TrueTrait: Estimate the true trait underlying a list of surrogate...

In WGCNA: Weighted Correlation Network Analysis

Estimate the true trait underlying a list of surrogate markers.

Description

Assume an imprecisely measured trait y that is related to the true, unobserved trait yTRUE as follows yTRUE=y+noise where noise is assumed to have mean zero and a constant variance. Assume you have 1 or more surrogate markers for yTRUE corresponding to the columns of datX. The function implements several approaches for estimating yTRUE based on the inputs y and/or datX.

Usage

 TrueTrait(datX, y, datXtest=NULL, 
        corFnc = "bicor", corOptions = "use = 'pairwise.complete.obs'",
        LeaveOneOut.CV=FALSE, skipMissingVariables=TRUE, 
        addLinearModel=FALSE)

Arguments

datX	is a vector or data frame whose columns correspond to the surrogate markers (variables) for the true underlying trait. The number of rows of datX equals the number of observations, i.e. it should equal the length of y
y	is a numeric vector which specifies the observed trait.
datXtest	can be set as a matrix or data frame of a second, independent test data set. Its columns should correspond to those of datX, i.e. the two data sets should have the same number of columns but the number or rows (test set observations) can be different.
corFnc	Character string specifying the correlation function to be used in the calculations. Recomended values are the default Pearson correlation "cor" or biweight mid-correlation "bicor". Additional arguments to the correlation function can be specified using corOptions.
corOptions	Character string giving additional arguments to the function specified in corFnc.
LeaveOneOut.CV	logical. If TRUE then leave one out cross validation estimates will be calculated for y.true1 and y.true2 based on datX.
skipMissingVariables	logical. If TRUE then variables whose values are missing for a given observation will be skipped when estimating the true trait of that particular observation. Thus, the estimate of a particular observation are determined by all the variables whose values are non-missing.
addLinearModel	logical. If TRUE then the function also estimates the true trait based on the predictions of the linear model lm(y~., data=datX)

Details

This R function implements formulas described in Klemera and Doubal (2006). The assumptions underlying these formulas are described in Klemera et al. But briefly, the function provides several estimates of the true underlying trait under the following assumptions: 1) There is a true underlying trait that affects y and a list of surrogate markers corresponding to the columns of datX. 2) There is a linear relationship between the true underlying trait and y and the surrogate markers. 3) yTRUE =y +Noise where the Noise term has a mean of zero and a fixed variance. 4) Weighted least squares estimation is used to relate the surrogate markers to the underlying trait where the weights are proportional to 1/ssq.j where ssq.j is the noise variance of the j-th marker.

Specifically, output y.true1 corresponds to formula 31, y.true2 corresponds to formula 25, and y.true3 corresponds to formula 34.

Although the true underlying trait yTRUE is not known, one can estimate the standard deviation between the estimate y.true2 and yTRUE using formula 33. Similarly, one can estimate the SD for the estimate y.true3 using formula 42. These estimated SDs correspond to output components 2 and 3, respectively. These SDs are valuable since they provide a sense of how accurate the measure is.

To estimate the correlations between y and the surrogate markers, one can specify different correlation measures. The default method is based on the Person correlation but one can also specify the biweight midcorrelation by choosing "bicor", see help(bicor) to learn more.

When the datX is comprised of observations measured in different strata (e.g. different batches or independent data sets) then one can obtain stratum specific estimates by specifying the strata using the argument Strata. In this case, the estimation focuses on one stratum at a time.

Value

A list with the following components.

datEstimates	is a data frame whose columns corresponds to estimates of the true underlying trait. The number of rows equals the number of observations, i.e. the length of y. The first column y.true1 is the average value of standardized columns of datX where standardization subtracts out the intercept term and divides by the slope of the linear regression model lm(marker~y). Since this estimate ignores the fact that the surrogate markers have different correlations with y, it is typically inferior to y.true2. The second column y.true2 equals the weighted average value of standardized columns of datX. The standardization is described in section 2.4 of Klemera et al. The weights are proportional to r^2/(1+r^2) where r denotes the correlation between the surrogate marker and y. Since this estimate does not include y as additional surrogate marker, it may be slightly inferior to y.true3. Having said this, the difference between y.true2 and y.true3 is often negligible. An additional column called y.lm is added if codeaddLinearModel=TRUE. In this case, y.lm reports the linear model predictions. Finally, the column y.true3 is very similar to y.true2 but it includes y as additional surrogate marker. It is expected to be the best estimate of the underlying true trait (see Klemera et al 2006).
datEstimatestest	is output only if a test data set has been specified in the argument datXtest. In this case, it contains a data frame with columns ytrue1 and ytrue2. The number of rows equals the number of test set observations, i.e the number of rows of datXtest. Since the value of y is not known in case of a test data set, one cannot calculate y.true3. An additional column with linear model predictions y.lm is added if codeaddLinearModel=TRUE.
datEstimates.LeaveOneOut.CV	is output only if the argument LeaveOneOut.CV has been set to TRUE. In this case, it contains a data frame with leave-one-out cross validation estimates of ytrue1 and ytrue2. The number of rows equals the length of y. Since the value of y is not known in case of a test data set, one cannot calculate y.true3
SD.ytrue2	is a scalar. This is an estimate of the standard deviation between the estimate y.true2 and the true (unobserved) yTRUE. It corresponds to formula 33.
SD.ytrue3	is a scalar. This is an estimate of the standard deviation between y.true3 and the true (unobserved) yTRUE. It corresponds to formula 42.
datVariableInfo	is a data frame that reports information for each variable (column of datX) when it comes to the definition of y.true2. The rows correspond to the number of variables. Columns report the variable name, the center (intercept that is subtracted to scale each variable), the scale (i.e. the slope that is used in the denominator), and finally the weights used in the weighted sum of the scaled variables.
datEstimatesByStratum	a data frame that will only be output if Strata is different from NULL. In this case, it is has the same dimensions as datEstimates but the estimates were calculated separately for each level of Strata.
SD.ytrue2ByStratum	a vector of length equal to the different levels of Strata. Each component reports the estimate of SD.ytrue2 for observations in the stratum specified by unique(Strata).
datVariableInfoByStratum	a list whose components are matrices with variable information. Each list component reports the variable information in the stratum specified by unique(Strata).

Author(s)

Steve Horvath

References

Klemera P, Doubal S (2006) A new approach to the concept and computation of biological age. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 127 (2006) 240-248

Choa IH, Parka KS, Limb CJ (2010) An Empirical Comparative Study on Validation of Biological Age Estimation Algorithms with an Application of Work Ability Index. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development Volume 131, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 69-78

Examples

# observed trait
y=rnorm(1000,mean=50,sd=20)
# unobserved, true trait
yTRUE =y +rnorm(100,sd=10)
# now we simulate surrogate markers around the true trait
datX=simulateModule(yTRUE,nGenes=20, minCor=.4,maxCor=.9,geneMeans=rnorm(20,50,30)  )
True1=TrueTrait(datX=datX,y=y)
datTrue=True1$datEstimates
par(mfrow=c(2,2))
for (i in 1:dim(datTrue)[[2]] ){
  meanAbsDev= mean(abs(yTRUE-datTrue[,i]))
  verboseScatterplot(datTrue[,i],yTRUE,xlab=names(datTrue)[i],  
                     main=paste(i, "MeanAbsDev=", signif(meanAbsDev,3))); 
  abline(0,1)
}
#compare the estimated standard deviation of y.true2
True1[[2]]
# with the true SD
sqrt(var(yTRUE-datTrue$y.true2))
#compare the estimated standard deviation of y.true3
True1[[3]]
# with the true SD
sqrt(var(yTRUE-datTrue$y.true3))

WGCNA documentation built on Jan. 22, 2023, 1:34 a.m.