How to get around error "factor has new levels" in cross-validation glm? - r

Question

My goal is to use cross-validation to evaluate the performance of a linear model.
My problem is that my training and testing sets might not always have the same variable levels.
Here is a reproducible data example:
set.seed(1)
x <- rnorm(n = 1000)
y <- rep(x = c("A","B"), times = c(500,500))
z <- rep(x = c("D","E","F"), times = c(997,2,1))
data <- data.frame(x,y,z)
summary(data)
Now let's make a glm model:
model_glm <- glm(x~., data = data)
And let's use cross-validation on this model:
library(boot)
cross_validation_glm <- cv.glm(data = data, glmfit = model_glm, K = 10)
And this is the kind of error output that you will get:
Error in model.frame.default(Terms, newdata, na.action = na.action, xlev = object$xlevels) :
factor z has new levels F
if you don't get this error, re-run the cross validation and at some point you will get a similar error.
The nature of the problem here is that when you do cross-validation, the train and test subsets might not have the exact same variable levels. Here our variable z has three levels (D,E,F).
In the total amount of our data there is much more D's than E's and F's.
Thus whenever you take a small subset of the whole data (to do cross-validation).
There is a very good chance that your z variable are all going to be set at the D's level.
Thus Eand F levels gets dropped, thus we get the error (This answer is helpful to understand the problem: https://stackoverflow.com/a/51555998/10972294).
My question is: how to avoid the drop in the first place?
If it is not possible, what are the alternatives?
(Keep in mind that this a reproducible example, the actual data I am using has many variables like z, I would like to avoid deleting them.)

Answer 1

To answer your question in the comment, I don't know if there is a function or not. Most likely there is one, but I have no idea on which package would contain it. For this example, this function should work:
set.seed(1)
x <- rnorm(n = 1000)
y <- rep(x = c("A","B"), times = c(500,500))
z <- rep(x = c("D","E","F"), times = c(997,2,1))
data <- data.frame(x,y,z)
#optional tag row for later identification:
#data$rowid<-1:nrow(data)
stratified <- function(df, column, percent){
#split dataframe into groups based on column
listdf<-split(df, df[[column]])
testsubgroups<-lapply(listdf, function(x){
#pick the number of samples per group, round up.
numsamples <- ceiling(percent*nrow(x))
#selects the rows
whichones <-sample(1:nrow(x), numsamples, replace = FALSE)
testsubgroup <-x[whichones,]
})
#combine the subgroups into one data frame
testgroup<-do.call(rbind, testsubgroups)
testgroup
}
testgroup<-stratified(data, "z", 0.8)
This will just split the initial data by column z, if you are interested is grouping by multiple columns then this could be extended by using the group_by function from the dplyr package, but that would be another question.
Comment on the statistics: If you just have a few examples for any particular factor, what type of fit do you expect? A poor fit with wide confidence limits.