

Cheers

Rachele

[Robyn Wright]

Hi Rachele,

I believe that that function was made for the primary purpose of comparing PICRUSt2 results with actual metagenome results, i.e. for validating PICRUSt2 for the paper that introduced it. You can see some information on the wiki page here. You could also determine whether e.g. differences between two groups shown with PICRUSt2 predictions differ from what you obtain from random predictions. 

Robyn