predict.ackwards: Score new observations with a fitted ackwards model

In ackwards: Bass-Ackwards Hierarchical Structural Analysis

Score new observations with a fitted ackwards model

Description

Applies a fitted bass-ackwards model to new data — for example the held-out test split of a cross-validation design — producing factor scores for every level without retraining. This is the idiomatic predict() front door to the same machinery as augment.ackwards(): the call predict(object, newdata) returns exactly augment(object, data = newdata, append = FALSE), a data frame holding only the ⁠.m{k}f{j}⁠ score columns, one row per row of newdata.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'ackwards'
predict(object, newdata, scaling = c("fit", "sample"), ...)

Arguments

object	An ackwards object.
newdata	A data frame or numeric matrix with the same variables (columns) used to fit object. Required — to retrieve scores stored at fit time, use augment(object) instead.
scaling	Which item means/SDs standardize newdata: "fit" (default, the training moments) or "sample" (newdata's own moments). See augment.ackwards().
...	Ignored.

Details

Under the default scaling = "fit", newdata is standardized by the fit-time item means/SDs stored in the object before the stored weight matrices are applied, so the new scores land on the same metric as the training solution: an observation's score does not depend on which other observations share its split, and train and test scores are directly comparable. See augment.ackwards() (section Scoring new observations) for the full semantics, the scaling = "sample" alternative, and the non-Pearson-basis caveat.

newdata must contain the variables the model was fit on (matched by column name, with extra columns ignored; a bare unnamed matrix is matched positionally). Rows with missing items produce NA scores (scoring does not impute).

Value

A data frame of factor scores (columns ⁠.m{k}f{j}⁠, one per factor per level), with one row per row of newdata in the original order.

See Also

augment.ackwards() for appending scores to the data (and the full scoring documentation), ackwards().

Examples

# Cross-validation: fit on a training split, score the test split
train <- sim16[1:500, ]
test <- sim16[501:1000, ]
x <- ackwards(train, k_max = 5)
test_scores <- predict(x, test)
head(test_scores)

# Identical to the augment() spelling:
identical(test_scores, augment(x, data = test, append = FALSE))

ackwards documentation built on July 25, 2026, 1:08 a.m.