LogRatio Regression – A Simple Way to Model Compositional Data

The compositional data are proportionals of mutually exclusive groups that would be summed up to the unity. Statistical models for compositional data have been applicable in a number of areas, e.g. the product or channel mix in the marketing research and asset allocations of a investment portfolio.

In the example below, I will show how to model compositional outcomes with a simple LogRatio regression. The underlying idea is very simple. With the D-dimension outcome [p_1, p_2…p_D], we can derive a [D-1]-dimension outcome [log(p_2 / p_1)…log(p_D / p_1)] and then estimate a multivariate regression based on the new outcome.

df = get("ArcticLake", envir = asNamespace('DirichletReg'))

#   sand  silt  clay depth
#1 0.775 0.195 0.030  10.4
#2 0.719 0.249 0.032  11.7
#3 0.507 0.361 0.132  12.8

lm(cbind(log(silt / sand), log(clay / sand)) ~ depth, data = df)

#Response log(silt/sand):
#Coefficients:
#             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
#(Intercept) -0.649656   0.236733  -2.744   0.0093 **
#depth        0.037522   0.004269   8.790 1.36e-10 ***
#
#Response log(clay/sand) :
#Coefficients:
#             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
#(Intercept) -2.614897   0.421383  -6.206 3.31e-07 ***
#depth        0.062181   0.007598   8.184 8.00e-10 ***

Since log(x / y) = log(x) – log(y), we can also estimate the model with log(sand) as an offset term.

lm(cbind(log(silt), log(clay)) ~ depth + offset(log(sand)), data = df)

#Response log(silt) :
#Coefficients:
#             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
#(Intercept) -0.649656   0.236733  -2.744   0.0093 **
#depth        0.037522   0.004269   8.790 1.36e-10 ***
#
#Response log(clay) :
#Coefficients:
#             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
#(Intercept) -2.614897   0.421383  -6.206 3.31e-07 ***
#depth        0.062181   0.007598   8.184 8.00e-10 ***

Alternatively, we can also use the comp.reg function in the Compositional package.

Compositional::comp.reg(as.matrix(df[, 1:3]), df[, 4])

#$be
#                   [,1]        [,2]
#(Intercept) -0.64965598 -2.61489731
#x            0.03752186  0.06218069
#
#$seb
#                   [,1]        [,2]
#(Intercept) 0.236733203 0.421382652
#x           0.004268588 0.007598043