Have a look at 

Rfree and the Rfree Ratio. I. Derivation of Expected Values of 
Cross-Validation Residuals Used in Macromolecular Least-Squares 
Refinement. Tickle IJ, Laskowski RA and Moss DS 
Acta Cryst. (1998). D54, 547-557    
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0907444997013875  

and 

Rfree and the Rfree ratio. II. Calculation of the expected values and 
variances of cross-validation statistics in macromolecular least-squares 
refinement. Tickle IJ, Laskowski RA and Moss DS  Acta Cryst. (2000). D56, 
442-450    http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0907444999016868 

Regards,
Mitch

-----Original Message-----
From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kay Diederichs
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 8:42 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ccp4bb] difference of R_work and R_free as a function of resolution

Dear crystallographers,

today I explained to a student that I believe that the difference of 
R_work and R_free should decrease as a function of resolution, because 
at high resolution there is less danger of overfitting, whereas at low 
resolution one is always overfitting to some extent. I'd say this should 
be true at least in absolute terms, but probably even in relative terms: 
for example, for a 1.5A structure I'd expect R_work/R_free= 14%/16%, 
whereas at 3A I'd expect 28%/35%.

I believe that I saw plots (maybe in a link given in a posting on 
CCP4BB) obtained for structures from the PDB, which confirmed this 
hypothesis. But I've been googling and searching through postings now 
for quite some while, and cannot seem to find anything to that effect.

Does anybody have a pointer to an analysis of this effect?

thanks,

Kay

P.S. Would be good to put this into the CCP4 Wiki article on R-factors
-- 
Kay Diederichs                http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Tel +49 7531 88 4049 Fax 3183
Fachbereich Biologie, Universität Konstanz, Box M647, D-78457 Konstanz

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