Why Simple Baselines Beat Fancy Biology Models: A Practical Guide
HongyiWang10 · x · 2026-08-17
Biological experiments are extremely noisy, often showing low correlation between replicates. In this high-noise environment, simple computations like "predicting the mean" often outperform complex models. This post catalogs common "trivial baselines" for gene expression prediction, perturbation modeling, and GRNs that are frequently overlooked. Rigorous baseline comparison helps identify underperforming models and spot foundation models that genuinely provide value.
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