struct_test: Structure dependence test

In netdiffuseR: Analysis of Diffusion and Contagion Processes on Networks

Structure dependence test

Description

Test whether or not a network estimates can be considered structurally dependent, i.e. a function of the network structure. By rewiring the graph and calculating a particular statistic t, the test compares the observed mean of t against the empirical distribution of it obtained from rewiring the network.

Usage

n_rewires(graph, p = c(20L, rep(0.1, nslices(graph) - 1)))

struct_test(graph, statistic, R, rewire.args = list(), ...)

## S3 method for class 'diffnet_struct_test'
c(..., recursive = FALSE)

## S3 method for class 'diffnet_struct_test'
print(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'diffnet_struct_test'
hist(
  x,
  main = "Empirical Distribution of Statistic",
  xlab = expression(Values ~ of ~ t),
  breaks = 20,
  annotated = TRUE,
  b0 = expression(atop(plain("") %up% plain("")), t[0]),
  b = expression(atop(plain("") %up% plain("")), t[]),
  ask = TRUE,
  ...
)

struct_test_asymp(graph, Y, statistic_name = "distance", p = 2, ...)

Arguments

graph	A diffnet graph.
p	Either a Numeric scalar or vector of length nslices(graph)-1 with the number of rewires per links.
statistic	A function that returns either a scalar or a vector.
R	Integer scalar. Number of repetitions.
rewire.args	List. Arguments to be passed to rewire_graph
...	Further arguments passed to the method (see details).
recursive	Ignored
x	A diffnet_struct_test class object.
main	Character scalar. Title of the histogram.
xlab	Character scalar. x-axis label.
breaks	Passed to hist.
annotated	Logical scalar. When TRUE marks the observed data average and the simulated data average.
b0	Character scalar. When annotated=TRUE, label for the value of b0.
b	Character scalar. When annotated=TRUE, label for the value of b.
ask	Logical scalar. When TRUE, asks the user to type <Enter> to see each plot (as many as statistics where computed).
Y	Numeric vector of length n.
statistic_name	Character scalar. Name of the metric to compute. Currently this can be either "distance",">","<","==", ">=", or "<=".

Details

struct_test computes the test by generating the null distribution using Monte Carlo simulations (rewiring). struct_test_asymp computes the test using an asymptotic approximation. While available, we do not recommend using the asymptotic approximation since it has not shown good results when compared to the MC approximation. Furthermore, the asymptotic version has only been implemented for graph as static graph.

The output from the hist method is the same as hist.default.

struct_test is a wrapper for the function boot from the boot package. Instead of resampling data–vertices or edges–in each iteration the function rewires the original graph using rewire_graph and applies the function defined by the user in statistic.

The default values to rewire_graph via rewire.args are:

p	Number or Integer with default n_rewires(graph).
undirected	Logical scalar with default getOption("diffnet.undirected", FALSE).
copy.first	Logical scalar with TRUE.
algorithm	Character scalar with default "swap".

In struct_test ... are passed to boot, otherwise are passed to the corresponding method (hist for instance).

From the print method, p-value for the null of the statistic been equal between graph and its rewired versions is computed as follows

% p(\tau)=2\times\min\left(\mbox{Pr}(t\leq\tau), \mbox{Pr}(t\geq\tau)\right) %

Where \mbox{Pr}\{\cdot\} is approximated using the Empirical Distribution Function retrieved from the simulations.

For the case of the asymptotic approximation, under the null we have

% \sqrt{n}\left(\hat\beta(Y,G)-\mu_\beta\right)\sim^d\mbox{N}\left(0,\sigma_\beta^2\right)

The test is actually on development by Vega Yon and Valente. A copy of the working paper can be distributed upon request to [e-mail].

The function n_rewires proposes a vector of number of rewirings that are performed in each iteration.

Value

A list of class diffnet_struct_test containing the following:

graph	The graph passed to struct_test.
p.value	The resulting p-value of the test (see details).
t0	The observed value of the statistic.
mean_t	The average value of the statistic applied to the simulated networks.
R	Number of simulations.
statistic	The function statistic passed to struct_test.
boot	A boot class object as return from the call to boot.
rewire.args	The list rewire.args passed to struct_test.

Author(s)

George G. Vega Yon

References

Vega Yon, George G. and Valente, Thomas W. (On development).

Davidson, R., & MacKinnon, J. G. (2004). Econometric Theory and Methods. New York: Oxford University Press.

See Also

Other Functions for inference: bootnet(), moran()

Examples

# Creating a random graph
set.seed(881)
diffnet <- rdiffnet(100, 5, seed.graph="small-world")

# Testing structure-dependency of threshold
res <- struct_test(
  diffnet,
  function(g) mean(threshold(g), na.rm=TRUE),
  R=100
)

res
hist(res)

# Adding a legend
legend("topright", bty="n",
 legend=c(
   expression(t[0]:~Baseline),
   expression(t:~Rewired~average)
 )
 )

# Concatenating results
c(res, res)

# Running in parallel fashion
res <- struct_test(
  diffnet, function(g) mean(threshold(g), na.rm=TRUE),
  R=100, ncpus=2, parallel="multicore"
)

res

hist(res)

netdiffuseR documentation built on Aug. 30, 2023, 5:07 p.m.