Fig. 6

The mean squared log error (MSLE) and the number of false positive taxa (FP) between true and estimated read counts at the levels of genus, species, and strain using mixed datasets one and two and the human-subset reference. We measured MSLE and False positive taxa at read thresholds between 0 and 300 with a step of 5 reads. At the read threshold of 0 reads (unfiltered results), all taxa were counted, even those with just 1 assigned read. At the read threshold of 5 reads, we counted the taxa with > 5 assigned reads and the taxa that had < 5 reads assigned were not taken into consideration and so on. Smaller MSLE and smaller numbers of false positives denote better performance