gg_partial_varpro: Partial dependence data from a varPro model

In ggRandomForests: Visually Exploring Random Forests

Partial dependence data from a varPro model

Description

varPro::partialpro returns one list, with continuous and categorical predictors mixed together. This function splits that list into two tidy data frames, one for each kind, and resolves the y-axis label the plot method will use.

Deprecated. gg_partialpro() has been superseded by gg_partial_varpro() and is now a thin alias for it. It will be removed in the release after ggRandomForests v3.0.0; use gg_partial_varpro() directly.

Usage

gg_partial_varpro(
  part_dta = NULL,
  object = NULL,
  scale = c("auto", "rmst", "mortality", "surv", "chf"),
  time = NULL,
  nvars = NULL,
  cat_limit = 10,
  model = NULL
)

gg_partialpro(
  part_dta,
  object = NULL,
  scale = c("auto", "rmst", "mortality", "surv", "chf"),
  time = NULL,
  nvars = NULL,
  cat_limit = 10,
  model = NULL
)

Arguments

part_dta	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
object	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
scale	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
time	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
nvars	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
cat_limit	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.
model	Passed to gg_partial_varpro.

Details

Scale detection: with scale = "auto" and an object in hand, the scale resolves to "mortality" for a survival forest and "generic" for a regression or classification forest. The RMST horizon \tau is not stored in the varpro object (varPro 3.1.0), so for RMST-labeled output you have to pass scale = "rmst", time = tau yourself.

Ensemble mortality (scale = "mortality"): here the y-axis is ensemble mortality, the expected number of events a subject would see if they were exposed to the study-average cumulative hazard. It is the same quantity as the rfsrc predicted value for survival forests (Ishwaran, Kogalur, Blackstone & Lauer, 2008 doi:10.1214/08-AOAS169). This is an unbounded relative-risk score, not a survival probability and not 1 - S(t); don't read it as one. If you want output on the probability scale, refit with varpro(..., rmst = tau) and use scale = "rmst".

Value

A named list of class "gg_partial_varpro" with elements:

continuous

data.frame with columns variable, parametric, nonparametric, causal, name (and optionally model).

categorical

data.frame with the same columns, one row per observation per category level.

A "provenance" attribute carries source, family, ntree, n, scale, rmst_tau, xvar.names, and path.

A gg_partial_varpro object (see gg_partial_varpro).

What partialpro is doing

A partial dependence curve answers the question, "if I hold a single variable at a grid of values and average out everything else, how does the model's prediction move?" That is the same question rfsrc partial dependence answers. What varPro::partialpro adds is two wrinkles that are worth understanding before you read the curves.

First, partialpro filters the partial grid through an isolation forest (Unlimited Virtual Twins, or UVT) so that unlikely combinations of the focal variable with the rest of the data are downweighted. The rfsrc version, by contrast, averages over the full marginal grid regardless of plausibility. So when a covariate is highly correlated with others, the two methods can disagree, and partialpro's curve is the one restricted to the data manifold.

Second, partialpro fits a local polynomial model to the predicted values rather than just plotting their mean. That gives three parallel curves per variable, stored as yhat.par, yhat.nonpar, and yhat.causal, which the plot method overlays so you can see whether a smooth parametric story and the raw forest predictions are telling you the same thing.

Interpretation of the y-axis depends on the outcome (per varPro::partialpro): response scale for regression, log-odds of the target class for classification, and either ensemble mortality (default) or RMST (if the original varpro call set rmst) for survival.

What's in the output

We split partialpro's mixed list into two tidy data frames so the plot method does not have to. A variable with more than cat_limit distinct grid points goes into $continuous, one row per grid point with the column means of yhat.par, yhat.nonpar, and yhat.causal stored as parametric, nonparametric, and causal. A variable at or below cat_limit goes into $categorical, one row per observation per category level, carrying the same three columns unaveraged so the plot method can draw boxplots. Path C (scale %in% c("surv","chf")) takes a different route: we hand the underlying rfsrc forest to gg_partial_rfsrc so you get a survival-probability or cumulative-hazard curve on the usual rfsrc scale instead.

What you use this for

• read the marginal shape of a relationship the varpro model found important: monotone, threshold, U-shape, flat;

• compare the three partialpro estimators on the same variable and flag the ones where parametric and nonparametric disagree, those are the candidates for closer inspection;

• report a survival partial dependence on the probability or cumulative-hazard scale (scale = "surv" or "chf") rather than the unbounded mortality scale.

A varpro partial dependence curve is a description of the model, not a causal effect. The causal column is varpro's local estimator, not a structural causal claim about the data-generating process.

References

Ishwaran H, Kogalur UB, Blackstone EH, Lauer MS (2008). Random survival forests. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2(3), 841–860. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1214/08-AOAS169")}.

See Also

plot.gg_partial_varpro, gg_varpro, gg_vimp, gg_partialpro (deprecated), gg_partial_rfsrc, varpro_feature_names

gg_partial_varpro

Examples

set.seed(42)
n_obs <- 30; n_pts <- 15
mock_data <- list(
  age = list(
    xvirtual    = seq(30, 80, length.out = n_pts),
    xorg        = sample(seq(30, 80, by = 5), n_obs, replace = TRUE),
    yhat.par    = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * n_pts), nrow = n_obs),
    yhat.nonpar = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * n_pts), nrow = n_obs),
    yhat.causal = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * n_pts), nrow = n_obs)
  ),
  sex = list(
    xvirtual    = c(0, 1),
    xorg        = sample(c(0, 1), n_obs, replace = TRUE),
    yhat.par    = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * 2), nrow = n_obs),
    yhat.nonpar = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * 2), nrow = n_obs),
    yhat.causal = matrix(rnorm(n_obs * 2), nrow = n_obs)
  )
)
result <- gg_partial_varpro(mock_data)
head(result$continuous)
head(result$categorical)

ggRandomForests documentation built on June 13, 2026, 5:07 p.m.