Leave-one-out cross-validation for data cubes — cross_validate

This function performs leave-one-out (LOO) or k-fold (experimental) cross-validation (CV) on a biodiversity data cube to assess the performance of a specified indicator function. It partitions the data by a specified variable, calculates the specified indicator on training data, and compares it with the true values to evaluate the influence of one or more categories on the final result.

Usage

cross_validate_cube(
  data_cube,
  fun,
  ...,
  grouping_var,
  out_var = "taxonKey",
  crossv_method = c("loo", "kfold"),
  k = ifelse(crossv_method == "kfold", 5, NA),
  max_out_cats = 1000,
  progress = FALSE
)

Arguments

data_cube: A data cube object (class 'processed_cube' or 'sim_cube', see b3gbi::process_cube()) or a dataframe (from $data slot of 'processed_cube' or 'sim_cube'). To limit runtime, we recommend using a dataframe with custom function as fun.
fun: A function which, when applied to data_cube returns the statistic(s) of interest. This function must return a dataframe with a column diversity_val containing the statistic of interest.
...: Additional arguments passed on to fun.
grouping_var: A character vector specifying the grouping variable(s) for fun. The output of fun(data_cube) returns a row per group.
out_var: A string specifying the column by which the data should be left out iteratively. Default is "taxonKey" which can be used for leave-one-species-out CV.
crossv_method: Method of data partitioning. If crossv_method = "loo" (default), S = number of unique values in out_var training partitions are created containing S - 1 rows each. If crossv_method = "kfold", the aggregated data is split the data into k exclusive partitions containing S / k rows each. K-fold CV is experimental and results should be interpreted with caution.
k: Number of folds (an integer). Used only if crossv_method = "kfold". Default 5.
max_out_cats: An integer specifying the maximum number of unique categories in out_var to leave out iteratively. Default is 1000. This can be increased if needed, but keep in mind that a high number of categories in out_var may significantly increase runtime.
progress: Logical. Whether to show a progress bar. Set to TRUE to display a progress bar, FALSE (default) to suppress it.

Value

A dataframe containing the cross-validation results with the following columns:

Cross-Validation id (id_cv)
The grouping variable grouping_var (e.g., year)
The category left out during each cross-validation iteration (specified out_var with suffix '_out' in lower case)
The computed statistic values for both training (rep_cv) and true datasets (est_original)
Error metrics: error (error), squared error (sq_error), absolute difference (abs_error), relative difference (rel_error), and percent difference (perc_error)
Error metrics summarised by grouping_var: mean relative difference (mre), mean squared error (mse) and root mean squared error (rmse)

See Details section on how these error metrics are calculated.

Details

This function assesses the influence of each category in out_var on the indicator value by iteratively leaving out one category at a time, similar to leave-one-out cross-validation. K-fold CV works in a similar fashion but is experimental and will not be covered here.

Original Sample Data: $\mathbf{X} = \{X_{11}, X_{12}, X_{13}, \ldots, X_{sn}\}$
- The initial set of data points, where there are $s$ different categories in out_var and $n$ total samples across all categories (= the sample size). $n$ corresponds to the number of cells in a data cube or the number of rows in tabular format.
Statistic of Interest: $\theta$
- The parameter or statistic being estimated, such as the mean $\bar{X}$, variance $\sigma^2$, or a biodiversity indicator. Let $\hat{\theta}$ denote the estimated value of $\theta$ calculated from the complete dataset $\mathbf{X}$.
Cross-Validation (CV) Sample: $\mathbf{X}_{-s_j}$
- The full dataset $\mathbf{X}$ excluding all samples belonging to category $j$. This subset is used to investigate the influence of category $j$ on the estimated statistic $\hat{\theta}$.
CV Estimate for Category $\mathbf{j}$: $\hat{\theta}_{-s_j}$
- The value of the statistic of interest calculated from $\mathbf{X}_{-s_j}$, which excludes category $j$. For example, if $\theta$ is the sample mean, $\hat{\theta}_{-s_j} = \bar{X}_{-s_j}$.
Error Measures:
- The Error is the difference between the statistic estimated without category $j$ ($\hat{\theta}_{-s_j}$) and the statistic calculated on the complete dataset ($\hat{\theta}$).
$$\text{Error}_{s_j} = \hat{\theta}_{-s_j} - \hat{\theta}$$
- The Relative Error is the absolute error, normalised by the true estimate $\hat{\theta}$ and a small error term $\epsilon = 10^{-8}$ to avoid division by zero.
$$\text{Rel. Error}_{s_j} = \frac{|\hat{\theta}_{-s_j} - \hat{\theta}|}{\hat{\theta} +\epsilon}$$
- The Percent Error is the relative error expressed as a percentage.
$$\text{Perc. Error}_{s_j} = \text{Rel. Error}_{s_j} \times 100 \%$$
Summary Measures:
- The Mean Relative Error (MRE) is the average of the relative errors over all categories.
$$\text{MRE} = \frac{1}{s} \sum_{j=1}^s \text{Rel. Error}_{s_j}$$
- The Mean Squared Error (MSE) is the average of the squared errors.
$$\text{MSE} = \frac{1}{s} \sum_{j=1}^s (\text{Error}_{s_j})^2$$
- The Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) is the square root of the MSE.
$$\text{RMSE} = \sqrt{\text{MSE}}$$

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# After processing a data cube with b3gbi::process_cube()

# Function to calculate statistic of interest
# Mean observations per year
mean_obs <- function(data) {
  out_df <- aggregate(obs ~ year, data, mean) # Calculate mean obs per year
  names(out_df) <- c("year", "diversity_val") # Rename columns
  return(out_df)
}
mean_obs(processed_cube$data)

# Perform leave-one-species-out CV
cv_mean_obs <- cross_validate_cube(
  data_cube = processed_cube$data,
  fun = mean_obs,
  grouping_var = "year",
  out_var = "taxonKey",
  crossv_method = "loo",
  progress = FALSE
)
head(cv_mean_obs)
} # }