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Regularized MIMIC

Joshua Pritikin and Ross Jacobucci and Timothy R. Brick

2024-10-18

Regularized MIMIC model

This example uses the immortal Holzinger Swineford data set.

library(OpenMx)
data(HS.ability.data)

The OpenMx model looks like this:

HS.ability.data$ageym <- HS.ability.data$agey*12 + HS.ability.data$agem
HS.ability.data$male <- as.numeric(HS.ability.data$Gender == 'Male')

# Specify variables
indicators <- c('visual','cubes','paper','flags','paperrev','flagssub',
                'general','paragrap','sentence','wordc','wordm')
covariates <- c("male","ageym","grade")
latents = c("g", covariates)

# Build the model
mimicModel <- mxModel(
  "MIMIC", type="RAM",
  manifestVars = indicators, latentVars = latents,

  # Set up exogenous predictors
  mxPath("one", covariates, labels=paste0('data.',covariates), free=FALSE),

  # Fix factor variance
  mxPath('g', arrows=2, free=FALSE, values=1),

  # Error variances:
  mxPath(from=c(indicators), arrows=2, free=TRUE, values=10),

  # Means (saturated means model):
  mxPath(from="one", to=indicators, values=rep(5, length(indicators))),

  # Loadings:
  mxPath(from="g", to=indicators, values=.5),

  # Covariate paths
  mxPath(covariates, "g", labels=covariates),

  # Data
  mxData(observed = HS.ability.data, type = "raw"))

# Get some good starting values for regularization. This
# saves 2-3 minutes on my laptop.
mimicModel <- mxRun(mimicModel)
## Running MIMIC with 36 parameters

Add the penalty:

mimicModel <- mxModel(
  mimicModel,
  mxMatrix('Full',1,1,free=TRUE,values=0,labels="lambda",name="hparam"),
  # Set scale to ML estimates for adaptive lasso
  mxPenaltyLASSO(what=covariates, name="LASSO",
                    scale = coef(mimicModel)[covariates],
                    lambda =  0, lambda.max =2, lambda.step=.04)
)

Run the regularization. With only three covariates, the plot of results is not very exciting. We learn that sex is not a good predictor of this factor.

regMIMIC <- mxPenaltySearch(mimicModel)
## Running MIMIC with 37 parameters
## Warning: In model 'MIMIC' Optimizer returned a non-zero status code 6. The
## model does not satisfy the first-order optimality conditions to the required
## accuracy, and no improved point for the merit function could be found during
## the final linesearch (Mx status RED)
detail <- regMIMIC$compute$steps$PS$output$detail

library(reshape2)
library(ggplot2)

est <- detail[,c(covariates, 'lambda')]
ggplot(melt(est, id.vars = 'lambda')) +
  geom_line(aes(x=lambda, y=value, color=variable)) +
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept=coef(regMIMIC)['lambda']),
             linetype="dashed", alpha=.5)

The regularized factor loadings can be found here,

detail[detail$EBIC == min(detail$EBIC), covariates]
##           male       ageym   grade
## 36 3.47131e-07 -0.02792844 1.05808

The regularization causes a lot of bias. One way to deal with this is to fix zerod parameters to zero, discard the regularization penalty, and re-fit model.

regMIMIC <- mxPenaltyZap(regMIMIC)
## Zapping 'male'
## Fixing 'lambda'
## Tip: Use
##   model = mxRun(model)
## to re-estimate the model without any penalty terms.
regMIMIC <- mxRun(regMIMIC)
## Running MIMIC with 35 parameters
summary(regMIMIC)
## Summary of MIMIC 
##  
## free parameters:
##              name matrix      row      col    Estimate    Std.Error A
## 1   MIMIC.A[1,12]      A   visual        g  2.61817105  0.364534563  
## 2   MIMIC.A[2,12]      A    cubes        g  0.93494431  0.256319516  
## 3   MIMIC.A[3,12]      A    paper        g  0.70084534  0.152041063  
## 4   MIMIC.A[4,12]      A    flags        g  1.57350766  0.491472833  
## 5   MIMIC.A[5,12]      A paperrev        g  0.99009878  0.245139237  
## 6   MIMIC.A[6,12]      A flagssub        g  3.33341890  0.640099599  
## 7   MIMIC.A[7,12]      A  general        g  9.23702148  0.536672435  
## 8   MIMIC.A[8,12]      A paragrap        g  2.53491878  0.157363203  
## 9   MIMIC.A[9,12]      A sentence        g  3.96091981  0.222177321  
## 10 MIMIC.A[10,12]      A    wordc        g  3.80400361  0.259672047  
## 11 MIMIC.A[11,12]      A    wordm        g  5.73048049  0.341017122  
## 12          ageym      A        g    ageym -0.02870563  0.006555489  
## 13          grade      A        g    grade  1.08144524  0.254231626  
## 14   MIMIC.S[1,1]      S   visual   visual 40.27126690  3.353608721  
## 15   MIMIC.S[2,2]      S    cubes    cubes 21.00803790  1.722367953  
## 16   MIMIC.S[3,3]      S    paper    paper  7.36559558  0.608809830  
## 17   MIMIC.S[4,4]      S    flags    flags 78.47401958  6.431633936  
## 18   MIMIC.S[5,5]      S paperrev paperrev  8.35237950  0.994140216 !
## 19   MIMIC.S[6,6]      S flagssub flagssub 56.56099127  6.792986323 !
## 20   MIMIC.S[7,7]      S  general  general 45.64524978  4.802395106  
## 21   MIMIC.S[8,8]      S paragrap paragrap  4.06598043  0.402084154  
## 22   MIMIC.S[9,9]      S sentence sentence  6.80451135  0.748411144  
## 23 MIMIC.S[10,10]      S    wordc    wordc 13.88560859  1.287061820  
## 24 MIMIC.S[11,11]      S    wordm    wordm 17.27853485  1.792470269  
## 25   MIMIC.M[1,1]      M        1   visual 21.29330086  6.209523404  
## 26   MIMIC.M[1,2]      M        1    cubes 21.38063178  2.205532617  
## 27   MIMIC.M[1,3]      M        1    paper 12.00174339  1.658232981  
## 28   MIMIC.M[1,4]      M        1    flags 13.00225084  3.769860864  
## 29   MIMIC.M[1,5]      M        1 paperrev 12.12979740  2.407687991  
## 30   MIMIC.M[1,6]      M        1 flagssub 24.45761673  8.142001966  
## 31   MIMIC.M[1,7]      M        1  general 11.26661411 22.007072505  
## 32   MIMIC.M[1,8]      M        1 paragrap  1.12600697  5.976502615  
## 33   MIMIC.M[1,9]      M        1 sentence  4.77315869  9.408036586  
## 34  MIMIC.M[1,10]      M        1    wordc 14.03600332  9.016417574  
## 35  MIMIC.M[1,11]      M        1    wordm -2.91414936 13.552291066  
## 
## Model Statistics: 
##                |  Parameters  |  Degrees of Freedom  |  Fit (-2lnL units)
##        Model:             35                   2964              17843.68
##    Saturated:             77                   2922                    NA
## Independence:             22                   2977                    NA
## Number of observations/statistics: 301/2999
## 
## Information Criteria: 
##       |  df Penalty  |  Parameters Penalty  |  Sample-Size Adjusted
## AIC:     11915.6773               17913.68                 17923.19
## BIC:       927.8025               18043.43                 17932.43
## To get additional fit indices, see help(mxRefModels)
## timestamp: 2024-10-18 13:30:26 
## Wall clock time: 0.6433542 secs 
## optimizer:  SLSQP 
## OpenMx version number: 2.21.13 
## Need help?  See help(mxSummary)

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.