Figure 4. Performance of HCC classifier (Classifier 2) with adding new non-hub genes (A for predictive accuracy and B for AUC values) and with different ratios of hub and non-hub genes (C for predictive accuracy and D for AUC values).

A and B showed that the predictive performance of the classifier does not change significantly with the non-hub genes being added (p>0.05); C and D indicated that the classifier worked much less properly with the hub genes being gradually reduced and non-hub genes gradually increased. Especially, the predictive performance of the classifier was decreased with statistic significance when the proportion of hub genes was reduced to 3/7 of the original one (*p<0.05).