How to extract info from package in R and use in function? - r

Question

I apologize for the vague question title. What I want to do is run a regression in R using geeglm from the geepack R package, then use information from that to calculate a quasilikelihood information criteria (QIC; Pan 2001). I can do this fairly easily for single models but I would like to write a general function that can do this for a variety of different types of models. I guess my real question is whether there is a better alternative than having a long series of nested ifelse statements?
Here's my current code:
library(geepack)
data(dietox) #data from the geepack package
# Run gee regression
dietox$Cu <- as.factor(dietox$Cu)
mf <- formula(Weight ~ Cu * (Time + I(Time^2) + I(Time^3)))
gee1 <- geeglm(mf, data = dietox, id = Pig, family = gaussian, corstr = "ar1")
Then I can run a function to calculate the quasilikelihood:
QlogLik.normal <- function(model.R) {
library(MASS)
mu.R <- model.R$fitted.values
y <- model.R$y
# Quasi Likelihood for Normal
quasi.R <- sum(((y - mu.R)^2)/-2)
quasi.R
}
However, I would like to write a function that is more general because the quasilikelihood function is different for every distribution. The above function would work for gee1 because it had a gaussian (normal) distribution. If I wanted to generalize it for a variety of distributions I could use a series of nested ifelse statements (below), but I don't know if this is the best way to do this. Does anyone have other options or a better solution? This just doesn't seem very elegant to say the least (clearly I don't have much programming or R experience).
QlogLik <- function(model.R) {
library(MASS)
mu.R <- model.R$fitted.values
y <- model.R$y
ifelse(model.R$modelInfo$variance == "poisson",
# Quasi Likelihood for Poisson
quasi.R <- sum((y*log(mu.R)) - mu.R),
ifelse(model.R$modelInfo$variance == "gaussian",
# Quasi Likelihood for Normal
quasi.R <- sum(((y - mu.R)^2)/-2),
ifelse(model.R$modelInfo$variance == "binomial",
# Quasilikelihood for Binomial
quasi.R <- sum(y*log(mu.R/(1 - mu.R)) + log(1 - mu.R)),
quasi.R <- "Error: distribution not recognized")))
quasi.R
}
In this example, I used the model output from geeglm to extract the type of distribution used to model the variance
model.R$modelInfo$variance
but there may be other ways to determine what distribution was used in the geeglm model. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You should be able to rewrite your function like this:
QlogLik <- function(model.R) {
library(MASS)
mu.R <- model.R$fitted.values
y <- model.R$y
type <- family(model.R)$family
switch(type,
poisson = sum((y*log(mu.R)) - mu.R),
gaussian = sum(((y - mu.R)^2)/-2),
binomial = sum(y*log(mu.R/(1 - mu.R)) + log(1 - mu.R)),
stop("Error: distribution not recognized"))
}
As #baptise points out, switch useful in these cases. You use family(model.R)$family to automatically detect what family type should be used with switch.
Also, if your commands for what to do in different cases run beyond one line, you can wrap the lines with curly brackets ({ do something here }) instead.
switch(type,
type1 = { something <- do(this)
thisis(something) },
type2 = do(that))
I hope this helps!

Answer 2

You may also use model.R$family$family which gives the type of distribution used to model the variance, but so far I didn't know if you could eliminate those ifelse statements. The quasi.R in your code differs among different distributions, so you have to define each of them separately.
BTW, it is a good question and thanks for posting it: I had similar situations in the past, and hope to get some advice on how to write the codes more efficiently.