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fabricatr 2.0.0 is a rewrite of the package on dplyr, tibble, purrr,
and rlang, with the same exported functions as 1.0.2. The vignette
vignette("fabricatr2.0") walks through every difference;
the list below is the summary.
fabricate() returns a tibble where 1.0.2 returned a
plain data frame. The columns, their order, their types, and their
values are unchanged, and a tibble is a data frame, so anything that
accepts one still works. Two things differ for a caller:
identical() against a plain data frame is now
FALSE, and df[, "Y"] returns a one-column
tibble rather than dropping to a vector. df$Y and
df[["Y"]] are unchanged.
N is supplied by name.
fabricate(100, Y = rnorm(N)) was read as
N = 100 in 1.x and is now an error whose message says to
write fabricate(N = 100, Y = rnorm(N)).
Every expression passed to fabricate() or to a level
needs a name. An unnamed one, fabricate(N = 5, rnorm(N)),
is an error naming its position; 1.x failed on it with an internal
indexing error.
link_levels() is
link_levels(N, .by, ..., rho = 0, sigma = NULL).
rho and sigma sit behind the dots, so they
must be named and a column called r or s is no
longer partially matched into them. In 1.x they were arguments of
join_using().
draw_normal_icc() and draw_binary_icc()
take clusters first:
draw_normal_icc(clusters, ICC, mean, sd, sd_between, total_sd, N)
and draw_binary_icc(clusters, prob, ICC, N). Positional
calls written for 1.x’s order (mean, N, clusters, ... and
prob, N, clusters, ICC) need names.
draw_ordered() requires breaks; 1.x
defaulted it to c(-1, 0, 1).
draw_likert(breaks = ) reads interior cut-points, as
draw_ordered(breaks = ) does, so
draw_likert(x, breaks = c(-1, 0, 1)) gives four categories
where 1.0.2 gave two. 1.0.2 handed breaks to
cut(), which reads the vector as the full set of bin
boundaries and sends every value outside it to NA: on 200
draws from rnorm() the same call returned two categories
and 53 NA. draw_likert() is a convenience
wrapper around draw_ordered(), and in 1.0.2 the two read
the same argument name in two different ways, since
draw_ordered(x, breaks = c(-1, 0, 1)) gives four categories
in 1.0.2 and in 2.0 alike. To ask for bin boundaries, say so:
draw_ordered(x, breaks = c(-1, 0, 1), strict = TRUE)
returns 1.0.2’s two categories and its 53 NA.
draw_likert(min = , max = , bins = ) puts values
outside [min, max] in the outermost bins rather than
returning NA for them. min and
max declare the range the latent variable is cut on, not a
filter, and 1.0.2’s NA was missing data in a Likert item
that nothing reported:
draw_likert(x, min = -3, max = 3, bins = 5) on 200 draws
from rnorm() returned one. A value exactly equal to
min was NA too, because cut()
leaves its lowest boundary open. The same recipe recovers 1.0.2 exactly:
draw_ordered(x, breaks = seq(min, max, length.out = bins + 1), strict = TRUE).
draw_likert() returns integer codes where 1.0.2
returned doubles, which it got by passing cut()’s factor
through as.numeric(). The codes are the same numbers, so
only identical() and typeof() see the
difference. draw_ordered() returned integer codes in 1.0.2
and still does.
draw_categorical() drops latent and
link, which 1.x accepted but rejected for any link other
than identity.
total_sd in draw_normal_icc() is a
parameter of the draw rather than a rescaling of the finished vector, so
the realised sd() varies from draw to draw as any sample
statistic does. The same call gives different numbers than 1.x
(fabricatr#133).
modify_level() named after a level above the current
one, regions = modify_level(z = rnorm(N)) after a
cities level, evaluates once per region as 1.x does, and
then keeps the cities. 1.x returned the regions frame alone, dropping
the nested rows.
reveal_outcomes() keeps the type of the potential
outcomes it reads. A factor reveals as a factor with its levels and
their order intact, and a Date as a Date. 1.x
selected the revealed value by matrix-indexing, which rendered both as
character: an outcome declared lo < mid < hi came
back as character, so re-factoring it ordered the levels alphabetically
as hi < lo < mid and a model fitted on it used the
wrong baseline in silence. Where the conditions do not agree on one set
of factor levels there are none to keep, so the result is character and
a warning says so. This is a deliberate break with 1.0.2.
potential_outcomes() names its columns exactly as
<outcome><sep><var><sep><value>
builds them, as its documentation always said, even where the result is
not a syntactic R name. 1.0.2 passed the columns through
as.data.frame(), whose name check rewrote any character R
does not allow in a bare name to .: a negative condition’s
Y_Z_-1 came out as Y_Z_.1, a condition
"b c" as Y_Z_b.c, and every column under
sep = "-" as Y.Z.0. Code that read one of
those rewritten names, say an inquiry mean(Y_Z_1 - Y_Z_.1),
must now write the name as built, mean(Y_Z_1 - `Y_Z_-1`) or
.data[["Y_Z_-1"]]. A design whose conditions and
sep are all syntactic, such as the default
Z = c(0, 1) with "_" or character conditions
like "control" and "treat", names its columns
as before. The rewritten names were also the reason
reveal_outcomes() could not reveal those designs; see the
fix below.
fabricatr does not promise that a given seed produces the same fabricated data in 2.0 as it did in 1.x, and two things here land at a different point in the random number stream. The distribution each one draws from is unchanged; only the position moves. This is deliberate: fabricatr invents data to stand in for data you do not have, so which particular draw you got is not a finding. Contrast randomizr, where the draw assigns real units to real treatments and is therefore part of the result, and whose stream does not move across versions. What 2.0 does promise is that it gives the same numbers as itself on every machine, which 1.x could not.
If a saved analysis draws its data through fabricate()
under a stored seed, expect its numbers to move; re-run it and store the
new ones.
link_levels() with rho or
sigma takes one draw path, chol() on the
correlation matrix, on every machine. 1.x used
mvnfast::rmvn() when that package was installed, and passed
it a core count, so its numbers depended on both. Without
mvnfast installed, 1.x and 2.0 agree exactly.
fabricate(data = df, ...) no longer advances the
stream before evaluating your first column. 1.x named the workspace slot
it put df into with
sample.int(.Machine$integer.max, 1), which costs exactly
two uniforms, so every 1.x call starting from data began two draws
in.
Each of these is accepted and warns once per call site with the call to write instead.
add_level(..., nest = FALSE) is
declare_level(...), and nest = TRUE is
add_level(...).
cross_levels(by = join_using(A, B)) and
link_levels(by = join_using(A, B)) are
.by = c("A", "B"). A rho inside
join_using() is carried through to
link_levels(rho = ). R will not partial-match a supplied
by = to a formal named .by, so
.by is left unfilled and R binds the first unnamed
argument to it positionally:
cross_levels(by = join_using(A, B), potential_outcomes(Y ~ Z))
put the potential outcomes in .by, where the shim discarded
them without a warning and the design ran on without its potential
outcomes. The displaced argument is now put back where the author wrote
it, so the two spellings of such a call return the same data.
modify_level(..., by = "g") is
modify_level(..., .by = "g").
draw_ordered(break_labels = ) and
draw_categorical(category_labels = ) are
labels =.
join_using() and recycle() are kept so
that 1.x code runs; neither is needed in new code.
declare_level() builds an independent level for
cross_levels() and link_levels(), replacing
add_level(nest = FALSE).
import_level() brings an existing data frame into a
fabricate() call as a level of its own, so two real data
sets can be crossed or linked (fabricatr#165). The level’s ID is the
frame’s own key: a column named after the level is used as it stands,
the way a join matches on a shared name, .id names one that
is called something else, and a frame with no key of its own gets
numbered rows. An imported key keeps its own type and values, so it
still matches the data it came from, and a key with a repeated or
missing value is refused. add_level(data = df), the
spelling the issue was filed on and one that has never imported anything
in either version, now fails with a message naming
import_level(). A column called N is refused,
because N is the row count in every expression a level
evaluates and the column would leave the frame in silence;
fabricate(data = ) evaluates nothing at a level and still
keeps it.
fabricate_with_dots() is exported. It takes an
already-captured list of quosures and builds what
fabricate() would have built from the same expressions,
which is what a package whose own verbs capture their arguments needs:
splicing captures back through !!! renders them as formulas
and fabricate() captures those again, one level too deep.
It existed as an internal in 2.0’s development and DeclareDesign reached
it with :::, which made the boundary between the two
packages depend on nothing but the two of them sharing a maintainer,
since R CMD check suppresses the unexported-object NOTE in
that case alone.
n() inside any declaration is the number of rows the
level is building, the same count N names, as a function
call that cannot be confused with a parameter of the design.
Level calls and ordinary columns can be mixed in one
fabricate() call. 1.x required all of the arguments to be
level calls or none of them.
modify_level(.by = ) groups the rows in hand by a
column before evaluating, on flat data as well as on levels.
ID_label = NA suppresses the unit ID column, leaving
the rows it would have numbered. 1.x accepted the argument and then
failed with an indexing error, so there was no way to ask for a frame
without one.
draw_ordered(), draw_likert(), and
draw_categorical() take labels.
draw_ordered() and draw_likert() return an
ordered factor when it is given, and draw_categorical() an
unordered one, as in 1.x.
draw_likert() reports the number of categories a
manual breaks vector produces when labels does
not match it, rather than failing inside cut().
draw_normal_icc() accepts any two of
ICC, sd, sd_between, and
total_sd, and the full ICC range including 0
and 1 (fabricatr#149).
draw_count() takes dispersion for
overdispersed counts. The default 0 is the Poisson draw it has always
made, on the same random number stream. A positive value draws from the
negative binomial with the same mean and variance
mean + dispersion * mean^2, the parameterization of Stata’s
nbreg and the reciprocal of MASS::glm.nb()’s
theta. The link, the latent scale, and
quantile_y work as before, so an overdispersed count can be
correlated with another variable through
correlate().
draw_normal_ar() draws an AR(1) process inside each
unit of a panel, the serially correlated errors that make unclustered
standard errors wrong in difference-in-differences. Each unit’s series
starts at its stationary distribution, so every period has the same
variance, and a gap in time decays the correlation as
rho raised to the gap, so an unbalanced panel needs no
special handling. time may be the character ID that
cross_levels() gives a level, or a Date, read
in days. sd is the standard deviation of the process in
each period, not of each period’s new shock as in
stats::arima.sim(), so changing rho leaves the
variance where it was. Binary and count outcomes with the same
persistence come from passing the draw on as latent or
quantile_y.
correlate() works with base R random number
generators such as rnorm(), not only the
draw_* family.
link_levels() validates sigma: wrong
dimensions, entries outside [-1, 1], asymmetry, and a
matrix that is not positive semi-definite are errors rather than a
silently uncorrelated draw.
A matrix-valued column is split into X.1,
X.2, … as it is stored, so a later expression can read
X.1 (fabricatr#188).
draw_binary_icc() pairs each cluster with its own
probability when prob has one value per unit, and errors
when a cluster’s probabilities disagree (fabricatr#189).
fabricate(N = 2.5) and N = 0 are
errors, as in 1.0.2, rather than a silently truncated row
count.
fabricate(data = df, N = 10) is an error: the data
fix the number of rows.
draw_quantile() returns an unordered factor, as 1.x
does, so a model formula picks treatment contrasts rather than
polynomial ones.
draw_ordered() numbers its categories from 1
whatever breaks looks like. An infinite endpoint bounds the
scale rather than cutting it, so c(-Inf, 0, Inf) gives the
same two categories as 0, and strict = TRUE
drops the open end categories instead of leaving them empty and
unreachable. 1.0.2 reads the lower end the same way but applies the same
test to a trailing Inf, so c(-1, 0, Inf) came
back 0-based; only the lower end decides, since
findInterval() returns 0 for a value below the first break
and nothing else. labels now takes one label per category
that can occur, which is length(breaks) + 1 for interior
cut-points and one fewer for each infinite endpoint.
draw_likert(labels = ) attaches each label to its
own category. 1.0.2 built the factor with
levels = unique(x_ret), the order the categories happen to
appear in the data rather than their sorted order, so each label landed
on whichever category turned up first:
draw_likert(c(2.5, 1.5, 0, -1.5, -2.5), min = -3, max = 3, bins = 5, labels = c("SD", "D", "N", "A", "SA"))
labelled the highest value SD and the lowest
SA, inverting the scale in silence. When fewer than
bins categories occurred it failed outright, with
invalid 'labels'; length 5 should be 1 or 3 raised from
inside factor().
resample_data(unique_labels = TRUE) builds labels
matching 1.x column for column.
ID columns are zero-padded character strings at every level, padded to the number of units at that level, as in 1.x.
An NA in given propagates to the result
of correlate() rather than being absorbed into it.
rank() puts an NA last by default, so 1.0.2
gave the missing value the highest rank and drew a correspondingly
extreme value to match: the returned vector held no NA
anywhere and the missingness read as a real observation. The observed
values are now ranked among themselves and each NA comes
back as an NA.
Argument validation names the argument and the function rather
than failing inside a comparison. An NA supplied as
rho to correlate(), as prob or
N to draw_categorical(), as ICC
to draw_binary_icc(), or as min,
max, or bins to draw_likert()
reached an if() still NA and raised R’s own
missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed, which names neither.
A fractional type in split_quantile() and
draw_quantile() is an error rather than
number of intervals and length of 'labels' differ raised
from inside cut().
modify_level(.by = ) names the argument when it is
not a column name. .by is an ordinary argument, so a bare
column name evaluates to the column and arrives as a vector, while the
1.x spelling by = is captured unevaluated and does take a
bare name: the two differ, and
modify_level(m = mean(Y), .by = g) reached the subscript
and failed there with no such index at level 1. A column
name that is not in view gave argument 1 is not a vector,
two names gave subscript out of bounds, and a number
silently grouped by whichever column came first.
cross_levels() and link_levels() already named
their function and their .by.
An unrecognised link in draw_binary()
reports draw_binary(). It delegates to
draw_binomial(), which validated the name under its own
label, so the error named a function the caller had not written. 1.0.2
named no function at all and listed a set of valid links that omitted
logistic.
Crossing or linking a level with one it is nested inside is
refused with a message naming the shared columns.
add_level() nests, so the second level’s entry carries the
first’s columns, and joining the two duplicated them: the call failed
several steps later on a name-uniqueness check that named neither level.
1.0.2 refuses the same call, saying the level name is ambiguous. Two
independent levels that happen to define the same column name are
refused on the same grounds.
reveal_outcomes() reveals every design
potential_outcomes() builds. It takes sep,
defaulting to "_" as potential_outcomes()
does; 1.0.2 always rebuilt the column name with "_", so
potential_outcomes(Y ~ Z, sep = ".") could not be revealed
and failed with object 'Y_Z_0' not found. A negative or
otherwise non-syntactic condition failed twice over in 1.0.2:
potential_outcomes() rewrote the column’s name (see
Breaking changes), and reveal_outcomes() pasted the name it
wanted into code to evaluate, where Y_Z_-1 parses as a
subtraction and failed with object 'Y_Z_' not found. It now
reads each column by name from the data. Inside fabricate()
or a dplyr verb it reads through the .data pronoun, which
sees only the data’s columns, so an object in the workspace that happens
to be named like a missing column cannot stand in for it. A column it
cannot find is reported by name with a pointer to
conditions and sep.
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.