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logmult (version 0.7.4)

yrcskew: Fitting Yamaguchi RC_SK Skew-Symmetric Association Model

Description

Fit a skew-symmetric association model proposed in Yamaguchi (1990) to describe asymmetry of square tables. This model can be combined with symmetric association models like a quasi-symmetry (the default) or symmetric (homogeneous) RC(M) models.

Usage

yrcskew(tab, nd.symm = NA, nd.skew = 1, diagonal = FALSE,
        weighting = c("marginal", "uniform", "none"),
        se = c("none", "jackknife", "bootstrap"),
        nreplicates = 100, ncpus = getOption("boot.ncpus"),
        family = poisson, weights = NULL,
        start = NA, etastart = NULL, tolerance = 1e-8,
        iterMax = 15000, trace = FALSE, verbose = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

tab

a two-way table, or an object (such as a matrix) that can be coerced into a table; if present, dimensions above two will be collapsed.

nd.symm

the number of dimensions to include in the symmetric RC(M) association. Cannot exceed 2 * min(nrow(tab) - 1, ncol(tab) - 1). If NA, a quasi-symmetric association is used instead of a RC(M) model.

nd.skew

the number of dimensions to include in the skew-symmetric RC(M) association.

diagonal

should the model include parameters specific to each diagonal cell? This amounts to taking quasi-independence, rather than independence, as the baseline model.

weighting

what weights should be used when normalizing the scores.

se

which method to use to compute standard errors for parameters.

nreplicates

the number of bootstrap replicates, if enabled.

ncpus

the number of processes to use for jackknife or bootstrap parallel computing. Defaults to the number of cores (see detectCores), with a maximum of 5, but falls back to 1 (no parallelization) if package parallel is not available.

family

a specification of the error distribution and link function to be used in the model. This can be a character string naming a family function; a family function, or the result of a call to a family function. See family details of family functions.

weights

an optional vector of weights to be used in the fitting process.

start

either NA (the default) to use reasonable starting values, NULL to use random starting values, or a vector of starting values for the parameters in the model.

etastart

starting values for the linear predictor; set to NULL to use either default starting values (if start = NA), or random starting values (in all other cases).

tolerance

a positive numeric value specifying the tolerance level for convergence; higher values will speed up the fitting process, but beware of numerical instability of estimated scores!

iterMax

a positive integer specifying the maximum number of main iterations to perform; consider raising this value if your model does not converge.

trace

a logical value indicating whether the deviance should be printed after each iteration.

verbose

a logical value indicating whether progress indicators should be printed, including a diagnostic error message if the algorithm restarts.

more arguments to be passed to gnm

Value

A yrcskew object, which is a subclass of an rc.symm object (seerc) unless nd.symm is NA. In addition to this class, it contains a assoc.yrcskew component holding information about the skew-symmetric association:

phi

The intrisic association parameters, one per dimension.

row

Row scores, normalized so that their (weighted) sum is 0, their (weighted) sum of squares is 1, and their (weighted) cross-dimensional correlation is null.

col

Column scores, normalized so that their (weighted) sum is 0, their (weighted) sum of squares is 1, and their (weighted) cross-dimensional correlation is null.

row.weights

The row weights used for the identification of scores, as specified by the weighting argument.

col.weights

The column weights used for the identification of scores, as specified by the weighting argument.

covmat

The variance-covariance matrix for phi coefficients and normalized row and column scores. Only present if se was not “none”.

adj.covmats

An array stacking on its third dimension one variance-covariance matrix for the adjusted scores of each layer in the model (used for plotting). Only present if se was not “none”.

covtype

The method used to compute the variance-covariance matrix (corresponding to the se argument.

Warning

This family of model sometimes converges to a non-optimal solution, in which case the reported scores are wrong. To protect yourself from this problem, you are advised to run the models several times to find out which convergence point is the true one. Furthermore, when model converges slowly, restarting the fitting procedure may produce much better random starting values.

Details

The original presented by Yamaguchi (1990), called “row-column-effect skew-symmetric association (logbilinear) model with full quasi-symmetry (QS+RC_SK)”, combines a skew-symmetric association with a quasi-symmetry baseline; it is the variant fitted by default by this function. If nd.symm is set to a positive integer value, though, variants using a RC(M) model to describe the symmetric association are used, with our without diagonal-specific parameters (depending on the value of the diagonal argument); among them is the HM_RC+RC_SK variant, when nd.symm is 1.

These models follow the equation: $$ log F_{ij} = q_{ij} + \delta_{i<j} \nu_i (\nu_j - \nu_i) - \delta_{i>j} \nu_j (\nu_i - \nu_j) $$ where \(F_{ij}\) is the expected frequency for the cell at the intersection of row i and column j of tab, and \(q_{ij}\) a quasi-symmetric or a RC(M) association. See reference for detailed information about the degrees of freedom and the identification constraints applied to the scores.

Please note that contrary to other association models, this model is sensitive to reorderings of rows and columns. You have to take care of passing a table whose categories follow a hierarchical order with a substantive meaning.

Another model presented in the paper, the homogeneous symmetric and skew-symmetric associations models (HM_(S+SK)) is not currently supported.

Actual model fitting is performed using gnm, which implements the Newton-Raphson algorithm. This function simply ensures correct start values are used, in addition to allowing for identification of scores even with several dimensions, computation of their jackknife or bootstrap standard errors, and plotting. The default starting values for main parameters are taken from the model without association parameters (“base model”); association parameters start with random starting values. In some complex cases, using start = NULL to get completely random starting values can be more efficient, but it is also less stable and can converge to non-optimal solutions.

References

Yamaguchi, K. (1990). Some Models for the Analysis of Asymmetric Association in Square Contingency Tables with Ordered Categories. Sociol. Methodology 20, 181-212.

See Also

plot.yrcskew, gnm

Examples

Run this code
# NOT RUN {
  ## Yamaguchi (1990), Table 5, p. 202, and Table 6B, p. 205
  data(ocg1973)

  # Simple symmetric RC(1) model ("Null skew-symmetry")
  rc.model <- rc(ocg1973, diagonal=TRUE, symmetric=TRUE, weighting="none")
  # Reported phi is slightly different, coefficients agree
  rc.model

  # Note model does not always converge, several attempts may be needed
  # Here we set known starting values to be sure it works
  set.seed(5)
  model <- yrcskew(ocg1973, nd.symm=1, nd.skew=1, diagonal=TRUE, weighting="none")

  # We do not get the same results as the author, but the smaller deviance
  # indicates a better fit in our version (!)
  model
# }

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