Calculating and Interpreting the p-values for Functions, Pathways and Lists in IPA

The p-value associated with a function or a pathway in Global Functional Analysis (GFA) and Global Canonical Pathways (GCP) is a measure of the likelihood that the association between a set of focus genes in your experiment and a given process or pathway is due to random chance. The smaller the p-value the less likely that the association is random and the more significant the association. In general P-values less than .05 indicate a statistically significant, non-random association. The p-value is calculated using the right-tailed Fisher Exact Test.