Function which outputs statistics for each variable combination - r

Question

I want to write function combinations_features(y, x) which go through all combinations containing three variables and will output r squared, adjusted r squared, AIC and BIC for each combination.
My solution
combinations_features <- function(y, x) {
# Define empty vectors to store statistics
feature_vec_1 <- feature_vec_2 <-
feature_vec_3 <- feature_vec_4 <- c()
# Obtaining all combinations containing three variables
comb_names <- utils::combn(colnames(x), 3)
# For each combination obtain wanted statistics
for (i in 1:ncol(comb_names)) {
feature_vec_1 <- append(
feature_vec_1, summary(lm(y ~ ., data = x[, comb_names[, i]]))$adj.r.squared
)
feature_vec_2 <- append(
feature_vec_2, summary(lm(y ~ ., data = x[, comb_names[, i]]))$r.squared
)
feature_vec_3 <- append(
feature_vec_3, AIC(lm(y ~ ., data = x[, comb_names[, i]]))
)
feature_vec_4 <- append(
feature_vec_4, BIC(lm(y ~ ., data = x[, comb_names[, i]]))
)
}
# Assign everything into data frame
data.frame(
"Adj R2" = feature_vec_1, "R2" = feature_vec_2,
"AIC" = feature_vec_3, "BIC" = feature_vec_4
)
}
Let's see how it works - define some artificial data and give it to the function.
set.seed(42)
predictors <- data.frame(rnorm(100), runif(100), rexp(100), rpois(100, 1))
dependent <- rnorm(100)
> combinations_features(dependent, predictors)
Adj.R2 R2 AIC BIC
1 -0.0283756015 0.002787295 276.2726 289.2985
2 0.0000677269 0.030368705 273.4678 286.4937
3 -0.0011990695 0.029140296 273.5944 286.6203
4 0.0015404392 0.031796789 273.3204 286.3463
However I find this code very inefficient due to these two things:
(1) Loop - I looped it over columns of matrices comb_names, I wonder if it can be omitted somehow
(2) Length of the code - This code is huge! Due to the fact that I define feature_vec for each statistics and append to them separately. I wonder if assigning to them can be done somehow by one command.
Could you please give me hand with improving my code by telling if it's possible to apply (1) or (2) ?

Answer 1

How about this, which relies on bind_rows() from tidyverse? I don't think there's a way to avoid looping over the combinations, but lapply makes everything a little neater, IMHO.
combinations_features1 <- function(y, x) {
comb_names <- utils::combn(colnames(x), 3)
bind_rows(
lapply(
1:ncol(comb_names),
function(z) {
m <- lm(y ~ ., data = x[, comb_names[,z]])
s <- summary(m)
tibble(Adj.R2=s$adj.r.squared, R2=s$r.squared, AIC=AIC(m), BIC=BIC(m))
}
)
)
}
combinations_features1(dependent, predictors)
# A tibble: 4 x 4
Adj.R2 R2 AIC BIC
<dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 -0.0284 0.00279 276. 289.
2 0.0000677 0.0304 273. 286.
3 -0.00120 0.0291 274. 287.
4 0.00154 0.0318 273. 286.
bind_rows(), if given a list, binds the elements of the list into a single data.frame.

Answer 2

Same idea as above, just directly applying lapply to the list of combinations would also work:
combinations_features <- function(y,x){
do.call(rbind, lapply(utils::combn(colnames(x), 3, simplify=FALSE),
function(i){
f1 <- lm(y ~ ., data=x[, i])
data.frame(Adj.R2=summary(f1)$adj.r.squared,
R2=summary(f1)$r.squared,
AIC=AIC(f1), BIC=BIC(f1))
}))
}