R scale function with character variable - r

I'm relatively new to R - I'm having challenges to figure out how to scale a dataset that contains a character variable.
However I when I try to use the scale function to create a dataframe, I'm getting an error:
df<-scale(USArrests)
Error in colMeans(x, na.rm = TRUE) : 'x' must be numeric
Is there a way to create a dataframe with a character variable to later use it in a cluster analysis?
km.res<-kmeans(df,4,nstart=10)

?scale() says scale is desgined to center columns of numeric matrices, see the help entry for further details.
However, df <- USArrests is sufficient to store the required in-built dataset as object df (see environment), if you have to name it df.
Compare the following:
df <- USArrests
# compare
head(df, n=5)
# to
df1 <- scale(df)
head(df1, n=5)
As you can see, all numeric columns are now scaled while the row ids, Alabama, ..., Wyoming, of course, do not change. Btw, to check the class of all variables you can use lapply(df, class).
I think you shouldn't have problems to then call km.res <- kmeans(df1,4,nstart=10). To inspect the object type km.res.
To be honest, I think previous to running kmeans() you should again have a look on the help page (e.g. help(kmeans)) to get in touch with the arguments clusters, iter, ...
Further, I think it would be a good idea to investigate why or why not to center the data in previous step. In any case, it is possible to run kmeans() with centered (df1) and uncentered (df) data. Why one of those alternatives is more appropriate is of major importance.
EDIT: It is recommended to set a seed (e.g. set.seed(09102021)) before running the algorithm. By doing so you ensure the reproducibility of results.

Related

Dummy coding omits / removes select variables from the data frame R

I have a fairly large dataset 1460(n)x81(p). About 38 variables are numeric and rest are factors with levels ranging from 2-30. I am using dummy.data.frame from *dummies package to encode the factor variables for use in running regression models.
However, as I run the following code:
train_dummy <- dummy.data.frame(train, sep = ".", verbose = TRUE, all = TRUE) some of the colums are from the original dataset are removed.
Has anyone encountered such issue before?
Link to original training dataset: https://www.kaggle.com/c/house-prices-advanced-regression-techniques/data
A number of columns from the original dataset including response variable SalePrice are being dropped. Any ideas/suggestions on what to try?
I wasn't able to reproduce the issue. I don't think there is enough info here to reproduce the issue, but I do have a few first thoughts.
run dummy data processing before train/test split
I see you're running the dummy data solely on your training data. I've found that it is usually a better strategy to run dummy data processing on the entire dataset as a whole, and then split into train / test.
Sometimes when you split first, you can run into issues with the levels of your factors.
Let's say I have a field called colors which is a factor in my data that contains the levels red, blue, green. If I split my data into train and test, I could run into a scenario where my training data only has red and blue values and no green. Now if my test dataset has all three, there will be a difference between the number of columns in my train vs test data.
I believe one way around that issue is the drop parameter in the dummy.data.frame function which defaults to TRUE.
things to check
Run these before running dummy data processing for train and test to see what characteristics these fields have that are being dropped:
# find the class of each column
train_class <- sapply(train, class)
test_class <- sapply(test, class)
# find the number of unique values within each column
unq_train_vals <- sapply(train, function(x) length(unique(x)))
unq_test_vals <- sapply(test, function(x) length(unique(x)))
# combine into data frame for easy comparison
mydf <- data.frame(
train_class = train_class,
test_class = test_class,
unq_train_vals = unq_train_vals,
unq_test_vals = unq_test_vals
)
I know this isn't really an "answer", but I don't have enough rep to comment yet.

matrix subseting by column's name using `subset` function

Consider the following simulation snippet:
k <- 1:5
x <- seq(0,10,length.out = 100)
dsts <- lapply(1:length(k), function(i) cbind(x=x, distri=dchisq(x,k[i]),i) )
dsts <- do.call(rbind,dsts)
why does this code throws an error (dsts is matrix):
subset(dsts,i==1)
#Error in subset.matrix(dsts, i == 1) : object 'i' not found
Even this one:
colnames(dsts)[3] <- 'iii'
subset(dsts,iii==1)
But not this one (matrix coerced as dataframe):
subset(as.data.frame(dsts),i==1)
This one works either where x is already defined:
subset(dsts,x> 500)
The error occurs in subset.matrix() on this line:
else if (!is.logical(subset))
Is this a bug that should be reported to R Core?
The behavior you are describing is by design and is documented on the ?subset help page.
From the help page:
For data frames, the subset argument works on the rows. Note that subset will be evaluated in the data frame, so columns can be referred to (by name) as variables in the expression (see the examples).
In R, data.frames and matrices are very different types of objects. If this is causing a problem, you are probably using the wrong data structure for your data. Matrices are really only necessary if you meed matrix arithmetic. If you are thinking of your columns as different attributes for a row observations, then you should be storing your data in a data.frame in the first place. You could store all your values in a simple vector where every three values represent one observation, but that would also be a poor choice of data structure for your data. I'm not sure if you were trying to be more efficient by choosing a matrix but it seems like just the wrong choice.
A data.frame is stored as a named list while a matrix is stored as a dimensioned vector. A list can be used as an environment which makes it easy to evaluate variable names in that context. The biggest difference between the two is that data.frames can hold columns of different classes (numerics, characters, dates) while matrices can only hold values of exactly one data.type. You cannot always easily convert between the two without a loss of information.
Thinks like $ only work with data.frames as well.
dd <- data.frame(x=1:10)
dd$x
mm <- matrix(1:10, ncol=1, dimnames=list(NULL, "x"))
mm$x # Error
If you want to subset a matrix, you are better off using standard [ subsetting rather than the sub setting function.
dsts[ dsts[,"i"]==1, ]
This behavior has been a part of R for a very long time. Any changes to this behavior is likely to introduce breaking changes to existing code that relies on variables being evaluated in a certain context. I think the problem lies with whomever told you to use a matrix in the first place. Rather than cbind(), you should have used data.frame()

Getting expected value through regression model and attach to original dataframe in R

My question is very similar to this one here , but I still can't solve my problem and thus would like to get little bit more help to make it clear. The original dataframe "ddf" looks like:
CONC <- c(0.15,0.52,0.45,0.29,0.42,0.36,0.22,0.12,0.27,0.14)
SPP <- c(rep('A',3),rep('B',3),rep('C',4))
LENGTH <- c(390,254,380,434,478,367,267,333,444,411)
ddf <- as.data.frame(cbind(CONC,SPECIES,LENGTH))
the regression model is constructed based on Species:
model <- dlply(ddf,.(SPP), lm, formula = CONC ~ LENGTH)
the regression model works fine and returns individual models for each species.
What I am going to get is the residual and expected value of 'Length' variable in terms of each models (corresponding to different species) and I want those data could be added into my original dataset ddf as new columns. so the new dataset should looks like:
SPP LENGTH CONC EXPECTED RESIDUAL
Firstly, I use the following code to get the expected value:
model_pre <- lapply(model,function(x)predict(x,data = ddf))
I loom there might be some mistakes in the above code, but it actually works! The result comes with two columns ( predicated value and species). My first question is whether I could believe this result of above code? (Does R fully understand what I am aiming to do, getting expected value of "length" in terms of different model?)
Then i used the following code to attach those data to ddf:
ddf_new <- cbind(ddf, model_pre)
This code works fine as well. But the problem comes here. It seems like R just attach the model_pre result directly to the original dataframe, since the result of model_pre is not sorted the same as the original ddf and thus is obviously wrong(justifying by the species column in original dataframe and model_pre).
I was using resid() and similar lapply, cbind code to get residual and attach it to original ddf. Same problem comes.
Therefore, how can I attach those result correctly in terms of length by species? (please let me know if you confuse what I am trying to explain here)
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
There are several problems with your code, you refer to columns SPP and Conc., but columns by those names don't exist in your data frame.
Your predicted values are made on the entire dataset, not just the subset corresponding to that model (this may be intended, but seems strange with the later usage).
When you cbind a data frame to a list of data frames, does it really cbind the individual data frames?
Now to more helpful suggestions.
Why use dlply at all here? You could just fit a model with interactions that effectively fits a different regression line to each species:
fit <- lm(CONC ~ SPECIES * LENGTH, data= ddf)
fitted(fit)
predict(fit)
ddf$Pred <- fitted(fit)
ddf$Resid <- ddf$CONC - ddf$Pred
Or if there is some other reason to really use dlply and the problem is combining 2 data frame that have different ordering then either use merge or reorder the data frames to match first (see functions like ordor, sort.list, and match).

Nested data frame

I have got a technical problem which, as it seems, I am not able to solve by myself. I ran an estimation with the mcmcglmm package. By results$Sol I get access to the estimated posterior distributions. Applying class() tells me that the object is of class "mcmc". Using as.data.frame() results in a nested data frame which contains other data frames (one data frame which contains many other data frames). I would like to rbind() all data frames within the main data frame in order to produce one data frame (or rather a vector) with all values of all posterior distributions and the name of the (secondary) data frame as a rowname., Any ideas? I would be grateful for every hint!
Update: I didn't manage to produce a useful data set for the purpose of stackoverflow, with all these sampling chains these data sets would be always too large. If you want to help me, please consider to run the following (exemplaric) model
require(MCMCglmm)
data(PlodiaPO)
result <- MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate + FSfamily, data = PlodiaPO, nitt = 50, thin = 2, burn = 10, verbose = FALSE)
result$Sol (an mcmc object) is where all the chains are stored. I want to rbind all chains in order to have a vector with all values of all posterior distributions and the variable names as rownames (or since no duplicated rownames are allowed, as an additional character vector).
I can't (using the example code from MCMCglmm) construct an example where as.data.frame(model$Sol) gives me a dataframe of dataframes. So although there's probably a simple answer I can't check it very easily.
That said, here's an example that might help. Note that if your child dataframes don't have the same colnames then this won't work.
# create a nested data.frame example to work on
a.df <- data.frame(c1=runif(10),c2=runif(10))
b.df <- data.frame(c1=runif(10),c2=runif(10))
full.df <- data.frame(1:10)
full.df$a <- a.df
full.df$b <- b.df
full.df <- full.df[,c("a","b")]
# the solution
res <- do.call(rbind,full.df)
EDIT
Okay, using your new example,
require(MCMCglmm)
data(PlodiaPO)
result<- MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate + FSfamily, data=PlodiaPO,nitt=50,thin=2,burn=10,verbose=FALSE)
melt(do.call(rbind,(as.data.frame(result$Sol))))

How do I match fitted(gamm4.model) values with DF despite NAs?

I'm trying to make use of the fitted values from a gamm4 model and need them to match up with the right rows in the dataframe I'm working with.
Here's the model I run:
gam.outcome <- gamm4(formula = outcome ~ male + s(gpa),
random = ~ (1|school),
data=avr, na.action="na.exclude")
With an lmer object the "na.exclude" option leaves NAs in the fitted values so that a fitted(lmer.output) call returns a vector the same length and order as the dataframe. But in gamm4 I've tried fitted(gam.outcome$gam) and fitted(gam.outcome$mer) but don't know how to deal with the results of either. The latter omits all NA, despite the "na.exclude" option. The former includes twice as many NA values as lmer which should be a clue of some kind, but I'm too thick to get it. All I know is that either way the vector doesn't line up with the original data.
I imagine there is more than one way to solve my problem. I greatly appreciate help improving or tagging my question as well as answering it. Thanks!
Approximately (untested):
myfitted <- numeric(nrow(avr))
myfitted[!complete.cases(avr)] <- NA
myfitted[complete.cases(avr)] <- fitted(gam.outcome$mer)
Or (also untested)
avrframe <- model.frame(outcome~male+gpa+school,na.action=na.exclude)
napredict(attr(avrframe,"na.action"),fitted(gam.outcome$mer))
The first solution assumes that all of the NA values in avr are either in the columns you are interested in, or are in the same rows as NA values in the columns you are interested in. The second attempts to figure this out automatically.

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