Table 1. Description of normal sample data and paired cancer-normal sample data used in this study.

	GEO Acc or Data source	Platform	Normal sample sizea	Tumor sample size
The normal sample data for REO evaluation
		Lung
SetA	GSE19804	Affymetrix GPL570	60
	GSE18842	Affymetrix GPL570	45
	GSE27262	Affymetrix GPL570	25
	GSE31210	Affymetrix GPL570	20
SetB	GSE19188	Affymetrix GPL570	65
SetA	GSE32863	Illumina GPL6884	58
SetB	GSE31267	Illumina GPL6947	24
SetA	GSE40588	Agilent GPL6480	60
SetB	GSE15197	Agilent GPL6480	13
	GSE57148b	Illumina GPL11154	91
		Colorectal
SetA	GSE21510	Affymetrix GPL570	25
	GSE18105	Affymetrix GPL570	17
	GSE4107	Affymetrix GPL570	10
SetB	GSE8671	Affymetrix GPL570	32
SetA	GSE56789	Illumina GPL10558	40
SetB	GSE31279	Illumina GPL6104	32
	GSE43841	Illumina GPL14951	6
SetA	GSE46271	Agilent GPL14550	22
	GSE50114	Agilent GPL6480	9
SetB	GSE28000	Agilent GPL4133	23
	GSE50760b	Illumina GPL11154	18
The paired cancer-normal sample data for the performance of RankComp evaluation
		Lung
	GSE27262	Affymetrix GPL570	25	25
	GSE32863	Illumina GPL6884	57	57
	TCGA_luadb	IlluminaHiSeq_RNASeqV2	58	58
		Colorectal
	GSE8671	Affymetrix GPL570	32	32
	GSE31279	Illumina GPL6104	32	32
	TCGA_coadb	IlluminaHiSeq_RNASeqV2	26	26

Note:

^aTo determine stable gene pairs for a particular type of normal tissue, only the normal sample sizes were described for the datasets.

^bDenotes mRNA_seq data, especially TCGA_luad and TCGA_coad denote paired lung adenocarcinoma and colon adenocarcinoma samples from TCGA, respectively.