Package 'projpred'

Title: Projection Predictive Feature Selection
Description: Performs projection predictive feature selection for generalized linear models (Piironen, Paasiniemi, and Vehtari, 2020, <doi:10.1214/20-EJS1711>) with or without multilevel or additive terms (Catalina, Bürkner, and Vehtari, 2022, <https://proceedings.mlr.press/v151/catalina22a.html>), for some ordinal and nominal regression models (Weber, Glass, and Vehtari, 2023, <arXiv:2301.01660>), and for many other regression models (using the latent projection by Catalina, Bürkner, and Vehtari, 2021, <arXiv:2109.04702>, which can also be applied to most of the former models). The package is compatible with the 'rstanarm' and 'brms' packages, but other reference models can also be used. See the vignettes and the documentation for more information and examples.
Authors: Juho Piironen [aut], Markus Paasiniemi [aut], Alejandro Catalina [aut], Frank Weber [cre, aut], Aki Vehtari [aut], Jonah Gabry [ctb], Marco Colombo [ctb], Paul-Christian Bürkner [ctb], Hamada S. Badr [ctb], Brian Sullivan [ctb], Sölvi Rögnvaldsson [ctb], The LME4 Authors [cph] (see file 'LICENSE' for details), Yann McLatchie [ctb], Juho Timonen [ctb]
Maintainer: Frank Weber <[email protected]>
License: GPL-3 | file LICENSE
Version: 2.8.0
Built: 2024-11-09 06:39:34 UTC
Source: CRAN

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Projection predictive feature selection

Description

The R package projpred performs the projection predictive variable (or "feature") selection for various regression models. We recommend to read the README file (available with enhanced formatting online) and the main vignette (topic = "projpred", but also available online) before continuing here.

Terminology

Throughout the whole package documentation, we use the term "submodel" for all kinds of candidate models onto which the reference model is projected. For custom reference models, the candidate models don't need to be actual submodels of the reference model, but in any case (even for custom reference models), the candidate models are always actual submodels of the full formula used by the search procedure. In this regard, it is correct to speak of submodels, even in case of a custom reference model.

The following model type abbreviations will be used at multiple places throughout the documentation: GLM (generalized linear model), GLMM (generalized linear multilevel—or "mixed"—model), GAM (generalized additive model), and GAMM (generalized additive multilevel—or "mixed"—model). Note that the term "generalized" includes the Gaussian family as well.

Draw-wise divergence minimizers

For the projection of the reference model onto a submodel, projpred currently relies on the following functions as draw-wise divergence minimizers (in other words, these are the workhorse functions employed by projpred's internal default div_minimizer functions, see init_refmodel()):

  • Submodel without multilevel or additive terms:

    • For the traditional (or latent) projection (or the augmented-data projection in case of the binomial() or brms::bernoulli() family): An internal C++ function which basically serves the same purpose as lm() for the gaussian() family and glm() for all other families. The returned object inherits from class subfit. Possible tuning parameters for this internal C++ function are: regul (amount of ridge regularization; default: 1e-4), thresh_conv (convergence threshold; default: 1e-7), qa_updates_max (maximum number of quadratic approximation updates; default: 100, but fixed to 1 in case of the Gaussian family with identity link), ls_iter_max (maximum number of line search iterations; default: 30, but fixed to 1 in case of the Gaussian family with identity link), normalize (single logical value indicating whether to scale the predictors internally with the returned regression coefficient estimates being back-adjusted appropriately; default: TRUE), beta0_init (single numeric value giving the starting value for the intercept at centered predictors; default: 0), and beta_init (numeric vector giving the starting values for the regression coefficients; default: vector of 0s).

    • For the augmented-data projection: MASS::polr() (the returned object inherits from class polr) for the brms::cumulative() family or rstanarm::stan_polr() fits, nnet::multinom() (the returned object inherits from class multinom) for the brms::categorical() family.

  • Submodel with multilevel but no additive terms:

  • Submodel without multilevel but additive terms: mgcv::gam() (the returned object inherits from class gam).

  • Submodel with multilevel and additive terms: gamm4::gamm4() (within projpred, the returned object inherits from class gamm4).

Verbosity, messages, warnings, errors

Setting global option projpred.extra_verbose to TRUE will print out which submodel projpred is currently projecting onto as well as (if method = "forward" and verbose = TRUE in varsel() or cv_varsel()) which submodel has been selected at those steps of the forward search for which a percentage (of the maximum submodel size that the search is run up to) is printed. In general, however, we cannot recommend setting this global option to TRUE for cv_varsel() with validate_search = TRUE (simply due to the amount of information that will be printed, but also due to the progress bar which will not work as intended anymore).

By default, projpred catches messages and warnings from the draw-wise divergence minimizers and throws their unique collection after performing all draw-wise divergence minimizations (i.e., draw-wise projections). This can be deactivated by setting global option projpred.warn_prj_drawwise to FALSE.

Furthermore, by default, projpred checks the convergence of the draw-wise divergence minimizers and throws a warning if any seem to have not converged. This warning is thrown after the warning message from global option projpred.warn_prj_drawwise (see above) and can be deactivated by setting global option projpred.check_conv to FALSE.

Parallelization

The projection of the reference model onto a submodel can be run in parallel (across the projected draws). This is powered by the foreach package. Thus, any parallel (or sequential) backend compatible with foreach can be used, e.g., the backends from packages doParallel, doMPI, or doFuture. Using the global option projpred.prll_prj_trigger, the number of projected draws below which no parallelization is applied (even if a parallel backend is registered) can be modified. Such a "trigger" threshold exists because of the computational overhead of a parallelization which makes the projection parallelization only useful for a sufficiently large number of projected draws. By default, the projection parallelization is turned off, which can also be achieved by supplying Inf (or NULL) to option projpred.prll_prj_trigger. Note that we cannot recommend the projection parallelization on Windows because in our experience, the parallelization overhead is larger there, causing a parallel run to take longer than a sequential run. Also note that the projection parallelization works well for submodels which are GLMs (and hence also for the latent projection if the submodel has no multilevel or additive predictor terms), but for all other types of submodels, the fitted submodel objects are quite big, which—when running in parallel—may lead to excessive memory usage which in turn may crash the R session (on Unix systems, setting an appropriate memory limit via unix::rlimit_as() may avoid crashing the whole machine). Thus, we currently cannot recommend parallelizing projections onto submodels which are GLMs (in this context, the latent projection onto a submodel without multilevel and without additive terms may be regarded as a projection onto a submodel which is a GLM). However, for cv_varsel(), there is also a CV parallelization (i.e., a parallelization of projpred's cross-validation) which can be activated via argument parallel.

Multilevel models: "Integrating out" group-level effects

In case of multilevel models, projpred offers two global options for "integrating out" group-level effects: projpred.mlvl_pred_new and projpred.mlvl_proj_ref_new. When setting projpred.mlvl_pred_new to TRUE (default is FALSE), then at prediction time, projpred will treat group levels existing in the training data as new group levels, implying that their group-level effects are drawn randomly from a (multivariate) Gaussian distribution. This concerns both, the reference model and the (i.e., any) submodel. Furthermore, setting projpred.mlvl_pred_new to TRUE causes as.matrix.projection() and as_draws_matrix.projection() to omit the projected group-level effects (for the group levels from the original dataset). When setting projpred.mlvl_proj_ref_new to TRUE (default is FALSE), then at projection time, the reference model's fitted values (that the submodels fit to) will be computed by treating the group levels from the original dataset as new group levels, implying that their group-level effects will be drawn randomly from a (multivariate) Gaussian distribution (as long as the reference model is a multilevel model, which—for custom reference models—does not need to be the case). This also affects the latent response values for a latent projection correspondingly. Setting projpred.mlvl_pred_new to TRUE makes sense, e.g., when the prediction task is such that any group level will be treated as a new one. Typically, setting projpred.mlvl_proj_ref_new to TRUE only makes sense when projpred.mlvl_pred_new is already set to TRUE. In that case, the default of FALSE for projpred.mlvl_proj_ref_new ensures that at projection time, the submodels fit to the best possible fitted values from the reference model, and setting projpred.mlvl_proj_ref_new to TRUE would make sense if the group-level effects should be integrated out completely.

Memory usage

By setting the global option projpred.run_gc to TRUE, projpred will call gc() at some places (e.g., after each size that the forward search passes through) to free up some memory. These gc() calls are not always necessary to reduce the peak memory usage, but they add runtime (hence the default of FALSE for that global option).

Other notes

Most examples are not executed when called via example(). To execute them, their code has to be copied and pasted manually to the console.

Functions

init_refmodel(), get_refmodel()

For setting up an object containing information about the reference model, the submodels, and how the projection should be carried out. Explicit calls to init_refmodel() and get_refmodel() are only rarely needed.

varsel(), cv_varsel()

For running the search part and the evaluation part for a projection predictive variable selection, possibly with cross-validation (CV).

summary.vsel(), print.vsel(), plot.vsel(), suggest_size.vsel(), ranking(), cv_proportions(), plot.cv_proportions(), performances()

For post-processing the results from varsel() and cv_varsel().

project()

For projecting the reference model onto submodel(s). Typically, this follows the variable selection, but it can also be applied directly (without a variable selection).

as.matrix.projection() and as_draws_matrix.projection()

For extracting projected parameter draws.

proj_linpred(), proj_predict()

For making predictions from a submodel (after projecting the reference model onto it).

Author(s)

Maintainer: Frank Weber [email protected]

Authors:

Other contributors:

  • Jonah Gabry [contributor]

  • Marco Colombo [contributor]

  • Paul-Christian Bürkner [contributor]

  • Hamada S. Badr [contributor]

  • Brian Sullivan [contributor]

  • Sölvi Rögnvaldsson [contributor]

  • The LME4 Authors (see file 'LICENSE' for details) [copyright holder]

  • Yann McLatchie [contributor]

  • Juho Timonen [contributor]

See Also

Useful links:


Extract projected parameter draws and coerce to draws_matrix (see package posterior)

Description

These are the posterior::as_draws() and posterior::as_draws_matrix() methods for projection objects (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list). They extract the projected parameter draws and return them as a draws_matrix. In case of different (i.e., nonconstant) weights for the projected draws, a draws_matrix allows for a safer handling of these weights (safer in contrast to the matrix returned by as.matrix.projection()), in particular by providing the natural input for posterior::resample_draws() (see section "Examples" below).

Usage

## S3 method for class 'projection'
as_draws_matrix(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'projection'
as_draws(x, ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class projection (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list).

...

Arguments passed to as.matrix.projection(), except for allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj.

Details

In case of the augmented-data projection for a multilevel submodel of a brms::categorical() reference model, the multilevel parameters (and therefore also their names) slightly differ from those in the brms reference model fit (see section "Augmented-data projection" in extend_family()'s documentation).

Value

An Sprj×QS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times Q draws_matrix (see posterior::draws_matrix()) of projected draws, with SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} denoting the number of projected draws and QQ the number of parameters. If the projected draws have nonconstant weights, posterior::weight_draws() is applied internally.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Projection onto an arbitrary combination of predictor terms (with a small
# value for `nclusters`, but only for illustrative purposes; this is not
# recommended in general):
prj <- project(fit, predictor_terms = c("X1", "X3", "X5"), nclusters = 5,
               seed = 9182)

# Applying the posterior::as_draws_matrix() generic to the output of
# project() dispatches to the projpred::as_draws_matrix.projection()
# method:
prj_draws <- posterior::as_draws_matrix(prj)

# Resample the projected draws according to their weights:
set.seed(3456)
prj_draws_resampled <- posterior::resample_draws(prj_draws, ndraws = 1000)

# The values from the following two objects should be the same (in general,
# this only holds approximately):
print(proportions(table(rownames(prj_draws_resampled))))
print(weights(prj_draws))

# Treat the resampled draws like ordinary draws, e.g., summarize them:
print(posterior::summarize_draws(
  prj_draws_resampled,
  "median", "mad", function(x) quantile(x, probs = c(0.025, 0.975))
))
# Or visualize them using the `bayesplot` package:
if (requireNamespace("bayesplot", quietly = TRUE)) {
  print(bayesplot::mcmc_intervals(prj_draws_resampled))
}

Extract projected parameter draws and coerce to matrix

Description

This is the as.matrix() method for projection objects (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list). It extracts the projected parameter draws and returns them as a matrix. In case of different (i.e., nonconstant) weights for the projected draws, see as_draws_matrix.projection() for a better solution.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'projection'
as.matrix(x, nm_scheme = NULL, allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class projection (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list).

nm_scheme

The naming scheme for the columns of the output matrix. Either NULL, "rstanarm", or "brms", where NULL chooses "rstanarm" or "brms" based on the class of the reference model fit (and uses "rstanarm" if the reference model fit is of an unknown class).

allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj

A single logical value indicating whether to allow projected draws with different (i.e., nonconstant) weights (TRUE) or not (FALSE). CAUTION: Expert use only because if set to TRUE, the weights of the projected draws are stored in an attribute wdraws_prj and handling this attribute requires special care (e.g., when subsetting the returned matrix).

...

Currently ignored.

Details

In case of the augmented-data projection for a multilevel submodel of a brms::categorical() reference model, the multilevel parameters (and therefore also their names) slightly differ from those in the brms reference model fit (see section "Augmented-data projection" in extend_family()'s documentation).

Value

An Sprj×QS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times Q matrix of projected draws, with SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} denoting the number of projected draws and QQ the number of parameters. If allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj is set to TRUE, the weights of the projected draws are stored in an attribute wdraws_prj. (If allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj is FALSE, projected draws with nonconstant weights cause an error.)

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Projection onto an arbitrary combination of predictor terms (with a small
# value for `ndraws`, but only for the sake of speed in this example; this
# is not recommended in general):
prj <- project(fit, predictor_terms = c("X1", "X3", "X5"), ndraws = 21,
               seed = 9182)

# Applying the as.matrix() generic to the output of project() dispatches to
# the projpred::as.matrix.projection() method:
prj_mat <- as.matrix(prj)

# Since the draws have all the same weight here, we can treat them like
# ordinary MCMC draws, e.g., we can summarize them using the `posterior`
# package:
if (requireNamespace("posterior", quietly = TRUE)) {
  print(posterior::summarize_draws(
    posterior::as_draws_matrix(prj_mat),
    "median", "mad", function(x) quantile(x, probs = c(0.025, 0.975))
  ))
}
# Or visualize them using the `bayesplot` package:
if (requireNamespace("bayesplot", quietly = TRUE)) {
  print(bayesplot::mcmc_intervals(prj_mat))
}

Break up matrix terms

Description

Sometimes there can be terms in a formula that refer to a matrix instead of a single predictor. This function breaks up the matrix term into individual predictors to handle separately, as that is probably the intention of the user.

Usage

break_up_matrix_term(formula, data)

Arguments

formula

A formula for a valid model.

data

The original data.frame with a matrix as predictor.

Value

A list containing the expanded formula and the expanded data.frame.


Weighted averaging within clusters of parameter draws

Description

This function aggregates SS parameter draws that have been clustered into SclS_{\mathrm{cl}} clusters by averaging across the draws that belong to the same cluster. This averaging can be done in a weighted fashion.

Usage

cl_agg(
  draws,
  cl = seq_len(nrow(draws)),
  wdraws = rep(1, nrow(draws)),
  eps_wdraws = 0
)

Arguments

draws

An S×PS \times P matrix of parameter draws, with PP denoting the number of parameters.

cl

A numeric vector of length SS, giving the cluster indices for the draws. The cluster indices need to be values from the set {1,...,Scl}\{1, ..., S_{\mathrm{cl}}\}, except for draws that should be dropped (e.g., by thinning), in which case NA needs to be provided at the positions of cl corresponding to these draws.

wdraws

A numeric vector of length SS, giving the weights of the draws. It doesn't matter whether these are normalized (i.e., sum to 1) or not because internally, these weights are normalized to sum to 1 within each cluster. Draws that should be dropped (e.g., by thinning) can (but must not necessarily) have an NA in wdraws.

eps_wdraws

A positive numeric value (typically small) which will be used to improve numerical stability: The weights of the draws within each cluster are multiplied by 1 - eps_wdraws. The default of 0 should be fine for most cases; this argument only exists to help in those cases where numerical instabilities occur (which must be detected by the user; this function will not detect numerical instabilities itself).

Value

An Scl×PS_{\mathrm{cl}} \times P matrix of aggregated parameter draws.

Examples

set.seed(323)
S <- 100L
P <- 3L
draws <- matrix(rnorm(S * P), nrow = S, ncol = P)
# Clustering example:
S_cl <- 10L
cl_draws <- sample.int(S_cl, size = S, replace = TRUE)
draws_cl <- cl_agg(draws, cl = cl_draws)
# Clustering example with nonconstant `wdraws`:
w_draws <- rgamma(S, shape = 4)
draws_cl <- cl_agg(draws, cl = cl_draws, wdraws = w_draws)
# Thinning example (implying constant `wdraws`):
S_th <- 50L
idxs_thin <- round(seq(1, S, length.out = S_th))
th_draws <- rep(NA, S)
th_draws[idxs_thin] <- seq_len(S_th)
draws_th <- cl_agg(draws, cl = th_draws)

Ranking proportions from fold-wise predictor rankings

Description

Calculates the ranking proportions from the fold-wise predictor rankings in a cross-validation (CV) with fold-wise searches. For a given predictor xx and a given submodel size jj, the ranking proportion is the proportion of CV folds which have predictor xx at position jj of their predictor ranking. While these ranking proportions are helpful for investigating variability in the predictor ranking, they can also be cumulated across submodel sizes. The cumulated ranking proportions are more helpful when it comes to model selection.

Usage

cv_proportions(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'ranking'
cv_proportions(object, cumulate = FALSE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
cv_proportions(object, ...)

Arguments

object

For cv_proportions.ranking(): an object of class ranking (returned by ranking()). For cv_proportions.vsel(): an object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()) that ranking() will be applied to internally before then calling cv_proportions.ranking().

...

For cv_proportions.vsel(): arguments passed to ranking.vsel() and cv_proportions.ranking(). For cv_proportions.ranking(): currently ignored.

cumulate

A single logical value indicating whether the ranking proportions should be cumulated across increasing submodel sizes (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

Value

A numeric matrix containing the ranking proportions. This matrix has nterms_max rows and nterms_max columns, with nterms_max as specified in the (possibly implicit) ranking() call. The rows correspond to the submodel sizes and the columns to the predictor terms (sorted according to the full-data predictor ranking). If cumulate is FALSE, then the returned matrix is of class cv_proportions. If cumulate is TRUE, then the returned matrix is of classes cv_proportions_cumul and cv_proportions (in this order).

Note that if cumulate is FALSE, then the values in the returned matrix only need to sum to 1 (column-wise and row-wise) if nterms_max (see above) is equal to the full model size. Likewise, if cumulate is TRUE, then the value 1 only needs to occur in each column of the returned matrix if nterms_max is equal to the full model size.

The cv_proportions() function is only applicable if the ranking object includes fold-wise predictor rankings (i.e., if it is based on a vsel object created by cv_varsel() with validate_search = TRUE). If the ranking object contains only a full-data predictor ranking (i.e., if it is based on a vsel object created by varsel() or by cv_varsel(), but the latter with validate_search = FALSE), then an error is thrown because in that case, there are no fold-wise predictor rankings from which to calculate ranking proportions.

See Also

plot.cv_proportions()

Examples

# For an example, see `?plot.cv_proportions`.

Run search and performance evaluation with cross-validation

Description

Run the search part and the evaluation part for a projection predictive variable selection. The search part determines the predictor ranking (also known as solution path), i.e., the best submodel for each submodel size (number of predictor terms). The evaluation part determines the predictive performance of the submodels along the predictor ranking. In contrast to varsel(), cv_varsel() performs a cross-validation (CV) by running the search part with the training data of each CV fold separately (an exception is explained in section "Note" below) and by running the evaluation part on the corresponding test set of each CV fold. A special method is cv_varsel.vsel() because it re-uses the search results from an earlier cv_varsel() (or varsel()) run, as illustrated in the main vignette.

Usage

cv_varsel(object, ...)

## Default S3 method:
cv_varsel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
cv_varsel(
  object,
  cv_method = object$cv_method %||% "LOO",
  nloo = object$nloo,
  K = object$K %||% if (!inherits(object, "datafit")) 5 else 10,
  cvfits = object$cvfits,
  validate_search = object$validate_search %||% TRUE,
  ...
)

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
cv_varsel(
  object,
  method = "forward",
  cv_method = if (!inherits(object, "datafit")) "LOO" else "kfold",
  ndraws = NULL,
  nclusters = 20,
  ndraws_pred = 400,
  nclusters_pred = NULL,
  refit_prj = !inherits(object, "datafit"),
  nterms_max = NULL,
  penalty = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE,
  nloo = object$nobs,
  K = if (!inherits(object, "datafit")) 5 else 10,
  cvfits = object$cvfits,
  search_control = NULL,
  lambda_min_ratio = 1e-05,
  nlambda = 150,
  thresh = 1e-06,
  validate_search = TRUE,
  seed = NA,
  search_terms = NULL,
  search_out = NULL,
  parallel = getOption("projpred.prll_cv", FALSE),
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class refmodel (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()) or an object that can be passed to argument object of get_refmodel().

...

For cv_varsel.default(): Arguments passed to get_refmodel() as well as to cv_varsel.refmodel(). For cv_varsel.vsel(): Arguments passed to cv_varsel.refmodel(). For cv_varsel.refmodel(): Arguments passed to the divergence minimizer (see argument div_minimizer of init_refmodel() as well as section "Draw-wise divergence minimizers" of projpred-package) when refitting the submodels for the performance evaluation (if refit_prj is TRUE).

cv_method

The CV method, either "LOO" or "kfold". In the "LOO" case, a Pareto-smoothed importance sampling leave-one-out CV (PSIS-LOO CV) is performed, which avoids refitting the reference model nloo times (in contrast to a standard LOO CV). In the "kfold" case, a KK-fold CV is performed. See also section "Note" below.

nloo

Caution: Still experimental. Only relevant if cv_method = "LOO". If nloo is smaller than the number of all observations, approximate full LOO CV using probability-proportional-to-size-sampling (PPS) to make accurate computation only for nloo (anything from 1 to the number of all observations) leave-one-out folds (Magnusson et al., 2019). Smaller values lead to faster computation but higher uncertainty in the evaluation part. If NULL, all observations are used (as by default).

K

Only relevant if cv_method = "kfold" and if cvfits is NULL (which is the case for reference model objects created by get_refmodel.stanreg() or brms::get_refmodel.brmsfit()). Number of folds in KK-fold CV.

cvfits

Only relevant if cv_method = "kfold". The same as argument cvfits of init_refmodel(), but repeated here so that output from run_cvfun() can be inserted here straightforwardly.

validate_search

A single logical value indicating whether to cross-validate also the search part, i.e., whether to run the search separately for each CV fold (TRUE) or not (FALSE). We strongly do not recommend setting this to FALSE, because this is known to bias the predictive performance estimates of the selected submodels. However, setting this to FALSE can sometimes be useful because comparing the results to the case where this argument is TRUE gives an idea of how strongly the search is (over-)fitted to the data (the difference corresponds to the search degrees of freedom or the effective number of parameters introduced by the search).

method

The method for the search part. Possible options are "forward" for forward search and "L1" for L1 search. See also section "Details" below.

ndraws

Number of posterior draws used in the search part. Ignored if nclusters is not NULL or in case of L1 search (because L1 search always uses a single cluster). If both (nclusters and ndraws) are NULL, the number of posterior draws from the reference model is used for ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

nclusters

Number of clusters of posterior draws used in the search part. Ignored in case of L1 search (because L1 search always uses a single cluster). For the meaning of NULL, see argument ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

ndraws_pred

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of posterior draws used in the evaluation part. Ignored if nclusters_pred is not NULL. If both (nclusters_pred and ndraws_pred) are NULL, the number of posterior draws from the reference model is used for ndraws_pred. See also section "Details" below.

nclusters_pred

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of clusters of posterior draws used in the evaluation part. For the meaning of NULL, see argument ndraws_pred. See also section "Details" below.

refit_prj

For the evaluation part, should the submodels along the predictor ranking be fitted again (TRUE) or should their fits from the search part be re-used (FALSE)?

nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) up to which the search is continued. If NULL, then min(19, D) is used where D is the number of terms in the reference model (or in search_terms, if supplied). Note that nterms_max does not count the intercept, so use nterms_max = 0 for the intercept-only model. (Correspondingly, D above does not count the intercept.)

penalty

Only relevant for L1 search. A numeric vector determining the relative penalties or costs for the predictors. A value of 0 means that those predictors have no cost and will therefore be selected first, whereas Inf means those predictors will never be selected. If NULL, then 1 is used for each predictor.

verbose

A single logical value indicating whether to print out additional information during the computations.

search_control

A list of "control" arguments (i.e., tuning parameters) for the search. In case of forward search, these arguments are passed to the divergence minimizer (see argument div_minimizer of init_refmodel() as well as section "Draw-wise divergence minimizers" of projpred-package). In case of forward search, NULL causes ... to be used not only for the performance evaluation, but also for the search. In case of L1 search, possible arguments are:

  • lambda_min_ratio: Ratio between the smallest and largest lambda in the L1-penalized search (default: 1e-5). This parameter essentially determines how long the search is carried out, i.e., how large submodels are explored. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

  • nlambda: Number of values in the lambda grid for L1-penalized search (default: 150). No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

  • thresh: Convergence threshold when computing the L1 path (default: 1e-6). Usually, there is no need to change this.

lambda_min_ratio

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Ratio between the smallest and largest lambda in the L1-penalized search. This parameter essentially determines how long the search is carried out, i.e., how large submodels are explored. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

nlambda

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Number of values in the lambda grid for L1-penalized search. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

thresh

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Convergence threshold when computing the L1 path. Usually, there is no need to change this.

seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling cv_varsel()) upon exiting cv_varsel(). Here, seed is used for clustering the reference model's posterior draws (if !is.null(nclusters) or !is.null(nclusters_pred)), for subsampling PSIS-LOO CV folds (if nloo is smaller than the number of observations), for sampling the folds in KK-fold CV, and for drawing new group-level effects when predicting from a multilevel submodel (however, not yet in case of a GAMM).

search_terms

Only relevant for forward search. A custom character vector of predictor term blocks to consider for the search. Section "Details" below describes more precisely what "predictor term block" means. The intercept ("1") is always included internally via union(), so there's no difference between including it explicitly or omitting it. The default search_terms considers all the terms in the reference model's formula.

search_out

Intended for internal use.

parallel

A single logical value indicating whether to run costly parts of the CV in parallel (TRUE) or not (FALSE). See also section "Note" below.

Details

Arguments ndraws, nclusters, nclusters_pred, and ndraws_pred are automatically truncated at the number of posterior draws in the reference model (which is 1 for datafits). Using less draws or clusters in ndraws, nclusters, nclusters_pred, or ndraws_pred than posterior draws in the reference model may result in slightly inaccurate projection performance. Increasing these arguments affects the computation time linearly.

For argument method, there are some restrictions: For a reference model with multilevel or additive formula terms or a reference model set up for the augmented-data projection, only the forward search is available. Furthermore, argument search_terms requires a forward search to take effect.

L1 search is faster than forward search, but forward search may be more accurate. Furthermore, forward search may find a sparser model with comparable performance to that found by L1 search, but it may also start overfitting when more predictors are added.

An L1 search may select an interaction term before all involved lower-order interaction terms (including main-effect terms) have been selected. In projpred versions > 2.6.0, the resulting predictor ranking is automatically modified so that the lower-order interaction terms come before this interaction term, but if this is conceptually undesired, choose the forward search instead.

The elements of the search_terms character vector don't need to be individual predictor terms. Instead, they can be building blocks consisting of several predictor terms connected by the + symbol. To understand how these building blocks work, it is important to know how projpred's forward search works: It starts with an empty vector chosen which will later contain already selected predictor terms. Then, the search iterates over model sizes j{0,...,J}j \in \{0, ..., J\} (with JJ denoting the maximum submodel size, not counting the intercept). The candidate models at model size jj are constructed from those elements from search_terms which yield model size jj when combined with the chosen predictor terms. Note that sometimes, there may be no candidate models for model size jj. Also note that internally, search_terms is expanded to include the intercept ("1"), so the first step of the search (model size 0) always consists of the intercept-only model as the only candidate.

As a search_terms example, consider a reference model with formula y ~ x1 + x2 + x3. Then, to ensure that x1 is always included in the candidate models, specify search_terms = c("x1", "x1 + x2", "x1 + x3", "x1 + x2 + x3") (or, in a simpler way that leads to the same results, search_terms = c("x1", "x1 + x2", "x1 + x3"), for which helper function force_search_terms() exists). This search would start with y ~ 1 as the only candidate at model size 0. At model size 1, y ~ x1 would be the only candidate. At model size 2, y ~ x1 + x2 and y ~ x1 + x3 would be the two candidates. At the last model size of 3, y ~ x1 + x2 + x3 would be the only candidate. As another example, to exclude x1 from the search, specify search_terms = c("x2", "x3", "x2 + x3") (or, in a simpler way that leads to the same results, search_terms = c("x2", "x3")).

Value

An object of class vsel. The elements of this object are not meant to be accessed directly but instead via helper functions (see the main vignette and projpred-package).

Note

If validate_search is FALSE, the search is not included in the CV so that only a single full-data search is run.

For PSIS-LOO CV, projpred calls loo::psis() (or, exceptionally, loo::sis(), see below) with r_eff = NA. This is only a problem if there was extreme autocorrelation between the MCMC iterations when the reference model was built. In those cases however, the reference model should not have been used anyway, so we don't expect projpred's r_eff = NA to be a problem.

PSIS cannot be used if the draws have different (i.e., nonconstant) weights or if the number of draws is too small. In such cases, projpred resorts to standard importance sampling (SIS) and throws a warning about this. Throughout the documentation, the term "PSIS" is used even though in fact, projpred resorts to SIS in these special cases.

With parallel = TRUE, costly parts of projpred's CV are run in parallel. Costly parts are the fold-wise searches and performance evaluations in case of validate_search = TRUE. (Note that in case of KK-fold CV, the KK reference model refits are not affected by argument parallel; only projpred's CV is affected.) The parallelization is powered by the foreach package. Thus, any parallel (or sequential) backend compatible with foreach can be used, e.g., the backends from packages doParallel, doMPI, or doFuture. For GLMs, this CV parallelization should work reliably, but for other models (such as GLMMs), it may lead to excessive memory usage which in turn may crash the R session (on Unix systems, setting an appropriate memory limit via unix::rlimit_as() may avoid crashing the whole machine). However, the problem of excessive memory usage is less pronounced for the CV parallelization than for the projection parallelization described in projpred-package. In that regard, the CV parallelization is recommended over the projection parallelization.

References

Magnusson, Måns, Michael Andersen, Johan Jonasson, and Aki Vehtari. 2019. "Bayesian Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation for Large Data." In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning, edited by Kamalika Chaudhuri and Ruslan Salakhutdinov, 97:4244–53. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research. PMLR. https://proceedings.mlr.press/v97/magnusson19a.html.

Vehtari, Aki, Andrew Gelman, and Jonah Gabry. 2017. "Practical Bayesian Model Evaluation Using Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation and WAIC." Statistics and Computing 27 (5): 1413–32. doi:10.1007/s11222-016-9696-4.

Vehtari, Aki, Daniel Simpson, Andrew Gelman, Yuling Yao, and Jonah Gabry. 2022. "Pareto Smoothed Importance Sampling." arXiv. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1507.02646.

See Also

varsel()

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 1000, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run cv_varsel() (with L1 search and small values for `K`, `nterms_max`, and
# `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of speed in this example; this is
# not recommended in general):
cvvs <- cv_varsel(fit, method = "L1", cv_method = "kfold", K = 2,
                  nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10, seed = 5555)
# Now see, for example, `?print.vsel`, `?plot.vsel`, `?suggest_size.vsel`,
# and `?ranking` for possible post-processing functions.

Create cross-validation folds

Description

These are helper functions to create cross-validation (CV) folds, i.e., to split up the indices from 1 to n into K subsets ("folds") for KK-fold CV. These functions are potentially useful when creating the input for arguments cvfits and cvfun of init_refmodel() (or argument cvfits of cv_varsel.refmodel()). Function cvfolds() is deprecated; please use cv_folds() instead (apart from the name, they are the same). The return value of cv_folds() and cv_ids() is different, see below for details.

Usage

cv_folds(n, K, seed = NA)

cvfolds(n, K, seed = NA)

cv_ids(n, K, out = c("foldwise", "indices"), seed = NA)

Arguments

n

Number of observations.

K

Number of folds. Must be at least 2 and not exceed n.

seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling cv_folds() or cv_ids()) upon exiting cv_folds() or cv_ids().

out

Format of the output, either "foldwise" or "indices". See below for details.

Value

cv_folds() returns a vector of length n such that each element is an integer between 1 and K denoting which fold the corresponding data point belongs to. The return value of cv_ids() depends on the out argument. If out = "foldwise", the return value is a list with K elements, each being a list with elements tr and ts giving the training and test indices, respectively, for the corresponding fold. If out = "indices", the return value is a list with elements tr and ts each being a list with K elements giving the training and test indices, respectively, for each fold.

Examples

n <- 100
set.seed(1234)
y <- rnorm(n)
cv <- cv_ids(n, K = 5)
# Mean within the test set of each fold:
cvmeans <- sapply(cv, function(fold) mean(y[fold$ts]))

Binomial toy example

Description

Binomial toy example

Usage

df_binom

Format

A simulated classification dataset containing 100 observations.

y

response, 0 or 1.

x

predictors, 30 in total.

Source

https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/glmnet/glmnetData/BNExample.RData


Gaussian toy example

Description

Gaussian toy example

Usage

df_gaussian

Format

A simulated regression dataset containing 100 observations.

y

response, real-valued.

x

predictors, 20 in total. Mean and SD are approximately 0 and 1, respectively.

Source

https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/glmnet/glmnetData/QSExample.RData


Extend a family

Description

This function adds some internally required elements to an object of class family (see, e.g., family()). It is called internally by init_refmodel(), so you will rarely need to call it yourself.

Usage

extend_family(
  family,
  latent = FALSE,
  latent_y_unqs = NULL,
  latent_ilink = NULL,
  latent_ll_oscale = NULL,
  latent_ppd_oscale = NULL,
  augdat_y_unqs = NULL,
  augdat_link = NULL,
  augdat_ilink = NULL,
  augdat_args_link = list(),
  augdat_args_ilink = list(),
  ...
)

Arguments

family

An object of class family.

latent

A single logical value indicating whether to use the latent projection (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Note that setting latent = TRUE causes all arguments starting with augdat_ to be ignored.

latent_y_unqs

Only relevant for a latent projection where the original response space has finite support (i.e., the original response values may be regarded as categories), in which case this needs to be the character vector of unique response values (which will be assigned to family$cats internally) or may be left at NULL (so that projpred will try to infer it from family$cats). See also section "Latent projection" below.

latent_ilink

Only relevant for the latent projection, in which case this needs to be the inverse-link function. If the original response family was the binomial() or the poisson() family, then latent_ilink can be NULL, in which case an internal default will be used. Can also be NULL in all other cases, but then an internal default based on family$linkinv will be used which might not work for all families. See also section "Latent projection" below.

latent_ll_oscale

Only relevant for the latent projection, in which case this needs to be the function computing response-scale (not latent-scale) log-likelihood values. If !is.null(family$cats) (after taking latent_y_unqs into account) or if the original response family was the binomial() or the poisson() family, then latent_ll_oscale can be NULL, in which case an internal default will be used. Can also be NULL in all other cases, but then downstream functions will have limited functionality (a message thrown by extend_family() will state what exactly won't be available). See also section "Latent projection" below.

latent_ppd_oscale

Only relevant for the latent projection, in which case this needs to be the function sampling response values given latent predictors that have been transformed to response scale using latent_ilink. If !is.null(family$cats) (after taking latent_y_unqs into account) or if the original response family was the binomial() or the poisson() family, then latent_ppd_oscale can be NULL, in which case an internal default will be used. Can also be NULL in all other cases, but then downstream functions will have limited functionality (a message thrown by extend_family() will state what exactly won't be available). See also section "Latent projection" below. Note that although this function has the abbreviation "PPD" in its name (which stands for "posterior predictive distribution"), projpred currently only uses it in proj_predict(), i.e., for sampling from what would better be termed posterior-projection predictive distribution (PPPD).

augdat_y_unqs

Only relevant for augmented-data projection, in which case this needs to be the character vector of unique response values (which will be assigned to family$cats internally) or may be left at NULL if family$cats is already non-NULL. See also section "Augmented-data projection" below.

augdat_link

Only relevant for augmented-data projection, in which case this needs to be the link function. Use NULL for the traditional projection. See also section "Augmented-data projection" below.

augdat_ilink

Only relevant for augmented-data projection, in which case this needs to be the inverse-link function. Use NULL for the traditional projection. See also section "Augmented-data projection" below.

augdat_args_link

Only relevant for augmented-data projection, in which case this may be a named list of arguments to pass to the function supplied to augdat_link.

augdat_args_ilink

Only relevant for augmented-data projection, in which case this may be a named list of arguments to pass to the function supplied to augdat_ilink.

...

Ignored (exists only to swallow up further arguments which might be passed to this function).

Details

In the following, NN, CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}}, ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}}, SrefS_{\mathrm{ref}}, and SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} from help topic refmodel-init-get are used. Note that NN does not necessarily denote the number of original observations; it can also refer to new observations. Furthermore, let SS denote either SrefS_{\mathrm{ref}} or SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}}, whichever is appropriate in the context where it is used.

Value

The family object extended in the way needed by projpred.

Augmented-data projection

As their first input, the functions supplied to arguments augdat_link and augdat_ilink have to accept:

  • For augdat_link: an S×N×CcatS \times N \times C_{\mathrm{cat}} array containing the probabilities for the response categories. The order of the response categories is the same as in family$cats (see argument augdat_y_unqs).

  • For augdat_ilink: an S×N×ClatS \times N \times C_{\mathrm{lat}} array containing the linear predictors.

The return value of these functions needs to be:

  • For augdat_link: an S×N×ClatS \times N \times C_{\mathrm{lat}} array containing the linear predictors.

  • For augdat_ilink: an S×N×CcatS \times N \times C_{\mathrm{cat}} array containing the probabilities for the response categories. The order of the response categories has to be the same as in family$cats (see argument augdat_y_unqs).

For the augmented-data projection, the response vector resulting from extract_model_data (see init_refmodel()) is coerced to a factor (using as.factor()) at multiple places throughout this package. Inside of init_refmodel(), the levels of this factor have to be identical to family$cats (after applying extend_family() inside of init_refmodel()). Everywhere else, these levels have to be a subset of ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ (where ⁠<refmodel>⁠ is an object resulting from init_refmodel()). See argument augdat_y_unqs for how to control family$cats.

For ordinal brms families, be aware that the submodels (onto which the reference model is projected) currently have the following restrictions:

  • The discrimination parameter disc is not supported (i.e., it is a constant with value 1).

  • The thresholds are "flexible" (see brms::brmsfamily()).

  • The thresholds do not vary across the levels of a factor-like variable (see argument gr of brms::resp_thres()).

  • The "probit_approx" link is replaced by "probit".

For the brms::categorical() family, be aware that:

  • For multilevel submodels, the group-level effects are allowed to be correlated between different response categories.

  • For multilevel submodels, mclogit versions < 0.9.4 may throw the error 'a' (<number> x 1) must be square. Updating mclogit to a version >= 0.9.4 should fix this.

Latent projection

The function supplied to argument latent_ilink needs to have the prototype

latent_ilink(lpreds, cl_ref, wdraws_ref = rep(1, length(cl_ref)))

where:

  • lpreds accepts an S×NS \times N matrix containing the linear predictors.

  • cl_ref accepts a numeric vector of length SrefS_{\mathrm{ref}}, containing projpred's internal cluster indices for these draws.

  • wdraws_ref accepts a numeric vector of length SrefS_{\mathrm{ref}}, containing weights for these draws. These weights should be treated as not being normalized (i.e., they don't necessarily sum to 1).

The return value of latent_ilink needs to contain the linear predictors transformed to the original response space, with the following structure:

  • If is.null(family$cats) (after taking latent_y_unqs into account): an S×NS \times N matrix.

  • If !is.null(family$cats) (after taking latent_y_unqs into account): an S×N×CcatS \times N \times C_{\mathrm{cat}} array. In that case, latent_ilink needs to return probabilities (for the response categories given in family$cats, after taking latent_y_unqs into account).

The function supplied to argument latent_ll_oscale needs to have the prototype

latent_ll_oscale(ilpreds, y_oscale, wobs = rep(1, length(y_oscale)), cl_ref,
                 wdraws_ref = rep(1, length(cl_ref)))

where:

  • ilpreds accepts the return value from latent_ilink.

  • y_oscale accepts a vector of length NN containing response values on the original response scale.

  • wobs accepts a numeric vector of length NN containing observation weights.

  • cl_ref accepts the same input as argument cl_ref of latent_ilink.

  • wdraws_ref accepts the same input as argument wdraws_ref of latent_ilink.

The return value of latent_ll_oscale needs to be an S×NS \times N matrix containing the response-scale (not latent-scale) log-likelihood values for the NN observations from its inputs.

The function supplied to argument latent_ppd_oscale needs to have the prototype

latent_ppd_oscale(ilpreds_resamp, wobs, cl_ref,
                  wdraws_ref = rep(1, length(cl_ref)), idxs_prjdraws)

where:

  • ilpreds_resamp accepts the return value from latent_ilink, but possibly with resampled (clustered) draws (see argument nresample_clusters of proj_predict()).

  • wobs accepts a numeric vector of length NN containing observation weights.

  • cl_ref accepts the same input as argument cl_ref of latent_ilink.

  • wdraws_ref accepts the same input as argument wdraws_ref of latent_ilink.

  • idxs_prjdraws accepts a numeric vector of length dim(ilpreds_resamp)[1] containing the resampled indices of the projected draws (i.e., these indices are values from the set {1,...,dim(ilpreds)[1]}\{1, ..., \texttt{dim(ilpreds)[1]}\} where ilpreds denotes the return value of latent_ilink).

The return value of latent_ppd_oscale needs to be a dim(ilpreds_resamp)[1]×N\texttt{dim(ilpreds\_resamp)[1]} \times N matrix containing the response-scale (not latent-scale) draws from the posterior(-projection) predictive distributions for the NN observations from its inputs.

If the bodies of these three functions involve parameter draws from the reference model which have not been projected (e.g., for latent_ilink, the thresholds in an ordinal model), cl_agg() is provided as a helper function for aggregating these reference model draws in the same way as the draws have been aggregated for the first argument of these functions (e.g., lpreds in case of latent_ilink).

In fact, the weights passed to argument wdraws_ref are nonconstant only in case of cv_varsel() with cv_method = "LOO" and validate_search = TRUE. In that case, the weights passed to this argument are the PSIS-LOO CV weights for one observation. Note that although argument wdraws_ref has the suffix ⁠_ref⁠, wdraws_ref does not necessarily obtain weights for the initial reference model's posterior draws: In case of cv_varsel() with cv_method = "kfold", these weights may refer to one of the KK reference model refits (but in that case, they are constant anyway).

If family$cats is not NULL (after taking latent_y_unqs into account), then the response vector resulting from extract_model_data (see init_refmodel()) is coerced to a factor (using as.factor()) at multiple places throughout this package. Inside of init_refmodel(), the levels of this factor have to be identical to family$cats (after applying extend_family() inside of init_refmodel()). Everywhere else, these levels have to be a subset of ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ (where ⁠<refmodel>⁠ is an object resulting from init_refmodel()).


Extra family objects

Description

Family objects not in the set of default family objects.

Usage

Student_t(link = "identity", nu = 3)

Arguments

link

Name of the link function. In contrast to the default family objects, this has to be a character string here.

nu

Degrees of freedom for the Student-tt distribution.

Value

A family object analogous to those described in family.

Note

Support for the Student_t() family is still experimental.


Force search terms

Description

A helper function to construct the input for argument search_terms of varsel() or cv_varsel() if certain predictor terms should be forced to be selected first whereas other predictor terms are optional (i.e., they are subject to the variable selection, but only after the inclusion of the "forced" terms).

Usage

force_search_terms(forced_terms, optional_terms)

Arguments

forced_terms

A character vector of predictor terms that should be selected first.

optional_terms

A character vector of predictor terms that should be subject to the variable selection after the inclusion of the "forced" terms.

Value

A character vector that may be used as input for argument search_terms of varsel() or cv_varsel().

See Also

varsel(), cv_varsel()

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# We will force X1 and X2 to be selected first:
search_terms_forced <- force_search_terms(
  forced_terms = paste0("X", 1:2),
  optional_terms = paste0("X", 3:5)
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation and with small values for
# `nterms_max`, `nclusters`, and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, nclusters = 5, nclusters_pred = 10,
             search_terms = search_terms_forced, seed = 5555)
# Now see, for example, `?print.vsel`, `?plot.vsel`, `?suggest_size.vsel`,
# and `?ranking` for possible post-processing functions.

Mesquite data set

Description

The mesquite bushes yields dataset from Gelman and Hill (2006) (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/arm/).

Usage

mesquite

Format

The response variable is the total weight (in grams) of photosynthetic material as derived from actual harvesting of the bush. The predictor variables are:

diam1

diameter of the canopy (the leafy area of the bush) in meters, measured along the longer axis of the bush.

diam2

canopy diameter measured along the shorter axis.

canopy height

height of the canopy.

total height

total height of the bush.

density

plant unit density (# of primary stems per plant unit).

group

group of measurements (0 for the first group, 1 for the second group).

Source

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/arm/examples/mesquite/mesquite.dat

References

Gelman, Andrew, and Jennifer Hill. 2006. Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511790942.


Predictive performance results

Description

Retrieves the predictive performance summaries after running varsel() or cv_varsel(). These summaries are computed by summary.vsel(), so the main method of performances() is performances.vselsummary() (objects of class vselsummary are returned by summary.vsel()). As a shortcut method, performances.vsel() is provided as well (objects of class vsel are returned by varsel() and cv_varsel()). For a graphical representation, see plot.vsel().

Usage

performances(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vselsummary'
performances(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
performances(object, ...)

Arguments

object

The object from which to retrieve the predictive performance results. Possible classes may be inferred from the names of the corresponding methods (see also the description).

...

For performances.vsel(): arguments passed to summary.vsel(). For performances.vselsummary(): currently ignored.

Value

An object of class performances which is a list with the following elements:

  • submodels: The predictive performance results for the submodels, as a data.frame.

  • reference_model: The predictive performance results for the reference model, as a named vector.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)
print(performances(vs))

Plot ranking proportions from fold-wise predictor rankings

Description

Plots the ranking proportions (see cv_proportions()) from the fold-wise predictor rankings in a cross-validation with fold-wise searches. This is a visualization of the transposed matrix returned by cv_proportions(). The proportions printed as text inside of the colored tiles are rounded to whole percentage points (the plotted proportions themselves are not rounded).

Usage

## S3 method for class 'cv_proportions'
plot(x, text_angle = NULL, ...)

## S3 method for class 'ranking'
plot(x, ...)

Arguments

x

For plot.cv_proportions(): an object of class cv_proportions (returned by cv_proportions(), possibly with cumulate = TRUE). For plot.ranking(): an object of class ranking (returned by ranking()) that cv_proportions() will be applied to internally before then calling plot.cv_proportions().

text_angle

Passed to argument angle of ggplot2::element_text() for the y-axis tick labels. In case of long predictor names, text_angle = 45 might be helpful (for example).

...

For plot.ranking(): arguments passed to cv_proportions.ranking() and plot.cv_proportions(). For plot.cv_proportions(): currently ignored.

Value

A ggplot2 plotting object (of class gg and ggplot).

Author(s)

Idea and original code by Aki Vehtari. Slight modifications of the original code by Frank Weber, Yann McLatchie, and Sölvi Rögnvaldsson. Final implementation in projpred by Frank Weber.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 1000, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run cv_varsel() (with L1 search and small values for `K`, `nterms_max`, and
# `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of speed in this example; this is
# not recommended in general):
cvvs <- cv_varsel(fit, method = "L1", cv_method = "kfold", K = 2,
                  nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10, seed = 5555)

# Extract predictor rankings:
rk <- ranking(cvvs)

# Compute ranking proportions:
pr_rk <- cv_proportions(rk)

# Visualize the ranking proportions:
gg_pr_rk <- plot(pr_rk)
print(gg_pr_rk)

# Since the object returned by plot.cv_proportions() is a standard ggplot2
# plotting object, you can modify the plot easily, e.g., to remove the
# legend:
print(gg_pr_rk + ggplot2::theme(legend.position = "none"))

Plot predictive performance

Description

This is the plot() method for vsel objects (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). It visualizes the predictive performance of the reference model (possibly also that of some other "baseline" model) and that of the submodels along the full-data predictor ranking. Basic information about the (CV) variability in the ranking of the predictors is included as well (if available; inferred from cv_proportions()). For a tabular representation, see summary.vsel() and performances().

Usage

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
plot(
  x,
  nterms_max = NULL,
  stats = "elpd",
  deltas = FALSE,
  alpha = 2 * pnorm(-1),
  baseline = if (!inherits(x$refmodel, "datafit")) "ref" else "best",
  thres_elpd = NA,
  resp_oscale = TRUE,
  point_size = 3,
  bar_thickness = 1,
  ranking_nterms_max = NULL,
  ranking_abbreviate = FALSE,
  ranking_abbreviate_args = list(),
  ranking_repel = NULL,
  ranking_repel_args = list(),
  ranking_colored = FALSE,
  show_cv_proportions = TRUE,
  cumulate = FALSE,
  text_angle = NULL,
  size_position = "primary_x_bottom",
  ...
)

Arguments

x

An object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()).

nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) for which the performance statistics are calculated. Using NULL is effectively the same as length(ranking(object)$fulldata). Note that nterms_max does not count the intercept, so use nterms_max = 0 for the intercept-only model. For plot.vsel(), nterms_max must be at least 1.

stats

One or more character strings determining which performance statistics (i.e., utilities or losses) to estimate based on the observations in the evaluation (or "test") set (in case of cross-validation, these are all observations because they are partitioned into multiple test sets; in case of varsel() with d_test = NULL, these are again all observations because the test set is the same as the training set). Available statistics are:

  • "elpd": expected log (pointwise) predictive density (for a new dataset). Estimated by the sum of the observation-specific log predictive density values (with each of these predictive density values being a—possibly weighted—average across the parameter draws).

  • "mlpd": mean log predictive density, that is, "elpd" divided by the number of observations.

  • "gmpd": geometric mean predictive density (GMPD), that is, exp() of "mlpd". The GMPD is especially helpful for discrete response families (because there, the GMPD is bounded by zero and one). For the corresponding standard error, the delta method is used. The corresponding confidence interval type is "exponentiated normal approximation" because the confidence interval bounds are the exponentiated confidence interval bounds of the "mlpd".

  • "mse": mean squared error (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below).

  • "rmse": root mean squared error (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). For the corresponding standard error and lower and upper confidence interval bounds, bootstrapping is used.

  • "acc" (or its alias, "pctcorr"): classification accuracy (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). By "classification accuracy", we mean the proportion of correctly classified observations. For this, the response category ("class") with highest probability (the probabilities are model-based) is taken as the prediction ("classification") for an observation.

  • "auc": area under the ROC curve (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). For the corresponding standard error and lower and upper confidence interval bounds, bootstrapping is used.

deltas

If TRUE, the submodel statistics are estimated relatively to the baseline model (see argument baseline). For the GMPD, the term "relatively" refers to the ratio vs. the baseline model (i.e., the submodel statistic divided by the baseline model statistic). For all other stats, "relatively" refers to the difference from the baseline model (i.e., the submodel statistic minus the baseline model statistic).

alpha

A number determining the (nominal) coverage 1 - alpha of the normal-approximation (or bootstrap or exponentiated normal-approximation; see argument stats) confidence intervals. For example, in case of the normal approximation, alpha = 2 * pnorm(-1) corresponds to a confidence interval stretching by one standard error on either side of the point estimate.

baseline

For summary.vsel(): Only relevant if deltas is TRUE. For plot.vsel(): Always relevant. Either "ref" or "best", indicating whether the baseline is the reference model or the best submodel found (in terms of stats[1]), respectively.

thres_elpd

Only relevant if any(stats %in% c("elpd", "mlpd", "gmpd")). The threshold for the ELPD difference (taking the submodel's ELPD minus the baseline model's ELPD) above which the submodel's ELPD is considered to be close enough to the baseline model's ELPD. An equivalent rule is applied in case of the MLPD and the GMPD. See suggest_size() for a formalization. Supplying NA deactivates this.

resp_oscale

Only relevant for the latent projection. A single logical value indicating whether to calculate the performance statistics on the original response scale (TRUE) or on latent scale (FALSE).

point_size

Passed to argument size of ggplot2::geom_point() and controls the size of the points.

bar_thickness

Passed to argument linewidth of ggplot2::geom_linerange() and controls the thickness of the uncertainty bars.

ranking_nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) for which the predictor names and the corresponding ranking proportions are added on the x-axis. Using NULL is effectively the same as using nterms_max. Using NA causes the predictor names and the corresponding ranking proportions to be omitted. Note that ranking_nterms_max does not count the intercept, so ranking_nterms_max = 1 corresponds to the submodel consisting of the first (non-intercept) predictor term.

ranking_abbreviate

A single logical value indicating whether the predictor names in the full-data predictor ranking should be abbreviated by abbreviate() (TRUE) or not (FALSE). See also argument ranking_abbreviate_args and section "Value".

ranking_abbreviate_args

A list of arguments (except for names.arg) to be passed to abbreviate() in case of ranking_abbreviate = TRUE.

ranking_repel

Either NULL, "text", or "label". By NULL, the full-data predictor ranking and the corresponding ranking proportions are placed below the x-axis. By "text" or "label", they are placed within the plotting area, using ggrepel::geom_text_repel() or ggrepel::geom_label_repel(), respectively. See also argument ranking_repel_args.

ranking_repel_args

A list of arguments (except for mapping) to be passed to ggrepel::geom_text_repel() or ggrepel::geom_label_repel() in case of ranking_repel = "text" or ranking_repel = "label", respectively.

ranking_colored

A single logical value indicating whether the points and the uncertainty bars should be gradient-colored according to the CV ranking proportions (TRUE, currently only works if show_cv_proportions is TRUE as well) or not (FALSE). The CV ranking proportions may be cumulated (see argument cumulate). Note that the point and the uncertainty bar at submodel size 0 (i.e., at the intercept-only model) are always colored in gray because the intercept is forced to be selected before any predictors are selected (in other words, the reason is that for submodel size 0, the question of variability across CV folds is not appropriate in the first place).

show_cv_proportions

A single logical value indicating whether the CV ranking proportions (see cv_proportions()) should be displayed (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

cumulate

Passed to argument cumulate of cv_proportions(). Affects the ranking proportions given on the x-axis (below the full-data predictor ranking).

text_angle

Passed to argument angle of ggplot2::element_text() for the x-axis tick labels. In case of long predictor names (and/or large nterms_max), text_angle = 45 might be helpful (for example). If text_angle > 0 (⁠< 0⁠), the x-axis text is automatically right-aligned (left-aligned). If -90 < text_angle && text_angle < 90 && text_angle != 0, the x-axis text is also top-aligned.

size_position

A single character string specifying the position of the submodel sizes. Either "primary_x_bottom" for including them in the x-axis tick labels, "primary_x_top" for putting them above the x-axis, or "secondary_x" for putting them into a secondary x-axis. Currently, both of the non-default options may not be combined with ranking_nterms_max = NA.

...

Arguments passed to the internal function which is used for bootstrapping (if applicable; see argument stats). Currently, relevant arguments are B (the number of bootstrap samples, defaulting to 2000) and seed (see set.seed(), but defaulting to NA so that set.seed() is not called within that function at all).

Details

The stats options "mse" and "rmse" are only available for:

  • the traditional projection,

  • the latent projection with resp_oscale = FALSE,

  • the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL.

The stats option "acc" (= "pctcorr") is only available for:

  • the binomial() family in case of the traditional projection,

  • all families in case of the augmented-data projection,

  • the binomial() family (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL,

  • all families (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being not NULL.

The stats option "auc" is only available for:

  • the binomial() family in case of the traditional projection,

  • the binomial() family (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL.

Value

A ggplot2 plotting object (of class gg and ggplot). If ranking_abbreviate is TRUE, the output of abbreviate() is stored in an attribute called projpred_ranking_abbreviated (to allow the abbreviations to be easily mapped back to the original predictor names).

Horizontal lines

As long as the reference model's performance is computable, it is always shown in the plot as a dashed red horizontal line. If baseline = "best", the baseline model's performance is shown as a dotted black horizontal line. If !is.na(thres_elpd) and any(stats %in% c("elpd", "mlpd", "gmpd")), the value supplied to thres_elpd (which is automatically adapted internally in case of the MLPD or the GMPD or deltas = FALSE) is shown as a dot-dashed gray horizontal line for the reference model and, if baseline = "best", as a long-dashed green horizontal line for the baseline model.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)
print(plot(vs))

Predictions from a submodel (after projection)

Description

After the projection of the reference model onto a submodel, the linear predictors (for the original or a new dataset) based on that submodel can be calculated by proj_linpred(). These linear predictors can also be transformed to response scale and averaged across the projected parameter draws. Furthermore, proj_linpred() returns the corresponding log predictive density values if the (original or new) dataset contains response values. The proj_predict() function draws from the predictive distributions (there is one such distribution for each observation from the original or new dataset) of the submodel that the reference model has been projected onto. If the projection has not been performed yet, both functions call project() internally to perform the projection. Both functions can also handle multiple submodels at once (for objects of class vsel or objects returned by a project() call to an object of class vsel; see project()).

Usage

proj_linpred(
  object,
  newdata = NULL,
  offsetnew = NULL,
  weightsnew = NULL,
  filter_nterms = NULL,
  transform = FALSE,
  integrated = FALSE,
  allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj = return_draws_matrix,
  return_draws_matrix = FALSE,
  .seed = NA,
  ...
)

proj_predict(
  object,
  newdata = NULL,
  offsetnew = NULL,
  weightsnew = NULL,
  filter_nterms = NULL,
  nresample_clusters = 1000,
  return_draws_matrix = FALSE,
  .seed = NA,
  resp_oscale = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object returned by project() or an object that can be passed to argument object of project().

newdata

Passed to argument newdata of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Provides the predictor (and possibly also the response) data for the new (or old) observations. May also be NULL for using the original dataset. If not NULL, any NAs will trigger an error.

offsetnew

Passed to argument orhs of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Used to get the offsets for the new (or old) observations.

weightsnew

Passed to argument wrhs of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Used to get the weights for the new (or old) observations.

filter_nterms

Only applies if object is an object returned by project(). In that case, filter_nterms can be used to filter object for only those elements (submodels) with a number of predictor terms in filter_nterms. Therefore, needs to be a numeric vector or NULL. If NULL, use all submodels.

transform

For proj_linpred() only. A single logical value indicating whether the linear predictor should be transformed to response scale using the inverse-link function (TRUE) or not (FALSE). In case of the latent projection, argument transform is similar in spirit to argument resp_oscale from other functions and affects the scale of both output elements pred and lpd (see sections "Details" and "Value" below).

integrated

For proj_linpred() only. A single logical value indicating whether the output should be averaged across the projected posterior draws (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj

Only relevant for proj_linpred() and only if integrated is FALSE. A single logical value indicating whether to allow projected draws with different (i.e., nonconstant) weights (TRUE) or not (FALSE). If return_draws_matrix is TRUE, allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj is internally set to TRUE as well. CAUTION: Expert use only because if set to TRUE, the weights of the projected draws are stored in attributes wdraws_prj and handling these attributes requires special care (e.g., when subsetting the returned matrices).

return_draws_matrix

A single logical value indicating whether to return an object (in case of proj_predict()) or objects (in case of proj_linpred()) of class draws_matrix (see posterior::draws_matrix()). In case of proj_linpred() and projected draws with nonconstant weights (as well as integrated being FALSE), posterior::weight_draws() is applied internally.

.seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling proj_linpred() or proj_predict()) upon exiting proj_linpred() or proj_predict(). Here, .seed is used for drawing new group-level effects in case of a multilevel submodel (however, not yet in case of a GAMM) and for drawing from the predictive distributions of the submodel(s) in case of proj_predict(). If a clustered projection was performed, then in proj_predict(), .seed is also used for drawing from the set of projected clusters of posterior draws (see argument nresample_clusters). If project() is called internally with seed = NA (or with seed being a lazily evaluated expression that uses the PRNG), then .seed also affects the PRNG usage there.

...

Arguments passed to project() if object is not already an object returned by project().

nresample_clusters

For proj_predict() with clustered projection (and nonconstant weights for the projected draws) only. Number of draws to return from the predictive distributions of the submodel(s). Not to be confused with argument nclusters of project(): nresample_clusters gives the number of draws (with replacement) from the set of clustered posterior draws after projection (with this set being determined by argument nclusters of project()).

resp_oscale

Only relevant for the latent projection. A single logical value indicating whether to draw from the posterior-projection predictive distributions on the original response scale (TRUE) or on latent scale (FALSE).

Details

Currently, proj_predict() ignores observation weights that are not equal to 1. A corresponding warning is thrown if this is the case.

In case of the latent projection and transform = FALSE:

  • Output element pred contains the linear predictors without any modifications that may be due to the original response distribution (e.g., for a brms::cumulative() model, the ordered thresholds are not taken into account).

  • Output element lpd contains the latent log predictive density values, i.e., those corresponding to the latent Gaussian distribution. If newdata is not NULL, this requires the latent response values to be supplied in a column called ⁠.<response_name>⁠ of newdata where ⁠<response_name>⁠ needs to be replaced by the name of the original response variable (if ⁠<response_name>⁠ contained parentheses, these have been stripped off by init_refmodel(); see the left-hand side of ⁠formula(<refmodel>)⁠). For technical reasons, the existence of column ⁠<response_name>⁠ in newdata is another requirement (even though ⁠.<response_name>⁠ is actually used).

Value

In the following, SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}}, NN, CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}}, and ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}} from help topic refmodel-init-get are used. (For proj_linpred() with integrated = TRUE, we have Sprj=1S_{\mathrm{prj}} = 1.) Furthermore, let CC denote either CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}} (if transform = TRUE) or ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}} (if transform = FALSE). Then, if the prediction is done for one submodel only (i.e., length(nterms) == 1 || !is.null(predictor_terms) in the explicit or implicit call to project(), see argument object):

  • proj_linpred() returns a list with the following elements:

    • Element pred contains the actual predictions, i.e., the linear predictors, possibly transformed to response scale (depending on argument transform).

    • Element lpd is non-NULL only if newdata is NULL or if newdata contains response values in the corresponding column. In that case, it contains the log predictive density values (conditional on each of the projected parameter draws if integrated = FALSE and averaged across the projected parameter draws if integrated = TRUE).

    In case of (i) the traditional projection, (ii) the latent projection with transform = FALSE, or (iii) the latent projection with transform = TRUE and ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ (where ⁠<refmodel>⁠ is an object resulting from init_refmodel(); see also extend_family()'s argument latent_y_unqs) being NULL, both elements are Sprj×NS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times N matrices (converted to a—possibly weighted—draws_matrix if argument return_draws_matrix is TRUE, see the description of this argument). In case of (i) the augmented-data projection or (ii) the latent projection with transform = TRUE and ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being not NULL, pred is an Sprj×N×CS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times N \times C array (if argument return_draws_matrix is TRUE, this array is "compressed" to an Sprj×(NC)S_{\mathrm{prj}} \times (N \cdot C) matrix—with the columns consisting of CC blocks of NN rows—and then converted to a—possibly weighted—draws_matrix) and lpd is an Sprj×NS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times N matrix (converted to a—possibly weighted—draws_matrix if argument return_draws_matrix is TRUE). If return_draws_matrix is FALSE and allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj is TRUE and integrated is FALSE and the projected draws have nonconstant weights, then both list elements have the weights of these draws stored in an attribute wdraws_prj. (If return_draws_matrix, allow_nonconst_wdraws_prj, and integrated are all FALSE, then projected draws with nonconstant weights cause an error.)

  • proj_predict() returns an Sprj×NS_{\mathrm{prj}} \times N matrix of predictions where SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} denotes nresample_clusters in case of clustered projection (or, more generally, in case of projected draws with nonconstant weights). If argument return_draws_matrix is TRUE, the returned matrix is converted to a draws_matrix (see posterior::draws_matrix()). In case of (i) the augmented-data projection or (ii) the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE and ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being not NULL, the returned matrix (or draws_matrix) has an attribute called cats (the character vector of response categories) and the values of the matrix (or draws_matrix) are the predicted indices of the response categories (these indices refer to the order of the response categories from attribute cats).

If the prediction is done for more than one submodel, the output from above is returned for each submodel, giving a named list with one element for each submodel (the names of this list being the numbers of predictor terms of the submodels when counting the intercept, too).

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Projection onto an arbitrary combination of predictor terms (with a small
# value for `ndraws`, but only for the sake of speed in this example; this
# is not recommended in general):
prj <- project(fit, predictor_terms = c("X1", "X3", "X5"), ndraws = 21,
               seed = 9182)

# Predictions (at the training points) from the submodel onto which the
# reference model was projected:
prjl <- proj_linpred(prj)
prjp <- proj_predict(prj, .seed = 7364)

Predictions or log posterior predictive densities from a reference model

Description

This is the predict() method for refmodel objects (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()). It offers three types of output which are all based on the reference model and new (or old) observations: Either the linear predictor on link scale, the linear predictor transformed to response scale, or the log posterior predictive density.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
predict(
  object,
  newdata = NULL,
  ynew = NULL,
  offsetnew = NULL,
  weightsnew = NULL,
  type = "response",
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class refmodel (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()).

newdata

Passed to argument newdata of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Provides the predictor (and possibly also the response) data for the new (or old) observations. May also be NULL for using the original dataset. If not NULL, any NAs will trigger an error.

ynew

If not NULL, then this needs to be a vector of new (or old) response values. See also section "Value" below. In case of (i) the augmented-data projection or (ii) the latent projection with type = "response" and object$family$cats being not NULL, ynew is internally coerced to a factor (using as.factor()). The levels of this factor have to be a subset of object$family$cats (see extend_family()'s arguments augdat_y_unqs and latent_y_unqs, respectively).

offsetnew

Passed to argument orhs of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Used to get the offsets for the new (or old) observations.

weightsnew

Passed to argument wrhs of the reference model's extract_model_data function (see init_refmodel()). Used to get the weights for the new (or old) observations.

type

Usually only relevant if is.null(ynew), but for the latent projection, this also affects the !is.null(ynew) case (see below). The scale on which the predictions are returned, either "link" or "response" (see predict.glm() but note that predict.refmodel() does not adhere to the typical R convention of a default prediction on link scale). For both scales, the predictions are averaged across the posterior draws. In case of the latent projection, argument type is similar in spirit to argument resp_oscale from other functions: If (i) is.null(ynew), then argument type affects the predictions as described above. In that case, note that type = "link" yields the linear predictors without any modifications that may be due to the original response distribution (e.g., for a brms::cumulative() model, the ordered thresholds are not taken into account). If (ii) !is.null(ynew), then argument type also affects the scale of the log posterior predictive densities (type = "response" for the original response scale, type = "link" for the latent Gaussian scale).

...

Currently ignored.

Details

Argument weightsnew is only relevant if !is.null(ynew).

In case of a multilevel reference model, group-level effects for new group levels are drawn randomly from a (multivariate) Gaussian distribution. When setting projpred.mlvl_pred_new to TRUE, all group levels from newdata (even those that already exist in the original dataset) are treated as new group levels (if is.null(newdata), all group levels from the original dataset are considered as new group levels in that case).

Value

In the following, NN, CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}}, and ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}} from help topic refmodel-init-get are used. Furthermore, let CC denote either CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}} (if type = "response") or ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}} (if type = "link"). Then, if is.null(ynew), the returned object contains the reference model's predictions (with the scale depending on argument type) as:

  • a length-NN vector in case of (i) the traditional projection, (ii) the latent projection with type = "link", or (iii) the latent projection with type = "response" and object$family$cats being NULL;

  • an N×CN \times C matrix in case of (i) the augmented-data projection or (ii) the latent projection with type = "response" and object$family$cats being not NULL.

If !is.null(ynew), the returned object is a length-NN vector of log posterior predictive densities evaluated at ynew.


Predictor terms used in a project() run

Description

For a projection object (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list), this function extracts the combination of predictor terms onto which the projection was performed.

Usage

predictor_terms(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'projection'
predictor_terms(object, ...)

Arguments

object

An object of class projection (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list) from which to retrieve the predictor terms.

...

Currently ignored.

Value

A character vector of predictor terms.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Projection onto an arbitrary combination of predictor terms (with a small
# value for `nclusters`, but only for the sake of speed in this example;
# this is not recommended in general):
prj <- project(fit, predictor_terms = c("X1", "X3", "X5"), nclusters = 10,
               seed = 9182)
print(predictor_terms(prj)) # gives `c("X1", "X3", "X5")`

Print information about project() output

Description

This is the print() method for objects of class projection. This method mainly exists to avoid cluttering the console when printing such objects accidentally.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'projection'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class projection (returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list).

...

Currently ignored.

Value

The input object x (invisible).


Print information about a reference model object

Description

This is the print() method for reference model objects (objects of class refmodel). This method mainly exists to avoid cluttering the console when printing such objects accidentally.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class refmodel (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()).

...

Currently ignored.

Value

The input object x (invisible).


Print results (summary) of a varsel() or cv_varsel() run

Description

This is the print() method for vsel objects (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). It displays a summary of a varsel() or cv_varsel() run by first calling summary.vsel() and then print.vselsummary().

Usage

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
print(x, digits = getOption("projpred.digits", 2), ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()).

digits

Passed to argument digits of print.vselsummary().

...

Arguments passed to summary.vsel().

Value

The output of summary.vsel() (invisible).


Print summary of a varsel() or cv_varsel() run

Description

This is the print() method for summary objects created by summary.vsel(). It displays a summary of the results from a varsel() or cv_varsel() run.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'vselsummary'
print(x, digits = getOption("projpred.digits", 2), ...)

Arguments

x

An object of class vselsummary.

digits

Passed to print.data.frame() (for the table containing the submodel performance evaluation results) and print.default() (for the vector containing the reference model performance evaluation results).

...

Arguments passed to print.data.frame() (for the table containing the submodel performance evaluation results) and print.default() (for the vector containing the reference model performance evaluation results).

Details

In the submodel predictive performance table printed at (or towards) the bottom, column ranking_fulldata contains the full-data predictor ranking and column cv_proportions_diag contains the main diagonal of the matrix returned by cv_proportions() (with cumulate as set in the summary.vsel() call that created x). To retrieve the fold-wise predictor rankings, use the ranking() function, possibly followed by cv_proportions() for computing the ranking proportions (which can be visualized by plot.cv_proportions()).

Value

The output of summary.vsel() (invisible).


Projection onto submodel(s)

Description

Project the posterior of the reference model onto the parameter space of a single submodel consisting of a specific combination of predictor terms or (after variable selection) onto the parameter space of a single or multiple submodels of specific sizes.

Usage

project(
  object,
  nterms = NULL,
  solution_terms = predictor_terms,
  predictor_terms = NULL,
  refit_prj = TRUE,
  ndraws = 400,
  nclusters = NULL,
  seed = NA,
  verbose = getOption("projpred.verbose_project", TRUE),
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object which can be used as input to get_refmodel() (in particular, objects of class refmodel).

nterms

Only relevant if object is of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). Ignored if !is.null(predictor_terms). Number of terms for the submodel (the corresponding combination of predictor terms is taken from object). If a numeric vector, then the projection is performed for each element of this vector. If NULL (and is.null(predictor_terms)), then the value suggested by suggest_size() is taken (with default arguments for suggest_size(), implying that this suggested size is based on the ELPD). Note that nterms does not count the intercept, so use nterms = 0 for the intercept-only model.

solution_terms

Deprecated. Please use argument predictor_terms instead.

predictor_terms

If not NULL, then this needs to be a character vector of predictor terms for the submodel onto which the projection will be performed. Argument nterms is ignored in that case. For an object which is not of class vsel, predictor_terms must not be NULL.

refit_prj

A single logical value indicating whether to fit the submodels (again) (TRUE) or—if object is of class vsel—to re-use the submodel fits from the full-data search that was run when creating object (FALSE). For an object which is not of class vsel, refit_prj must be TRUE. See also section "Details" below.

ndraws

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of posterior draws to be projected. Ignored if nclusters is not NULL or if the reference model is of class datafit (in which case one cluster is used). If both (nclusters and ndraws) are NULL, the number of posterior draws from the reference model is used for ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

nclusters

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of clusters of posterior draws to be projected. Ignored if the reference model is of class datafit (in which case one cluster is used). For the meaning of NULL, see argument ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling project()) upon exiting project(). Here, seed is used for clustering the reference model's posterior draws (if !is.null(nclusters)) and for drawing new group-level effects when predicting from a multilevel submodel (however, not yet in case of a GAMM) and having global option projpred.mlvl_pred_new set to TRUE. (Such a prediction takes place when calculating output elements dis and ce.)

verbose

A single logical value indicating whether to print out additional information during the computations. More precisely, this gets passed as verbose_divmin to the divergence minimizer function of the refmodel object. For the built-in divergence minimizers, this only has an effect in case of sequential computations (not in case of parallel projection, which is described in projpred-package).

...

Arguments passed to get_refmodel() (if get_refmodel() is actually used; see argument object) as well as to the divergence minimizer (if refit_prj is TRUE).

Details

Arguments ndraws and nclusters are automatically truncated at the number of posterior draws in the reference model (which is 1 for datafits). Using less draws or clusters in ndraws or nclusters than posterior draws in the reference model may result in slightly inaccurate projection performance. Increasing these arguments affects the computation time linearly.

If refit_prj = FALSE (which is only possible if object is of class vsel), project() retrieves the submodel fits from the full-data search that was run when creating object. Usually, the search relies on a rather coarse clustering or thinning of the reference model's posterior draws (by default, varsel() and cv_varsel() use nclusters = 20). Consequently, project() with refit_prj = FALSE then inherits this coarse clustering or thinning.

Value

If the projection is performed onto a single submodel (i.e., length(nterms) == 1 || !is.null(predictor_terms)), an object of class projection which is a list containing the following elements:

dis

Projected draws for the dispersion parameter.

ce

The cross-entropy part of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence from the reference model to the submodel. For some families, this is not the actual cross-entropy, but a reduced one where terms which would cancel out when calculating the KL divergence have been dropped. In case of the Gaussian family, that reduced cross-entropy is further modified, yielding merely a proxy.

wdraws_prj

Weights for the projected draws.

predictor_terms

A character vector of the submodel's predictor terms.

outdmin

A list containing the submodel fits (one fit per projected draw). This is the same as the return value of the div_minimizer function (see init_refmodel()), except if project() was used with an object of class vsel based on an L1 search as well as with refit_prj = FALSE, in which case this is the output from an internal L1-penalized divergence minimizer.

cl_ref

A numeric vector of length equal to the number of posterior draws in the reference model, containing the cluster indices of these draws.

wdraws_ref

A numeric vector of length equal to the number of posterior draws in the reference model, giving the weights of these draws. These weights should be treated as not being normalized (i.e., they don't necessarily sum to 1).

const_wdraws_prj

A single logical value indicating whether the projected draws have constant weights (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

refmodel

The reference model object.

If the projection is performed onto more than one submodel, the output from above is returned for each submodel, giving a list with one element for each submodel.

The elements of an object of class projection are not meant to be accessed directly but instead via helper functions (see the main vignette and projpred-package; see also as_draws_matrix.projection(), argument return_draws_matrix of proj_linpred(), and argument nresample_clusters of proj_predict() for the intended use of the weights stored in element wdraws_prj).

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)

# Projection onto the best submodel with 2 predictor terms (with a small
# value for `nclusters`, but only for the sake of speed in this example;
# this is not recommended in general):
prj_from_vs <- project(vs, nterms = 2, nclusters = 10, seed = 9182)

# Projection onto an arbitrary combination of predictor terms (with a small
# value for `nclusters`, but only for the sake of speed in this example;
# this is not recommended in general):
prj <- project(fit, predictor_terms = c("X1", "X3", "X5"), nclusters = 10,
               seed = 9182)

Predictor ranking(s)

Description

Extracts the predictor ranking(s) from an object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). A predictor ranking is simply a character vector of predictor terms ranked by predictive relevance (with the most relevant term first). In any case, objects of class vsel contain the predictor ranking based on the full-data search. If an object of class vsel is based on a cross-validation (CV) with fold-wise searches (i.e., if it was created by cv_varsel() with validate_search = TRUE), then it also contains fold-wise predictor rankings.

Usage

ranking(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
ranking(object, nterms_max = NULL, ...)

Arguments

object

The object from which to retrieve the predictor ranking(s). Possible classes may be inferred from the names of the corresponding methods (see also the description).

...

Currently ignored.

nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) for the predictor ranking(s), i.e., the submodel size at which to cut off the predictor ranking(s). Using NULL is effectively the same as setting nterms_max to the full model size, i.e., this means to not cut off the predictor ranking(s) at all. Note that nterms_max does not count the intercept, so nterms_max = 1 corresponds to the submodel consisting of the first (non-intercept) predictor term.

Value

An object of class ranking which is a list with the following elements:

  • fulldata: The predictor ranking from the full-data search.

  • foldwise: The predictor rankings from the fold-wise searches in the form of a character matrix (only available if object is based on a CV with fold-wise searches, otherwise element foldwise is NULL). The rows of this matrix correspond to the CV folds and the columns to the submodel sizes. Each row contains the predictor ranking from the search of that CV fold.

See Also

cv_proportions()

Examples

# For an example, see `?plot.cv_proportions`.

Reference model and more general information

Description

Function get_refmodel() is a generic function whose methods usually call init_refmodel() which is the underlying workhorse (and may also be used directly without a call to get_refmodel()).

Both, get_refmodel() and init_refmodel(), create an object containing information needed for the projection predictive variable selection, namely about the reference model, the submodels, and how the projection should be carried out. For the sake of simplicity, the documentation may refer to the resulting object also as "reference model" or "reference model object", even though it also contains information about the submodels and the projection.

A "typical" reference model object is created by get_refmodel.stanreg() and brms::get_refmodel.brmsfit(), either implicitly by a call to a top-level function such as project(), varsel(), and cv_varsel() or explicitly by a call to get_refmodel(). All non-"typical" reference model objects will be called "custom" reference model objects.

Some arguments are for KK-fold cross-validation (KK-fold CV) only; see cv_varsel() for the use of KK-fold CV in projpred.

Usage

get_refmodel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
get_refmodel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
get_refmodel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'projection'
get_refmodel(object, ...)

## Default S3 method:
get_refmodel(object, family = NULL, ...)

## S3 method for class 'stanreg'
get_refmodel(object, latent = FALSE, dis = NULL, ...)

init_refmodel(
  object,
  data,
  formula,
  family,
  ref_predfun = NULL,
  div_minimizer = NULL,
  proj_predfun = NULL,
  extract_model_data = NULL,
  cvfun = NULL,
  cvfits = NULL,
  dis = NULL,
  cvrefbuilder = NULL,
  called_from_cvrefbuilder = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

For init_refmodel(), an object that the functions from arguments extract_model_data and ref_predfun can be applied to, with a NULL object being treated specially (see section "Value" below). For get_refmodel.default(), an object that function family() can be applied to in order to retrieve the family (if argument family is NULL), additionally to the properties required for init_refmodel(). For non-default methods of get_refmodel(), an object of the corresponding class.

...

For get_refmodel.default() and get_refmodel.stanreg(): arguments passed to init_refmodel(). For the get_refmodel() generic: arguments passed to the appropriate method. For init_refmodel(): arguments passed to extend_family() (apart from family).

family

An object of class family representing the observation model (i.e., the distributional family for the response) of the submodels. (However, the link and the inverse-link function of this family are also used for quantities like predictions and fitted values related to the reference model.) May be NULL for get_refmodel.default() in which case the family is retrieved from object. For custom reference models, family does not have to coincide with the family of the reference model (if the reference model possesses a formal family at all). In typical reference models, however, these families do coincide. Furthermore, the latent projection is an exception where family is not the family of the submodels (in that case, the family of the submodels is the gaussian() family).

latent

A single logical value indicating whether to use the latent projection (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Note that setting latent = TRUE causes all arguments starting with augdat_ to be ignored.

dis

A vector of posterior draws for the reference model's dispersion parameter or—more precisely—the posterior values for the reference model's parameter-conditional predictive variance (assuming that this variance is the same for all observations). May be NULL if the submodels have no dispersion parameter or if the submodels do have a dispersion parameter, but object is NULL (in which case 0 is used for dis). Note that for the gaussian() family, dis is the standard deviation, not the variance.

data

A data.frame containing the data to use for the projection predictive variable selection. Any contrasts attributes of the dataset's columns are silently removed. For custom reference models, the columns of data do not necessarily have to coincide with those of the dataset used for fitting the reference model, but keep in mind that a row-subset of data is used for argument newdata of ref_predfun during KK-fold CV.

formula

The full formula to use for the search procedure. For custom reference models, this does not necessarily coincide with the reference model's formula. For general information about formulas in R, see formula. For information about possible right-hand side (i.e., predictor) terms in formula here, see the main vignette and section "Formula terms" below. For multilevel formulas, see also package lme4 (in particular, functions lme4::lmer() and lme4::glmer()). For additive formulas, see also packages mgcv (in particular, function mgcv::gam()) and gamm4 (in particular, function gamm4::gamm4()).

ref_predfun

Prediction function for the linear predictor of the reference model, including offsets (if existing). See also section "Arguments ref_predfun, proj_predfun, and div_minimizer" below. If object is NULL, ref_predfun is ignored and an internal default is used instead.

div_minimizer

A function for minimizing the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence from the reference model to a submodel (i.e., for performing the projection of the reference model onto a submodel). The output of div_minimizer is used, e.g., by proj_predfun's argument fits. See also section "Arguments ref_predfun, proj_predfun, and div_minimizer" below.

proj_predfun

Prediction function for the linear predictor of a submodel onto which the reference model is projected. See also section "Arguments ref_predfun, proj_predfun, and div_minimizer" below.

extract_model_data

A function for fetching some variables (response, observation weights, offsets) from the original dataset (supplied to argument data) or from a new dataset. May be NULL for using an internal default that essentially corresponds to y_wobs_offs(). See also section "Argument extract_model_data" below.

cvfun

For KK-fold CV only. A function that, given a fold indices vector, fits the reference model separately for each fold and returns the KK model fits as a list. If object is NULL, cvfun may be NULL for using an internal default. Only one of cvfits and cvfun needs to be provided (for KK-fold CV). Note that cvfits takes precedence over cvfun, i.e., if both are provided, cvfits is used.

cvfits

For KK-fold CV only. A list containing the KK reference model refits from which reference model objects are created. This list needs to have an attribute called folds, consisting of an integer vector giving the fold indices (one fold index per observation). Only one of cvfits and cvfun needs to be provided (for KK-fold CV). Note that cvfits takes precedence over cvfun, i.e., if both are provided, cvfits is used.

cvrefbuilder

For KK-fold CV only. A function that, given a reference model fit for fold k{1,...,K}k \in \{1, ..., K\}, returns an object of the same type as init_refmodel() does. The reference model fit for fold kk is the kk-th element of the return value of cvfun or the kk-th element of the list supplied to cvfits (either here in init_refmodel() or in cv_varsel.refmodel()), extended by elements omitted (containing the indices of the left-out observations in that fold) and projpred_k (containing the integer kk) if that kk-th element is a list itself (otherwise, omitted and projpred_k are appended as attributes). Argument cvrefbuilder may be NULL for using an internal default: get_refmodel() if object is not NULL and a function calling init_refmodel() appropriately (with the assumption dis = 0) if object is NULL.

called_from_cvrefbuilder

A single logical value indicating whether init_refmodel() is called from a cvrefbuilder function (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Currently, TRUE only causes some warnings to be suppressed (warnings which don't need to be thrown for each of the KK reference model objects because it is sufficient to throw them for the original reference model object only). This argument is mainly for internal use, but may also be helpful for users with a custom cvrefbuilder function.

Value

An object that can be passed to all the functions that take the reference model fit as the first argument, such as varsel(), cv_varsel(), project(), proj_linpred(), and proj_predict(). Usually, the returned object is of class refmodel. However, if object is NULL, the returned object is of class datafit as well as of class refmodel (with datafit being first). Objects of class datafit are handled differently at several places throughout this package.

The elements of the returned object are not meant to be accessed directly but instead via downstream functions (see the functions mentioned above as well as predict.refmodel()).

Formula terms

Although bad practice (in general), a reference model lacking an intercept can be used within projpred. However, it will always be projected onto submodels which include an intercept. The reason is that even if the true intercept in the reference model is zero, this does not need to hold for the submodels.

In multilevel (group-level) terms, function calls on the right-hand side of the | character (e.g., (1 | gr(group_variable)), which is possible in brms) are currently not allowed in projpred.

For additive models (still an experimental feature), only mgcv::s() and mgcv::t2() are currently supported as smooth terms. Furthermore, these need to be called without any arguments apart from the predictor names (symbols). For example, for smoothing the effect of a predictor x, only s(x) or t2(x) are allowed. As another example, for smoothing the joint effect of two predictors x and z, only s(x, z) or t2(x, z) are allowed (and analogously for higher-order joint effects, e.g., of three predictors). Note that all smooth terms need to be included in formula (there is no random argument as in rstanarm::stan_gamm4(), for example).

Arguments ref_predfun, proj_predfun, and div_minimizer

Arguments ref_predfun, proj_predfun, and div_minimizer may be NULL for using an internal default (see projpred-package for the functions used by the default divergence minimizers). Otherwise, let NN denote the number of observations (in case of CV, these may be reduced to each fold), SrefS_{\mathrm{ref}} the number of posterior draws for the reference model's parameters, and SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} the number of draws for the parameters of a submodel that the reference model has been projected onto (short: the number of projected draws). For the augmented-data projection, let CcatC_{\mathrm{cat}} denote the number of response categories, ClatC_{\mathrm{lat}} the number of latent response categories (which typically equals Ccat1C_{\mathrm{cat}} - 1), and define Naugcat:=NCcatN_{\mathrm{augcat}} := N \cdot C_{\mathrm{cat}} as well as Nauglat:=NClatN_{\mathrm{auglat}} := N \cdot C_{\mathrm{lat}}. Then the functions supplied to these arguments need to have the following prototypes:

  • ref_predfun: ref_predfun(fit, newdata = NULL) where:

    • fit accepts the reference model fit as given in argument object (but possibly refitted to a subset of the observations, as done in KK-fold CV).

    • newdata accepts either NULL (for using the original dataset, typically stored in fit) or data for new observations (at least in the form of a data.frame).

  • proj_predfun: proj_predfun(fits, newdata) where:

    • fits accepts a list of length SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} containing this number of submodel fits. This list is the same as that returned by project() in its output element outdmin (which in turn is the same as the return value of div_minimizer, except if project() was used with an object of class vsel based on an L1 search as well as with refit_prj = FALSE).

    • newdata accepts data for new observations (at least in the form of a data.frame).

  • div_minimizer does not need to have a specific prototype, but it needs to be able to be called with the following arguments:

    • formula accepts either a standard formula with a single response (if Sprj=1S_{\mathrm{prj}} = 1 or in case of the augmented-data projection) or a formula with Sprj>1S_{\mathrm{prj}} > 1 response variables cbind()-ed on the left-hand side in which case the projection has to be performed for each of the response variables separately.

    • data accepts a data.frame to be used for the projection. In case of the traditional or the latent projection, this dataset has NN rows. In case of the augmented-data projection, this dataset has NaugcatN_{\mathrm{augcat}} rows.

    • family accepts an object of class family.

    • weights accepts either observation weights (at least in the form of a numeric vector) or NULL (for using a vector of ones as weights).

    • projpred_var accepts an N×SprjN \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} matrix of predictive variances (necessary for projpred's internal GLM fitter) in case of the traditional or the latent projection and an Naugcat×SprjN_{\mathrm{augcat}} \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} matrix (containing only NAs) in case of the augmented-data projection.

    • projpred_ws_aug accepts an N×SprjN \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} matrix of expected values for the response in case of the traditional or the latent projection and an Naugcat×SprjN_{\mathrm{augcat}} \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} matrix of probabilities for the response categories in case of the augmented-data projection.

    • ... accepts further arguments specified by the user (or by projpred).

The return value of these functions needs to be:

  • ref_predfun: for the traditional or the latent projection, an N×SrefN \times S_{\mathrm{ref}} matrix; for the augmented-data projection, an Sref×N×ClatS_{\mathrm{ref}} \times N \times C_{\mathrm{lat}} array (the only exception is the augmented-data projection for the binomial() family in which case ref_predfun needs to return an N×SrefN \times S_{\mathrm{ref}} matrix just like for the traditional projection because the array is constructed by an internal wrapper function).

  • proj_predfun: for the traditional or the latent projection, an N×SprjN \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} matrix; for the augmented-data projection, an N×Clat×SprjN \times C_{\mathrm{lat}} \times S_{\mathrm{prj}} array.

  • div_minimizer: a list of length SprjS_{\mathrm{prj}} containing this number of submodel fits.

Argument extract_model_data

The function supplied to argument extract_model_data needs to have the prototype

extract_model_data(object, newdata, wrhs = NULL, orhs = NULL,
                   extract_y = TRUE)

where:

  • object accepts the reference model fit as given in argument object (but possibly refitted to a subset of the observations, as done in KK-fold CV).

  • newdata accepts data for new observations (at least in the form of a data.frame).

  • wrhs accepts at least (i) a right-hand side formula consisting only of the variable in newdata containing the observation weights or (ii) NULL for using the observation weights corresponding to newdata (typically, the observation weights are stored in a column of newdata; if the model was fitted without observation weights, a vector of ones should be used).

  • orhs accepts at least (i) a right-hand side formula consisting only of the variable in newdata containing the offsets or (ii) NULL for using the offsets corresponding to newdata (typically, the offsets are stored in a column of newdata; if the model was fitted without offsets, a vector of zeros should be used).

  • extract_y accepts a single logical value indicating whether output element y (see below) shall be NULL (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

The return value of extract_model_data needs to be a list with elements y, weights, and offset, each being a numeric vector containing the data for the response, the observation weights, and the offsets, respectively. An exception is that y may also be NULL (depending on argument extract_y), a non-numeric vector, or a factor.

The weights and offsets returned by extract_model_data will be assumed to hold for the reference model as well as for the submodels.

Above, arguments wrhs and orhs were assumed to have defaults of NULL. It should be possible to use defaults other than NULL, but we strongly recommend to use NULL. If defaults other than NULL are used, they need to imply the behaviors described at items "(ii)" (see the descriptions of wrhs and orhs).

Augmented-data projection

If a custom reference model for an augmented-data projection is needed, see also extend_family().

For the augmented-data projection, the response vector resulting from extract_model_data is internally coerced to a factor (using as.factor()). The levels of this factor have to be identical to family$cats (after applying extend_family() internally; see extend_family()'s argument augdat_y_unqs).

Note that response-specific offsets (i.e., one length-NN offset vector per response category) are not supported by projpred yet. So far, only offsets which are the same across all response categories are supported. This is why in case of the brms::categorical() family, offsets are currently not supported at all.

Currently, object = NULL (i.e., a datafit; see section "Value") is not supported in case of the augmented-data projection.

Latent projection

If a custom reference model for a latent projection is needed, see also extend_family().

For the latent projection, family$cats (after applying extend_family() internally; see extend_family()'s argument latent_y_unqs) currently must not be NULL if the original (i.e., non-latent) response is a factor. Conversely, if family$cats (after applying extend_family()) is non-NULL, the response vector resulting from extract_model_data is internally coerced to a factor (using as.factor()). The levels of this factor have to be identical to that non-NULL element family$cats.

Currently, object = NULL (i.e., a datafit; see section "Value") is not supported in case of the latent projection.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Define the reference model object explicitly:
ref <- get_refmodel(fit)
print(class(ref)) # gives `"refmodel"`
# Now see, for example, `?varsel`, `?cv_varsel`, and `?project` for
# possible post-processing functions. Most of the post-processing functions
# call get_refmodel() internally at the beginning, so you will rarely need
# to call get_refmodel() yourself.

# A custom reference model object which may be used in a variable selection
# where the candidate predictors are not a subset of those used for the
# reference model's predictions:
ref_cust <- init_refmodel(
  fit,
  data = dat_gauss,
  formula = y ~ X6 + X7,
  family = gaussian(),
  cvfun = function(folds) {
    kfold(
      fit, K = max(folds), save_fits = TRUE, folds = folds, cores = 1
    )$fits[, "fit"]
  },
  dis = as.matrix(fit)[, "sigma"],
  cvrefbuilder = function(cvfit) {
    init_refmodel(cvfit,
                  data = dat_gauss[-cvfit$omitted, , drop = FALSE],
                  formula = y ~ X6 + X7,
                  family = gaussian(),
                  dis = as.matrix(cvfit)[, "sigma"],
                  called_from_cvrefbuilder = TRUE)
  }
)
# Now, the post-processing functions mentioned above (for example,
# varsel(), cv_varsel(), and project()) may be applied to `ref_cust`.

Create cvfits from cvfun

Description

A helper function that can be used to create input for cv_varsel.refmodel()'s argument cvfits by running first cv_folds() and then the reference model object's cvfun (see init_refmodel()). This is helpful if KK-fold CV is run multiple times based on the same KK reference model refits.

Usage

run_cvfun(object, ...)

## Default S3 method:
run_cvfun(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
run_cvfun(
  object,
  K = if (!inherits(object, "datafit")) 5 else 10,
  folds = NULL,
  seed = NA,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class refmodel (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()) or an object that can be passed to argument object of get_refmodel().

...

For run_cvfun.default(): Arguments passed to get_refmodel(). For run_cvfun.refmodel(): Currently ignored.

K

Number of folds. Must be at least 2 and not exceed the number of observations. Ignored if folds is not NULL.

folds

Either NULL for determining the CV folds automatically via cv_folds() (using argument K) or a numeric (in fact, integer) vector giving the fold index for each observation. In the latter case, argument K is ignored.

seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling run_cvfun()) upon exiting run_cvfun().

Value

An object that can be used as input for cv_varsel.refmodel()'s argument cvfits.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Define the reference model object explicitly (not really necessary here
# because the get_refmodel() call is quite fast in this example, but in
# general, this approach is faster than defining the reference model object
# multiple times implicitly):
ref <- get_refmodel(fit)

# Run the reference model object's `cvfun` (with a small value for `K`, but
# only for the sake of speed in this example; this is not recommended in
# general):
cv_fits <- run_cvfun(ref, K = 2, seed = 184)

# Run cv_varsel() (with L1 search and small values for `nterms_max` and
# `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of speed in this example; this is
# not recommended in general) and use `cv_fits` there:
cvvs_L1 <- cv_varsel(ref, method = "L1", cv_method = "kfold",
                     cvfits = cv_fits, nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
                     seed = 5555)
# Now see, for example, `?print.vsel`, `?plot.vsel`, `?suggest_size.vsel`,
# and `?ranking` for possible post-processing functions.

# The purpose of run_cvfun() is to create an object that can be used in
# multiple cv_varsel() calls, e.g., to check the sensitivity to the search
# method (L1 or forward):
cvvs_fw <- cv_varsel(ref, method = "forward", cv_method = "kfold",
                     cvfits = cv_fits, nterms_max = 3, nclusters = 5,
                     nclusters_pred = 10, seed = 5555)

# Stratified K-fold CV is straightforward:
n_strat <- 3L
set.seed(692)
# Some example strata:
strat_fac <- sample(paste0("lvl", seq_len(n_strat)), size = nrow(dat_gauss),
                    replace = TRUE,
                    prob = diff(c(0, pnorm(seq_len(n_strat - 1L) - 0.5), 1)))
table(strat_fac)
# Use loo::kfold_split_stratified() to create the folds vector:
folds_strat <- loo::kfold_split_stratified(K = 2, x = strat_fac)
table(folds_strat, strat_fac)
# Call run_cvfun(), but this time with argument `folds` instead of `K` (here,
# specifying argument `seed` would not be necessary because of the set.seed()
# call above, but we specify it nonetheless for the sake of generality):
cv_fits_strat <- run_cvfun(ref, folds = folds_strat, seed = 391)
# Now use `cv_fits_strat` analogously to `cv_fits` from above.

Retrieve the full-data solution path from a varsel() or cv_varsel() run or the predictor combination from a project() run

Description

The solution_terms.vsel() method retrieves the solution path from a full-data search (vsel objects are returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). The solution_terms.projection() method retrieves the predictor combination onto which a projection was performed (projection objects are returned by project(), possibly as elements of a list). Both methods (and hence also the solution_terms() generic) are deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use ranking() instead of solution_terms.vsel() (ranking()'s output element fulldata contains the full-data predictor ranking that is extracted by solution_terms.vsel(); ranking()'s output element foldwise contains the fold-wise predictor rankings—if available—which were previously not accessible via a built-in function) and predictor_terms() instead of solution_terms.projection().

Usage

solution_terms(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
solution_terms(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'projection'
solution_terms(object, ...)

Arguments

object

The object from which to retrieve the predictor terms. Possible classes may be inferred from the names of the corresponding methods (see also the description).

...

Currently ignored.

Value

A character vector of predictor terms.


Suggest submodel size

Description

This function can suggest an appropriate submodel size based on a decision rule described in section "Details" below. Note that this decision is quite heuristic and should be interpreted with caution. It is recommended to examine the results via plot.vsel(), cv_proportions(), plot.cv_proportions(), and/or summary.vsel() and to make the final decision based on what is most appropriate for the problem at hand.

Usage

suggest_size(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
suggest_size(
  object,
  stat = "elpd",
  pct = 0,
  type = "upper",
  thres_elpd = NA,
  warnings = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()).

...

Arguments passed to summary.vsel(), except for object, stats (which is set to stat), type, and deltas (which is set to TRUE). See section "Details" below for some important arguments which may be passed here.

stat

Performance statistic (i.e., utility or loss) used for the decision. See argument stats of summary.vsel() for possible choices.

pct

A number giving the proportion (not percents) of the relative null model utility one is willing to sacrifice. See section "Details" below for more information.

type

Either "upper" or "lower" determining whether the decision is based on the upper or lower confidence interval bound, respectively. See section "Details" below for more information.

thres_elpd

Only relevant if ⁠stat %in% c("elpd", "mlpd", "gmpd"))⁠. The threshold for the ELPD difference (taking the submodel's ELPD minus the baseline model's ELPD) above which the submodel's ELPD is considered to be close enough to the baseline model's ELPD. An equivalent rule is applied in case of the MLPD and the GMPD. See section "Details" for a formalization. Supplying NA deactivates this.

warnings

Mainly for internal use. A single logical value indicating whether to throw warnings if automatic suggestion fails. Usually there is no reason to set this to FALSE.

Details

In general (beware of special cases below), the suggested model size is the smallest model size j{0,1,...,nterms_max}j \in \{0, 1, ..., \texttt{nterms\_max}\} for which either the lower or upper bound (depending on argument type) of the normal-approximation (or bootstrap or exponentiated normal-approximation; see argument stat) confidence interval (with nominal coverage 1 - alpha; see argument alpha of summary.vsel()) for UjUbaseU_j - U_{\mathrm{base}} (with UjU_j denoting the jj-th submodel's true utility and UbaseU_{\mathrm{base}} denoting the baseline model's true utility) falls above (or is equal to)

pct(u0ubase)\texttt{pct} \cdot (u_0 - u_{\mathrm{base}})

where u0u_0 denotes the null model's estimated utility and ubaseu_{\mathrm{base}} the baseline model's estimated utility. The baseline model is either the reference model or the best submodel found (see argument baseline of summary.vsel()).

In doing so, loss statistics like the root mean squared error (RMSE) and the mean squared error (MSE) are converted to utilities by multiplying them by -1, so a call such as suggest_size(object, stat = "rmse", type = "upper") finds the smallest model size whose upper confidence interval bound for the negative RMSE or MSE exceeds (or is equal to) the cutoff (or, equivalently, has the lower confidence interval bound for the RMSE or MSE below—or equal to—the cutoff). This is done to make the interpretation of argument type the same regardless of argument stat.

For the geometric mean predictive density (GMPD), the decision rule above is applied on log() scale. In other words, if the true GMPD is denoted by UjU^\ast_j for the jj-th submodel and UbaseU^\ast_{\mathrm{base}} for the baseline model (so that UjU_j and UbaseU_{\mathrm{base}} from above are given by Uj=log(Uj)U_j = \log(U^\ast_j) and Ubase=log(Ubase)U_{\mathrm{base}} = \log(U^\ast_{\mathrm{base}})), then suggest_size() yields the smallest model size whose lower or upper (depending on argument type) confidence interval bound for UjUbase\frac{U^\ast_j}{U^\ast_{\mathrm{base}}} exceeds (or is equal to)

(u0ubase)pct(\frac{u^\ast_0}{u^\ast_{\mathrm{base}}})^{\texttt{pct}}

where u0u^\ast_0 denotes the null model's estimated GMPD and ubaseu^\ast_{\mathrm{base}} the baseline model's estimated GMPD.

If !is.na(thres_elpd) and stat = "elpd", the decision rule above is extended: The suggested model size is then the smallest model size jj fulfilling the rule above or ujubase>thres_elpdu_j - u_{\mathrm{base}} > \texttt{thres\_elpd}. Correspondingly, in case of stat = "mlpd" (and !is.na(thres_elpd)), the suggested model size is the smallest model size jj fulfilling the rule above or ujubase>thres_elpdNu_j - u_{\mathrm{base}} > \frac{\texttt{thres\_elpd}}{N} with NN denoting the number of observations. Correspondingly, in case of stat = "gmpd" (and !is.na(thres_elpd)), the suggested model size is the smallest model size jj fulfilling the rule above or ujubase>exp(thres_elpdN)\frac{u^\ast_j}{u^\ast_{\mathrm{base}}} > \exp(\frac{\texttt{thres\_elpd}}{N}).

For example (disregarding the special extensions in case of !is.na(thres_elpd) with stat %in% c("elpd", "mlpd", "gmpd")), alpha = 2 * pnorm(-1), pct = 0, and type = "upper" means that we select the smallest model size for which the upper bound of the 1 - 2 * pnorm(-1) (approximately 68.3%) confidence interval for UjUbaseU_j - U_{\mathrm{base}} (UjUbase\frac{U^\ast_j}{U^\ast_{\mathrm{base}}} in case of the GMPD) exceeds (or is equal to) zero (one in case of the GMPD), that is (if stat is a performance statistic for which the normal approximation is used, not the bootstrap and not the exponentiated normal approximation), for which the submodel's utility estimate is at most one standard error smaller than the baseline model's utility estimate (with that standard error referring to the utility difference).

Apart from the two summary.vsel() arguments mentioned above (alpha and baseline), resp_oscale is another important summary.vsel() argument that may be passed via ....

Value

A single numeric value, giving the suggested submodel size (or NA if the suggestion failed).

The intercept is not counted by suggest_size(), so a suggested size of zero stands for the intercept-only model.

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)
print(suggest_size(vs))

Summary of a varsel() or cv_varsel() run

Description

This is the summary() method for vsel objects (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()). Apart from some general information about the varsel() or cv_varsel() run, it shows the full-data predictor ranking, basic information about the (CV) variability in the ranking of the predictors (if available; inferred from cv_proportions()), and estimates for user-specified predictive performance statistics. For a graphical representation, see plot.vsel(). For extracting the predictive performance results printed at the bottom of the output created by this summary() method, see performances().

Usage

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
summary(
  object,
  nterms_max = NULL,
  stats = "elpd",
  type = c("mean", "se", "diff", "diff.se"),
  deltas = FALSE,
  alpha = 2 * pnorm(-1),
  baseline = if (!inherits(object$refmodel, "datafit")) "ref" else "best",
  resp_oscale = TRUE,
  cumulate = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class vsel (returned by varsel() or cv_varsel()).

nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) for which the performance statistics are calculated. Using NULL is effectively the same as length(ranking(object)$fulldata). Note that nterms_max does not count the intercept, so use nterms_max = 0 for the intercept-only model. For plot.vsel(), nterms_max must be at least 1.

stats

One or more character strings determining which performance statistics (i.e., utilities or losses) to estimate based on the observations in the evaluation (or "test") set (in case of cross-validation, these are all observations because they are partitioned into multiple test sets; in case of varsel() with d_test = NULL, these are again all observations because the test set is the same as the training set). Available statistics are:

  • "elpd": expected log (pointwise) predictive density (for a new dataset). Estimated by the sum of the observation-specific log predictive density values (with each of these predictive density values being a—possibly weighted—average across the parameter draws).

  • "mlpd": mean log predictive density, that is, "elpd" divided by the number of observations.

  • "gmpd": geometric mean predictive density (GMPD), that is, exp() of "mlpd". The GMPD is especially helpful for discrete response families (because there, the GMPD is bounded by zero and one). For the corresponding standard error, the delta method is used. The corresponding confidence interval type is "exponentiated normal approximation" because the confidence interval bounds are the exponentiated confidence interval bounds of the "mlpd".

  • "mse": mean squared error (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below).

  • "rmse": root mean squared error (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). For the corresponding standard error and lower and upper confidence interval bounds, bootstrapping is used.

  • "acc" (or its alias, "pctcorr"): classification accuracy (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). By "classification accuracy", we mean the proportion of correctly classified observations. For this, the response category ("class") with highest probability (the probabilities are model-based) is taken as the prediction ("classification") for an observation.

  • "auc": area under the ROC curve (only available in the situations mentioned in section "Details" below). For the corresponding standard error and lower and upper confidence interval bounds, bootstrapping is used.

type

One or more items from "mean", "se", "lower", "upper", "diff", and "diff.se" indicating which of these to compute for each item from stats (mean, standard error, lower and upper confidence interval bounds, mean difference to the corresponding statistic of the reference model, and standard error of this difference, respectively; note that for the GMPD, "diff", and "diff.se" actually refer to the ratio vs. the reference model, not the difference). The confidence interval bounds belong to normal-approximation (or bootstrap or exponentiated normal-approximation; see argument stats) confidence intervals with (nominal) coverage 1 - alpha. Items "diff" and "diff.se" are only supported if deltas is FALSE.

deltas

If TRUE, the submodel statistics are estimated relatively to the baseline model (see argument baseline). For the GMPD, the term "relatively" refers to the ratio vs. the baseline model (i.e., the submodel statistic divided by the baseline model statistic). For all other stats, "relatively" refers to the difference from the baseline model (i.e., the submodel statistic minus the baseline model statistic).

alpha

A number determining the (nominal) coverage 1 - alpha of the normal-approximation (or bootstrap or exponentiated normal-approximation; see argument stats) confidence intervals. For example, in case of the normal approximation, alpha = 2 * pnorm(-1) corresponds to a confidence interval stretching by one standard error on either side of the point estimate.

baseline

For summary.vsel(): Only relevant if deltas is TRUE. For plot.vsel(): Always relevant. Either "ref" or "best", indicating whether the baseline is the reference model or the best submodel found (in terms of stats[1]), respectively.

resp_oscale

Only relevant for the latent projection. A single logical value indicating whether to calculate the performance statistics on the original response scale (TRUE) or on latent scale (FALSE).

cumulate

Passed to argument cumulate of cv_proportions(). Affects column cv_proportions_diag of the summary table.

...

Arguments passed to the internal function which is used for bootstrapping (if applicable; see argument stats). Currently, relevant arguments are B (the number of bootstrap samples, defaulting to 2000) and seed (see set.seed(), but defaulting to NA so that set.seed() is not called within that function at all).

Details

The stats options "mse" and "rmse" are only available for:

  • the traditional projection,

  • the latent projection with resp_oscale = FALSE,

  • the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL.

The stats option "acc" (= "pctcorr") is only available for:

  • the binomial() family in case of the traditional projection,

  • all families in case of the augmented-data projection,

  • the binomial() family (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL,

  • all families (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being not NULL.

The stats option "auc" is only available for:

  • the binomial() family in case of the traditional projection,

  • the binomial() family (on the original response scale) in case of the latent projection with resp_oscale = TRUE in combination with ⁠<refmodel>$family$cats⁠ being NULL.

Value

An object of class vselsummary. The elements of this object are not meant to be accessed directly but instead via helper functions (print.vselsummary() and performances.vselsummary()).

See Also

print.vselsummary(), performances.vselsummary()

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)
print(summary(vs), digits = 1)

Run search and performance evaluation without cross-validation

Description

Run the search part and the evaluation part for a projection predictive variable selection. The search part determines the predictor ranking (also known as solution path), i.e., the best submodel for each submodel size (number of predictor terms). The evaluation part determines the predictive performance of the submodels along the predictor ranking. A special method is varsel.vsel() because it re-uses the search results from an earlier varsel() (or cv_varsel()) run, as illustrated in the main vignette.

Usage

varsel(object, ...)

## Default S3 method:
varsel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'vsel'
varsel(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'refmodel'
varsel(
  object,
  d_test = NULL,
  method = "forward",
  ndraws = NULL,
  nclusters = 20,
  ndraws_pred = 400,
  nclusters_pred = NULL,
  refit_prj = !inherits(object, "datafit"),
  nterms_max = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE,
  search_control = NULL,
  lambda_min_ratio = 1e-05,
  nlambda = 150,
  thresh = 1e-06,
  penalty = NULL,
  search_terms = NULL,
  search_out = NULL,
  seed = NA,
  ...
)

Arguments

object

An object of class refmodel (returned by get_refmodel() or init_refmodel()) or an object that can be passed to argument object of get_refmodel().

...

For varsel.default(): Arguments passed to get_refmodel() as well as to varsel.refmodel(). For varsel.vsel(): Arguments passed to varsel.refmodel(). For varsel.refmodel(): Arguments passed to the divergence minimizer (see argument div_minimizer of init_refmodel() as well as section "Draw-wise divergence minimizers" of projpred-package) when refitting the submodels for the performance evaluation (if refit_prj is TRUE).

d_test

A list of the structure outlined in section "Argument d_test" below, providing test data for evaluating the predictive performance of the submodels as well as of the reference model. If NULL, the training data is used.

method

The method for the search part. Possible options are "forward" for forward search and "L1" for L1 search. See also section "Details" below.

ndraws

Number of posterior draws used in the search part. Ignored if nclusters is not NULL or in case of L1 search (because L1 search always uses a single cluster). If both (nclusters and ndraws) are NULL, the number of posterior draws from the reference model is used for ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

nclusters

Number of clusters of posterior draws used in the search part. Ignored in case of L1 search (because L1 search always uses a single cluster). For the meaning of NULL, see argument ndraws. See also section "Details" below.

ndraws_pred

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of posterior draws used in the evaluation part. Ignored if nclusters_pred is not NULL. If both (nclusters_pred and ndraws_pred) are NULL, the number of posterior draws from the reference model is used for ndraws_pred. See also section "Details" below.

nclusters_pred

Only relevant if refit_prj is TRUE. Number of clusters of posterior draws used in the evaluation part. For the meaning of NULL, see argument ndraws_pred. See also section "Details" below.

refit_prj

For the evaluation part, should the submodels along the predictor ranking be fitted again (TRUE) or should their fits from the search part be re-used (FALSE)?

nterms_max

Maximum submodel size (number of predictor terms) up to which the search is continued. If NULL, then min(19, D) is used where D is the number of terms in the reference model (or in search_terms, if supplied). Note that nterms_max does not count the intercept, so use nterms_max = 0 for the intercept-only model. (Correspondingly, D above does not count the intercept.)

verbose

A single logical value indicating whether to print out additional information during the computations.

search_control

A list of "control" arguments (i.e., tuning parameters) for the search. In case of forward search, these arguments are passed to the divergence minimizer (see argument div_minimizer of init_refmodel() as well as section "Draw-wise divergence minimizers" of projpred-package). In case of forward search, NULL causes ... to be used not only for the performance evaluation, but also for the search. In case of L1 search, possible arguments are:

  • lambda_min_ratio: Ratio between the smallest and largest lambda in the L1-penalized search (default: 1e-5). This parameter essentially determines how long the search is carried out, i.e., how large submodels are explored. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

  • nlambda: Number of values in the lambda grid for L1-penalized search (default: 150). No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

  • thresh: Convergence threshold when computing the L1 path (default: 1e-6). Usually, there is no need to change this.

lambda_min_ratio

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Ratio between the smallest and largest lambda in the L1-penalized search. This parameter essentially determines how long the search is carried out, i.e., how large submodels are explored. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

nlambda

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Number of values in the lambda grid for L1-penalized search. No need to change this unless the program gives a warning about this.

thresh

Deprecated (please use search_control instead). Only relevant for L1 search. Convergence threshold when computing the L1 path. Usually, there is no need to change this.

penalty

Only relevant for L1 search. A numeric vector determining the relative penalties or costs for the predictors. A value of 0 means that those predictors have no cost and will therefore be selected first, whereas Inf means those predictors will never be selected. If NULL, then 1 is used for each predictor.

search_terms

Only relevant for forward search. A custom character vector of predictor term blocks to consider for the search. Section "Details" below describes more precisely what "predictor term block" means. The intercept ("1") is always included internally via union(), so there's no difference between including it explicitly or omitting it. The default search_terms considers all the terms in the reference model's formula.

search_out

Intended for internal use.

seed

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) seed by which the same results can be obtained again if needed. Passed to argument seed of set.seed(), but can also be NA to not call set.seed() at all. If not NA, then the PRNG state is reset (to the state before calling varsel()) upon exiting varsel(). Here, seed is used for clustering the reference model's posterior draws (if !is.null(nclusters) or !is.null(nclusters_pred)) and for drawing new group-level effects when predicting from a multilevel submodel (however, not yet in case of a GAMM).

Details

Arguments ndraws, nclusters, nclusters_pred, and ndraws_pred are automatically truncated at the number of posterior draws in the reference model (which is 1 for datafits). Using less draws or clusters in ndraws, nclusters, nclusters_pred, or ndraws_pred than posterior draws in the reference model may result in slightly inaccurate projection performance. Increasing these arguments affects the computation time linearly.

For argument method, there are some restrictions: For a reference model with multilevel or additive formula terms or a reference model set up for the augmented-data projection, only the forward search is available. Furthermore, argument search_terms requires a forward search to take effect.

L1 search is faster than forward search, but forward search may be more accurate. Furthermore, forward search may find a sparser model with comparable performance to that found by L1 search, but it may also start overfitting when more predictors are added.

An L1 search may select an interaction term before all involved lower-order interaction terms (including main-effect terms) have been selected. In projpred versions > 2.6.0, the resulting predictor ranking is automatically modified so that the lower-order interaction terms come before this interaction term, but if this is conceptually undesired, choose the forward search instead.

The elements of the search_terms character vector don't need to be individual predictor terms. Instead, they can be building blocks consisting of several predictor terms connected by the + symbol. To understand how these building blocks work, it is important to know how projpred's forward search works: It starts with an empty vector chosen which will later contain already selected predictor terms. Then, the search iterates over model sizes j{0,...,J}j \in \{0, ..., J\} (with JJ denoting the maximum submodel size, not counting the intercept). The candidate models at model size jj are constructed from those elements from search_terms which yield model size jj when combined with the chosen predictor terms. Note that sometimes, there may be no candidate models for model size jj. Also note that internally, search_terms is expanded to include the intercept ("1"), so the first step of the search (model size 0) always consists of the intercept-only model as the only candidate.

As a search_terms example, consider a reference model with formula y ~ x1 + x2 + x3. Then, to ensure that x1 is always included in the candidate models, specify search_terms = c("x1", "x1 + x2", "x1 + x3", "x1 + x2 + x3") (or, in a simpler way that leads to the same results, search_terms = c("x1", "x1 + x2", "x1 + x3"), for which helper function force_search_terms() exists). This search would start with y ~ 1 as the only candidate at model size 0. At model size 1, y ~ x1 would be the only candidate. At model size 2, y ~ x1 + x2 and y ~ x1 + x3 would be the two candidates. At the last model size of 3, y ~ x1 + x2 + x3 would be the only candidate. As another example, to exclude x1 from the search, specify search_terms = c("x2", "x3", "x2 + x3") (or, in a simpler way that leads to the same results, search_terms = c("x2", "x3")).

Value

An object of class vsel. The elements of this object are not meant to be accessed directly but instead via helper functions (see the main vignette and projpred-package).

Argument d_test

If not NULL, then d_test needs to be a list with the following elements:

  • data: a data.frame containing the predictor variables for the test set.

  • offset: a numeric vector containing the offset values for the test set (if there is no offset, use a vector of zeros).

  • weights: a numeric vector containing the observation weights for the test set (if there are no observation weights, use a vector of ones).

  • y: a vector or a factor containing the response values for the test set. In case of the latent projection, this has to be a vector containing the latent response values, but it can also be a vector full of NAs if latent-scale post-processing is not needed.

  • y_oscale: Only needs to be provided in case of the latent projection where this needs to be a vector or a factor containing the original (i.e., non-latent) response values for the test set.

See Also

cv_varsel()

Examples

# Data:
dat_gauss <- data.frame(y = df_gaussian$y, df_gaussian$x)

# The `stanreg` fit which will be used as the reference model (with small
# values for `chains` and `iter`, but only for technical reasons in this
# example; this is not recommended in general):
fit <- rstanarm::stan_glm(
  y ~ X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5, family = gaussian(), data = dat_gauss,
  QR = TRUE, chains = 2, iter = 500, refresh = 0, seed = 9876
)

# Run varsel() (here without cross-validation, with L1 search, and with small
# values for `nterms_max` and `nclusters_pred`, but only for the sake of
# speed in this example; this is not recommended in general):
vs <- varsel(fit, method = "L1", nterms_max = 3, nclusters_pred = 10,
             seed = 5555)
# Now see, for example, `?print.vsel`, `?plot.vsel`, `?suggest_size.vsel`,
# and `?ranking` for possible post-processing functions.

Extract response values, observation weights, and offsets

Description

A helper function for extracting response values, observation weights, and offsets from a dataset. It is designed for use in the extract_model_data function of custom reference model objects (see init_refmodel()).

Usage

y_wobs_offs(newdata, wrhs = NULL, orhs = NULL, resp_form)

Arguments

newdata

The data.frame from which at least the response values should be extracted.

wrhs

Either a right-hand side formula consisting only of the variable in newdata containing the weights, NULL (for using a vector of ones), or directly the numeric vector of observation weights.

orhs

Either a right-hand side formula consisting only of the variable in newdata containing the offsets, NULL (for using a vector of zeros), or directly the numeric vector of offsets.

resp_form

If this is a formula, then the second element of this formula (if the formula is a standard formula with both left-hand and right-hand side, then its second element is the left-hand side; if the formula is a right-hand side formula, then its second element is the right-hand side) will be extracted from newdata (so resp_form may be either a standard formula or a right-hand side formula, but in the latter case, the right-hand side should consist only of the response variable). In all other cases, NULL will be returned for element y of the output list.

Value

A list with elements y, weights, and offset, each being a numeric vector containing the data for the response, the observation weights, and the offsets, respectively. An exception is that y may also be NULL (depending on argument resp_form), a non-numeric vector, or a factor.

See Also

init_refmodel()

Examples

# For an example, see `?init_refmodel`.