BGGM (version 2.1.5)

estimate: GGM: Estimation

Description

Estimate the conditional (in)dependence with either an analytic solution or efficiently sampling from the posterior distribution. These methods were introduced in Williams2019;textualBGGM. The graph is selected with select.estimate and then plotted with plot.select.

Usage

estimate(
  Y,
  formula = NULL,
  type = "continuous",
  mixed_type = NULL,
  analytic = FALSE,
  prior_sd = sqrt(1/3),
  iter = 5000,
  impute = FALSE,
  progress = TRUE,
  seed = NULL,
  ...
)

Value

The returned object of class estimate contains a lot of information that is used for printing and plotting the results. For users of BGGM, the following are the useful objects:

• pcor_mat Partial correltion matrix (posterior mean).

• post_samp An object containing the posterior samples.

Arguments

Y

Matrix (or data frame) of dimensions n (observations) by p (variables).

formula

An object of class formula. This allows for including control variables in the model (i.e., ~ gender). See the note for further details.

type

Character string. Which type of data for Y ? The options include continuous, binary, ordinal, or mixed. Note that mixed can be used for data with only ordinal variables. See the note for further details.

mixed_type

Numeric vector. An indicator of length p for which variables should be treated as ranks. (1 for rank and 0 to assume normality). The default is currently to treat all integer variables as ranks when type = "mixed" and NULL otherwise. See note for further details.

analytic

Logical. Should the analytic solution be computed (default is FALSE)?

prior_sd

Scale of the prior distribution, approximately the standard deviation of a beta distribution (defaults to sqrt(1/3)).

iter

Number of iterations (posterior samples; defaults to 5000).

impute

Logical. Should the missing values (NA) be imputed during model fitting (defaults to TRUE) ?

progress

Logical. Should a progress bar be included (defaults to TRUE) ?

seed

An integer for the random seed.

...

Currently ignored.

Details

The default is to draw samples from the posterior distribution (analytic = FALSE). The samples are required for computing edge differences (see ggm_compare_estimate), Bayesian R2 introduced in gelman_r2_2019;textualBGGM (see predictability), etc. If the goal is to *only* determine the non-zero effects, this can be accomplished by setting analytic = TRUE. This is particularly useful when a fast solution is needed (see the examples in ggm_compare_ppc)

Controlling for Variables:

When controlling for variables, it is assumed that Y includes only the nodes in the GGM and the control variables. Internally, only the predictors that are included in formula are removed from Y. This is not behavior of, say, lm, but was adopted to ensure users do not have to write out each variable that should be included in the GGM. An example is provided below.

Mixed Type:

The term "mixed" is somewhat of a misnomer, because the method can be used for data including only continuous or only discrete variables. This is based on the ranked likelihood which requires sampling the ranks for each variable (i.e., the data is not merely transformed to ranks). This is computationally expensive when there are many levels. For example, with continuous data, there are as many ranks as data points!

The option mixed_type allows the user to determine which variable should be treated as ranks and the "emprical" distribution is used otherwise hoff2007extendingBGGM. This is accomplished by specifying an indicator vector of length p. A one indicates to use the ranks, whereas a zero indicates to "ignore" that variable. By default all integer variables are treated as ranks.

Dealing with Errors:

An error is most likely to arise when type = "ordinal". The are two common errors (although still rare):

• The first is due to sampling the thresholds, especially when the data is heavily skewed. This can result in an ill-defined matrix. If this occurs, we recommend to first try decreasing prior_sd (i.e., a more informative prior). If that does not work, then change the data type to type = mixed which then estimates a copula GGM (this method can be used for data containing only ordinal variable). This should work without a problem.

• The second is due to how the ordinal data are categorized. For example, if the error states that the index is out of bounds, this indicates that the first category is a zero. This is not allowed, as the first category must be one. This is addressed by adding one (e.g., Y + 1) to the data matrix.

Imputing Missing Values:

Missing values are imputed with the approach described in hoff2009first;textualBGGM. The basic idea is to impute the missing values with the respective posterior pedictive distribution, given the observed data, as the model is being estimated. Note that the default is TRUE, but this ignored when there are no missing values. If set to FALSE, and there are missing values, list-wise deletion is performed with na.omit.

References

Examples

# \donttest{
# note: iter = 250 for demonstrative purposes

#########################################
### example 1: continuous and ordinal ###
#########################################
# data
Y <- ptsd

# continuous

# fit model
fit <- estimate(Y, type = "continuous",
                iter = 250)

# summarize the partial correlations
summ <- summary(fit)

# plot the summary
plt_summ <- plot(summary(fit))

# select the graph
E <- select(fit)

# plot the selected graph
plt_E <- plot(select(fit))


# ordinal

# fit model (note + 1, due to zeros)
fit <- estimate(Y + 1, type = "ordinal",
                iter = 250)

# summarize the partial correlations
summ <- summary(fit)

# plot the summary
plt <- plot(summary(fit))

# select the graph
E <- select(fit)

# plot the selected graph
plt_E <- plot(select(fit))

##################################
## example 2: analytic solution ##
##################################
# (only continuous)

# data
Y <- ptsd

# fit model
fit <- estimate(Y, analytic = TRUE)

# summarize the partial correlations
summ <- summary(fit)

# plot summary
plt_summ <- plot(summary(fit))

# select graph
E <- select(fit)

# plot the selected graph
plt_E <- plot(select(fit))

# }