Solved – kNN randomization test in R

k nearest neighbourr

I am trying to determine significant differences between groups of data using a k-nearest neighbor randomization test in R. This test basically looks for similarity amongst homogenous groups and separates them out using random clustering. In the literature, this test is called a "K-nearest neighbor (kNN) randomization test," however, I'm not certain if it called by other names elsewhere.

For my specific data, I have isotopic ratios given for various prey items. I have already grouped together ecologically similar prey item types, and now want to see if those groups differ from one another in their isotopic signature. This is where the kNN test would come in.

Thanks for all of your answers – I'm new to this site, so I'll address your inquiries as applicable in the comments section.

Best Answer

kmeans() (you can find it by typing ?? followed by the name of what you want as in ??kmean). In general, a good trick is to first look it up on a R specific search engine

Related Solutions

Solved – Dealing with lots of ties in kNN model

In some situation you have a lot of data items that are might be considered to be tied in distance, especially if your data is discrete (e.g. your matrix is made up of integers).

A "hack" that might be able to work is that you add a very small pseudo-random noise to the data. This will reduce the number of data items that happen to be equidistant. Note that the noise should be as small as possible so as to bias the results but large enough to reduce the ties.

Solved – KNN imputation R packages

You could also try the following package: DMwR.

It failed on the case of 3 NN, giving 'Error in knnImputation(x, k = 3) : Not sufficient complete cases for computing neighbors.'

However, trying 2 gives.

> knnImputation(x,k=2)
             [,1]       [,2]       [,3]       [,4]       [,5]        [,6]
 [1,] -0.59091360 -1.2698175  0.5556009 -0.1327224 -0.8325065  0.71664000
 [2,] -1.27255074 -0.7853602  0.7261897  0.2969900  0.2969556 -0.44612831
 [3,]  0.55473981  0.4748735  0.5158498 -0.9493917 -1.5187722 -0.99377854
 [4,] -0.47797654  0.1647818  0.6167311 -0.5149731  0.5240514 -0.46027809
 [5,] -1.08767831 -0.3785608  0.6659499 -0.7223724 -0.9512409 -1.60547053
 [6,] -0.06153279  0.9486815 -0.5464601  0.1544475  0.2835521 -0.82250221
 [7,] -0.82536029 -0.2906253 -3.0284281 -0.8473210  0.7985286 -0.09751927
 [8,] -1.15366189  0.5341000 -1.0109258 -1.5900281  0.2742328  0.29039928
 [9,] -1.49504465 -0.5419533  0.5766574 -1.2412777 -1.4089572 -0.71069839
[10,] -0.35935440 -0.2622265  0.4048126 -2.0869817  0.2682486  0.16904559
             [,7]       [,8]        [,9]      [,10]
 [1,]  0.58027159 -1.0669137  0.48670802  0.5824858
 [2,] -0.48314440 -1.0532693 -0.34030385 -1.1041681
 [3,] -2.81996446  0.3191438 -0.48117020 -0.0352633
 [4,] -0.55080515 -1.0620243 -0.51383557  0.3161907
 [5,] -0.56808769 -0.3696951  0.35549191  0.3202675
 [6,] -0.25043479 -1.0389393  0.07810902  0.5251606
 [7,] -0.41667318  0.8809541 -0.04613332 -1.1586756
 [8,] -0.06898363 -1.0736161  0.62698065 -1.0373835
 [9,]  0.30051583 -0.2936140  0.31417921 -1.4155193
[10,] -0.68180034 -1.0789745  0.58290920 -1.0197956

You can test for sufficient observations using complete.cases(x), where that value must be at least k.

One way to overcome this problem is to relax your requirements (i.e. less incomplete rows), by 1) increasing the NA threshold, or alternatively, 2) increasing your number of observations.

Here is the first:

> x = matrix(rnorm(100),10,10)
> x.missing = x > 2
> x[x.missing] = NA
> complete.cases(x)
 [1]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE
> knnImputation(x,k=3)
             [,1]       [,2]       [,3]       [,4]        [,5]       [,6]       [,7]        [,8]        [,9]       [,10]
 [1,]  0.86882569 -0.2409922  0.3859031  0.5818927 -1.50310330  0.8752261 -0.5173105 -2.18244988 -0.28817656 -0.63941237
 [2,]  1.54114079  0.7227511  0.7856277  0.8512048 -1.32442954 -2.1668744  0.7017532 -0.40086348 -0.41251883  0.42924986
 [3,]  0.60062917 -0.5955623  0.6192783 -0.3836310  0.06871570  1.7804657  0.5965411 -1.62625036  1.27706937  0.72860273
 [4,] -0.07328279 -0.1738157  1.4965579 -1.1686115 -0.06954318 -1.0171604 -0.3283916  0.63493884  0.72039689 -0.20889111
 [5,]  0.78747874 -0.8607320  0.4828322  0.6558960 -0.22064430  0.2001473  0.7725701  0.06155196  0.09011719 -1.01902968
 [6,]  0.17988720 -0.8520000 -0.5911523  1.8100573 -0.56108621  0.0151522 -0.2484345 -0.80695513 -0.18532984 -1.75115335
 [7,]  1.03943492  0.4880532 -2.7588922 -0.1336166 -1.28424057  1.2871333  0.7595750 -0.55615677 -1.67765572 -0.05440992
 [8,]  1.12394474  1.4890366 -1.6034648 -1.4315445 -0.23052386 -0.3536677 -0.8694188 -0.53689507 -1.11510406 -1.39108817
 [9,] -0.30393916  0.6216156  0.1559639  1.2297105 -0.29439390  1.8224512 -0.4457441 -0.32814665  0.55487894 -0.22602598
[10,]  1.18424722 -0.1816049 -2.2975095 -0.7537477  0.86647524 -0.8710603  0.3351710 -0.79632184 -0.56254688 -0.77449398
> x
             [,1]       [,2]       [,3]       [,4]       [,5]       [,6]       [,7]        [,8]        [,9]       [,10]
 [1,]  0.86882569 -0.2409922  0.3859031  0.5818927 -1.5031033  0.8752261 -0.5173105 -2.18244988 -0.28817656 -0.63941237
 [2,]  1.54114079  0.7227511  0.7856277  0.8512048 -1.3244295 -2.1668744  0.7017532 -0.40086348 -0.41251883  0.42924986
 [3,]  0.60062917 -0.5955623  0.6192783 -0.3836310  0.0687157  1.7804657  0.5965411 -1.62625036  1.27706937  0.72860273
 [4,] -0.07328279 -0.1738157  1.4965579 -1.1686115         NA -1.0171604 -0.3283916  0.63493884  0.72039689 -0.20889111
 [5,]  0.78747874 -0.8607320  0.4828322         NA -0.2206443  0.2001473  0.7725701  0.06155196  0.09011719 -1.01902968
 [6,]  0.17988720 -0.8520000 -0.5911523  1.8100573 -0.5610862  0.0151522 -0.2484345 -0.80695513 -0.18532984 -1.75115335
 [7,]  1.03943492  0.4880532 -2.7588922 -0.1336166 -1.2842406  1.2871333  0.7595750 -0.55615677 -1.67765572 -0.05440992
 [8,]  1.12394474  1.4890366 -1.6034648 -1.4315445 -0.2305239 -0.3536677 -0.8694188 -0.53689507 -1.11510406 -1.39108817
 [9,] -0.30393916  0.6216156  0.1559639  1.2297105 -0.2943939  1.8224512 -0.4457441 -0.32814665  0.55487894 -0.22602598
[10,]  1.18424722 -0.1816049 -2.2975095 -0.7537477  0.8664752 -0.8710603  0.3351710 -0.79632184 -0.56254688 -0.77449398

here is an example of the 2nd...

x = matrix(rnorm(1000),100,10)
x.missing = x > 1
x[x.missing] = NA

complete.cases(x)

  [1]  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
 [22] FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
 [43]  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
 [64] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE
 [85] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE

At least k=3 complete rows are satisfied, thus it is able to impute for k=3.

> head(knnImputation(x,k=3))
            [,1]       [,2]       [,3]       [,4]       [,5]       [,6]       [,7]       [,8]        [,9]       [,10]
[1,]  0.01817557 -2.8141502  0.3929944  0.1495092 -1.7218396  0.4159133 -0.8438809  0.6599224 -0.02451113 -1.14541016
[2,]  0.51969964 -0.4976021 -0.1495392 -0.6448184 -0.6066386 -1.6210476 -0.3118440  0.2477855 -0.30986749  0.32424673
...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Solved – Dealing with lots of ties in kNN model

Solved – KNN imputation R packages

Related Question