createBanditList: Create a List of Outcome Values to Use in the Bandit Task
In ndphillips/ShinyPsych: An easy way to program psychology experiments using Shiny

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Examples

Create a list of outcome values from (possibly different) distributions. These values will then be displayed in the bandit task.

createBanditList(
  nArms = 2,
  roundDigits = 0,
  loadList = FALSE,
  distList = NULL,
  differentDists = FALSE,
  fileName = NULL,
  randomize = TRUE
)

`nArms`	integer. The number of arms (i.e. options) the bandit task will have.
`roundDigits`	integer. The number of digits after the comma outcome values should be rounded to. This is passed to `round`.
`loadList`	logical. If TRUE the list specifying the distribution will be loaded from a local file.
`distList`	list. Contains information about the distributions from which the values should be drawn.
`differentDists`	logical. If TRUE the outcomes of different options can be drawn from different distribution types. If FALSE it is assumed that values over all games come from the same distribution type. Valid inputs are "normal", "exp", "unif", "beta" or "exgauss".
`fileName`	string. The name of the file with the distribution info. Must be specified if loadList is set to TRUE.
`randomize`	logical. If TRUE (default) the option positions are randomized.

If a file with the distribution info is specified it has to be either an rds file or an RData file. Else a list must be given to distList.

A valid list must have the following options: A vector of number of trials named "nTrials" specifying the number of trials each game takes. If different distribution types should be used a matrix of the distribution type each option in each game takes, else a single string indicating the distribution. The arguments the specific distributions take. The names of these arguments must match the argument names from the distribution documentations. If different distributions are used the number of rows of the matrix must match the number of games, use placeholder for the rows where a specific distribution is not used (see example). If the same distribution type is used it is of course also possible to give a matrix with always the same type but this will be slower because checks are on different levels.

A list containing a list of the outcome values, their positioning order in option.order and the distList.

### example with a single distribution type for a four armed bandit task:

# first create the list which as the distribution info
banditDistList <- list("nTrials" = c(5, rep(10, 4)),
                       "distributionType" = "normal",
                       "mean" = matrix(c(4, 4, 4, 4, rep(c(2, 4, 3, 4), 4)),
                                ncol = 4, byrow = TRUE),
                       "sd" = matrix(c(3, 3, 3, 3, rep(c(2.5, 11, 5, 7), 4)),
                                ncol = 4, byrow = TRUE))

# then call createBanditList
banditContainer <- createBanditList(nArms = 4, roundDigits = 1,
                                    distList = banditDistList)

### example with a different distribution types for a two armed bandit task:

# first create the list which as the distribution info
banditDistList <- list("nTrials" = c(5, rep(10, 2)),
                       "distributionType" = matrix(c("normal", "normal",
                                                     "unif", "exp",
                                                     "exgauss", "beta",
                                                     "normal", "unif"),
                                ncol = 2),
                       "mean" = matrix(c(4, 4, rep(c(2, 4), 4)), # for rnorm
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "sd" = matrix(c(3, 3, rep(c(2.5, 11), 4)),# for rnorm
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "min" = matrix(rep(1, 8),                 # for runif
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "max" = matrix(rep(10, 8),                # for runif
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "rate" = matrix(rep(1, 8),                # for rexp
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "mu" = matrix(rep(4, 8),                  # for rexgauss
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "sigma" = matrix(rep(2.5, 8),             # for rexgauss
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "tau" = matrix(rep(2, 8),                 # for rexgauss
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "positive" = matrix(rep(FALSE, 8),        # for rexgauss
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "shape1" = matrix(rep(2, 8),              # for rbeta
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "shape2" = matrix(rep(3, 8),              # for rbeta
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE),
                       "ncp" = matrix(rep(0.5, 8),               # for ncp
                                ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE))

# then call createBanditList
banditContainer <- createBanditList(nArms = 2, roundDigits = 2,
                                    distList = banditDistList,
                                    differentDists = TRUE)