1 research outputs found
Optimal Dorfman Group Testing For Symmetric Distributions
We study Dorfman's classical group testing protocol in a novel setting where
individual specimen statuses are modeled as exchangeable random variables. We
are motivated by infectious disease screening. In that case, specimens which
arrive together for testing often originate from the same community and so
their statuses may exhibit positive correlation. Dorfman's protocol screens a
population of n specimens for a binary trait by partitioning it into
nonoverlapping groups, testing these, and only individually retesting the
specimens of each positive group. The partition is chosen to minimize the
expected number of tests under a probabilistic model of specimen statuses. We
relax the typical assumption that these are independent and indentically
distributed and instead model them as exchangeable random variables. In this
case, their joint distribution is symmetric in the sense that it is invariant
under permutations. We give a characterization of such distributions in terms
of a function q where q(h) is the marginal probability that any group of size h
tests negative. We use this interpretable representation to show that the set
partitioning problem arising in Dorfman's protocol can be reduced to an integer
partitioning problem and efficiently solved. We apply these tools to an
empirical dataset from the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodology helps explain the
unexpectedly high empirical efficiency reported by the original investigators.Comment: 20 pages w/o references, 2 figure