[R] NMDS with missing data?

Mon Jun 17 19:34:30 CEST 2013

Just wanted to note that one does **not** use
"prcomp() on the correlation matrix of the variables."

As ?prcomp says, it uses the svd of the data matrix, which is
generally preferable.

Cheers,
Bert

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Elizabeth Beck
<elizabethbeck0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello David,
>
> Yes my variables are all numeric....I have a few questions regarding your 2
> options.
>
> Would these still be the best options if missing data was not an issue? I
> was told that I should be performing NMDS as it has few assumptions on the
> data distribution but neither of your options use this.
>
> If NMDS is not preferred and I were to perform a PCA, can you tell me why
> you chose prcomp()? My statistical text (Discovering Statistics Using R)
> explains PCA quite well using principal() in the psych package so I am just
> wondering the advantages of one over the other... I am overwhelmed by the
> number of ordination methods!
>
> Thank you,
> Elizabeth
>
> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:44 AM, David Carlson <dcarlson at tamu.edu> wrote:
>
>> First. Do not use html messages. They are converted to plain text and your
>> table ends up a mess. See below. It appears the variables are all numeric?
>> If so, there are two standard approaches to handling multiple scales and
>> magnitudes with cluster analysis:
>>
>> 1. Use z-scores. The scale() function will convert each variable into a
>> standard score with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Then use
>> Euclidean distance in the dist() function which will adjust for your
>> missing
>> values.
>>
>> 2. Use prcomp() on the correlation matrix of the variables to extract a set
>> of principal components and use the principal component scores in the
>> cluster analysis. This may allow you to reduce the number of variables in
>> the data set if the 29 variables are correlated with one another.
>>
>> -------------------------------------
>> David L Carlson
>> Associate Professor of Anthropology
>> Texas A&M University
>> College Station, TX 77840-4352
>>
>> From: Elizabeth Beck [mailto:elizabethbeck0 at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 1:20 PM
>> To: dcarlson at tamu.edu
>> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [R] NMDS with missing data?
>>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> You are right in that Bray-Curtis is not suitable for my dataset, and that
>> my variables are very different. Given your suggestions, I am struggling
>> with how to transform or standardize my data given that they vary so much.
>> Additionally, looking at the dist() package I am not sure which distance
>> measure would be most appropriate. Euclidean seems to most widely used but
>> I'm not sure if it is appropriate for myself (there much more help for
>> ecology data than toxicology). Given a sample of my data below ( total of
>> 287 obs. of  29 variables) can you suggest a starting point?
>>
>> SODIUM
>> K
>> CL
>> HCO3
>> ANION
>> CA
>> P
>> GLUCOSE
>>  CHOLEST
>>        GGT
>>    GLDH
>> CK
>> AST
>> PROTEIN
>> ALBUMIN
>> GLOBULIN
>> A_G
>> UA
>> BA
>> CORTICO
>> T3
>> T4
>> THYROID
>> 145
>> 3.3
>> 102
>> 24
>> 22
>> 2.9
>> 2.45
>> 9.8
>> 5.7
>> 3
>> 3
>> 678
>> 5
>> 34
>> 15
>> 19
>> 0.79
>> 180
>> 6
>> 70.97
>> 1.31
>> 12.77
>> 0.102376
>> 146
>> 3.2
>> 102
>> 21
>> 26
>> 2.89
>> 2.68
>> 11.1
>> 6.78
>> 3
>> 4
>> 1290
>> 9
>> 36
>> 18
>> 18
>> 1
>> 170
>> 13
>> 79.1
>> 3.51
>> 18.78
>> 0.186751
>> 147
>> 2.5
>> 103
>> 22
>> 25
>> 2.96
>> 2.59
>> 10
>> 5.78
>> 3
>> 6
>> 1582
>> 11
>> 35
>> 17
>> 18
>> 0.94
>> 272
>> 10
>> 65.84
>> 1.84
>> 15.5
>> 0.118602
>> 148
>> 2.5
>> 101
>> 21
>> 29
>> 2.91
>> 2.91
>> 10.6
>> 5.83
>> 3
>> 3
>> 1479
>> 8
>> 35
>> 17
>> 18
>> 0.94
>> 317
>> 8
>> 74.9
>> 2.59
>> 20.68
>> 0.125389
>>
>> Thank you!
>> Elizabeth
>>
>> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:50 AM, David Carlson <dcarlson at tamu.edu> wrote:
>> Since you pass your entire data.frame to metaMDS(), your first error
>> probably comes from the fact that you have included ID as one of the
>> variables. You should look at the results of
>>
>> str(dat)
>>
>> You can drop cases with missing values using
>>
>> > dat2 <- na.omit(dat)
>> > metaMDS(dat2[,-1])
>>
>> would run the analysis on all but the first column (ID) with all the cases
>> containing complete data. But that assumes that sex and exposure are not
>> factors.
>>
>> Or you could use one of the distance functions in dist() which adjust for
>> missing values. However dist() does not have an option to use Bray-Curtis
>> (the default in metaMDS()). Bray-Curtis is designed for comparing species
>> counts or proportions so it is not clear that it is an appropriate
>> dissimilarity measure for your data. Further, your data seem contain a
>> mixture of measurement scales and/or magnitudes so some variable
>> standardization or transformations are probably necessary before you can
>> get
>> any useful results from MDS.
>>
>> -------------------------------------
>> David L Carlson
>> Associate Professor of Anthropology
>> Texas A&M University
>> College Station, TX 77840-4352
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
>> On
>> Behalf Of Elizabeth Beck
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 3:39 PM
>> To: r-help at r-project.org
>> Subject: [R] NMDS with missing data?
>>
>> Hi,
>> I'm trying to run NMDS (non-metric multidimensional scaling) with R vegan
>> (metaMDS) but I have a few NAs in my data set. I've tried to run it 2 ways.
>>
>> The first way with my entire data set which includes variables such as ID,
>> sex, exposure, treatment, sodium, potassium, chloride....
>>
>> mydata.mds<-metaMDS(dat)
>>
>> I get the following error:
>>
>>  in if (any(autotransform, noshare > 0, wascores) && any(comm < 0)) { :
>>   missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
>> In addition: Warning messages:
>> 1: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>> 2: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>> 3: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>> 4: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>> 5: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>>
>> The second way with only those last biochemical variables (29 in total).
>>
>> mydata.mds<-metaMDS(measurements)
>>
>> I get this error:
>>
>> Error in if (any(autotransform, noshare > 0, wascores) && any(comm < 0)) {
>> :
>>   missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
>>
>> My go to "na.rm=TRUE" does nothing. Any ideas on how to account for NAs and
>> if so which of the above options I should be using?
>> Thanks!
>> Elizabeth
>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>>
>>
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
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