net: Specify Network Dependencies in a 'DAG'

In simDAG: Simulate Data from a DAG and Associated Node Information

Specify Network Dependencies in a DAG

Description

This function may be used in the formula of nodes in which the value of the observation of one individual are dependent on its' neighbors in a defined static network or dynamic network_td. Given the network and a previously generated variable, net() aggregates data of the neighbors according to an arbitrary function under the hood. The resulting variable can then be used directly in a formula.

Usage

net(expr, net=NULL, mode="all", order=1,
    mindist=0, na=NA)

Arguments

expr	Any R expression, usually containing one or more previously generated variables, that returns one numeric value given a vector, such as sum(variable) or mean(variable).
net	A single character string specifying the name of the network that should be used to define the neighbors of an observation. If only one network is present in the DAG, this argument can be omitted. The single added network is then used by default. If multiple networks are present and this argument is not defined, an error will be produced.
mode	A single character, specifying how to use the direction of the edges if a directed network is supplied (ignored otherwise). If "all", the direction of the edges is ignored and both incoming and outgoing edges are used to define the neighbors of each individual. If "out", only the individuals who i (the observation row) is pointing to are used as neighbors and if "in" only the individuals who point to i are being used as neighbors.
order	A single integer giving the order of the neighborhood. If order=1 (default), only the vertices that are directly connected to vertex i are considered its neighbors. If order=2, all vertices connected to those neighbors are also considered the neighbors of vertex i and so on.
mindist	A single integer >= 0, specifying the minimum distance the neighbors needs to have to an observation to be considered neighbors. Only makes sense with order > 1.
na	A single value assigned to the variable if expr could not be computed. This can happen due to the nature of the expression (e.g. NA being returned directly after evaluating the expression for some reason), or when an observation does not have any neighbors in a network.

Details

How it works:

Internally the following procedure is used whenever a net() function call is included in a formula of a node (regardless of whether time-fixed or time-dependent). First, the associated network (defined using the net argument) is used to identify the neighbors of each observation. Every vertex that is directly connected to an observation is considered its' neighbor. The parent variable(s) specified in the net() call are then aggregated over these neighbors using the given expr. A simple example: consider observation 1 with four neighbors named 2, 5, 8 and 10. The formula contains the following net() call: net(sum(infected)). The value of the infected variable is 0, 0, 1, 1 for persons 2, 5, 8 and 10 respectively. These values are then summed up to result in a value of 2 for person 1. The same is done for every person in the simulated data. The resulting variable is then used as-is in the simulation.

Supported inputs:

Any function that returns a single (usually numeric) value, given the neighbors' values can be used. It is therefore also possible to make the simulation dependent on specific neighbors only. For example, using infected[1] instead of sum(infected) would return a value of 0 for observation 1 in the above example, because person 2 is the first neighbor and has a value of 0. Note that the internally used variable named ..neighbor.. includes the ids of the neighbors. The entire expr is evaluated in a data.table call of the form: data[, .(variable = eval(expr)), by=id], making it also possible to use any data.table syntax such as .N (which would return the number of neighbors a person has).

Specifying parents:

Whenever a net() call is used in a formula, we recommend specifying the parents argument of the node as well. The reason for this recommendation is, that it is sometimes difficult to identify which variables are used in net() calls, depending on the expr. This may cause issues if a DAG is not specified in a topologically sorted manner and users rely on the sort_dag argument of sim_from_dag to re-order the variables. Specifying the parents ensures that this issue cannot occur.

A small warning:

Note that it never really makes sense to use this function outside of a formula argument: if you look at its source code you will realize that it does not actually do anything, except returning its input. It is only a piece of syntax for the formula interface. Please consult the network documentation page or the associated vignette for more information.

Value

"Returns" a vector of length n_sim when used properly in a sim_from_dag or sim_discrete_time call. Returns a list of its input when used outside formula.

Author(s)

Robin Denz

Examples

library(igraph)
library(data.table)
library(simDAG)

# define a random network for illustration, with 10 vertices
set.seed(234)
g <- igraph::sample_smallworld(1, 10, 2, 0.5)

# a simple dag containing only two time-constant variables and the network
dag <- empty_dag() +
  node("A", type="rnorm", mean=0, sd=1) +
  node("B", type="rbernoulli", p=0.5) +
  network("Net1", net=g)

# using the mean of A of each observations neighbor in a linear model
dag2 <- dag +
  node("Y", type="gaussian", formula= ~ -2 + net(mean(A))*4, error=1)

# using an indicator of whether any of an observations neighbors has
# a 1 in B in a linear model
dag3 <- dag +
  node("Y", type="gaussian", formula= ~ 1.5 + net(as.numeric(any(B==1)))*3,
       error=1.2)

simDAG documentation built on Aug. 28, 2025, 1:08 a.m.