English

PRADAS: PRior-Assisted DAta Splitting for False Discovery Rate Control

Methodology 2026-04-22 v1

Abstract

In the FDR-controlling literature, mirror statistics offer a flexible alternative to pp-value based procedures. When prior information is available, however, it is unclear how to incorporate mirror statistics in a principled way, and the standard equal split used by data-splitting methods can be inefficient. In this paper, we characterize a broader class of mirror statistics for any fixed splitting scheme and establish asymptotic FDR control under mild weak-dependence conditions using a two-stage procedure inspired by \cite{li2021whiteout}. Within this class, we derive a Bayes-optimal mirror statistic. Theoretically, we demonstrate its power advantage through analyses in the Rare/Weak signal model. Building upon this Bayes-optimal mirror statistic, we propose \textsc{PRADAS} (PRior-Assisted DAta Splitting) that treats split ratio as a stopping time and recasts the data-splitting as an optional stopping over a natural filtration; the optimal stopping rule is characterized by the Snell envelope and computed efficiently via a Longstaff--Schwartz regression approximation. Both simulations and real data examples demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.19517,
  title  = {PRADAS: PRior-Assisted DAta Splitting for False Discovery Rate Control},
  author = {Yuanchuan Guo and Buyu Lin and Jun S. Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.19517},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

61 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:28:28.135Z