5th Feb, 2014
Industry
Question
Asked 2nd Feb, 2014
What does the warning message "1: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)" mean?
** Package ade4, command dist.binary
I would like to estimate the genetic distance using simple matching approach "Simple matching coefficient of Sokal & Michener (1958)"
My file name is snp and I run the command as follow
snp
for (i in 1:10) {
d <- dist.binary(snp, method = 2)
cat(attr(d, "2"), is.euclid(d), "\n")}
and the results were
> for (i in 1:10) {
+ d <- dist.binary(snp, method = 2)
+ cat(attr(d, "2"), is.euclid(d), "\n")}
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
TRUE
Warning messages:
1: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
2: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
3: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
4: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
5: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
6: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
7: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
8: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
9: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
10: In is.euclid(d) : Zero distance(s)
I would like to ask you,
1- what does the warning message mean?
I would like to be sure that I correctly deal with missing values.
2- How can I deal with missing values?
Popular answers (1)
The warning message means that there is at least a Zero distance in your d distance matrix. This should be caused by at least two identical rows in your snp matrix (so the distance between them is equal to 0). In fact, the warning is given by the is.euclid() function and just is there to inform you that have two identical rows (and maybe you want to simplify them).
This is an example:
# ALL ROWS DIFFERENT - No warning
> snp <- matrix(c(1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] 1 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
1 2
2 0.7071068
3 0.5000000 0.5000000
> is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method=2))
[1] TRUE
#ROWS 1 AND · IDENTICAL - Warning
> snp <- matrix(c(0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] 0 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
1 2
2 0.5
3 0.0 0.5
> is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method=2))
[1] TRUE
Warning message:
In is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method = 2)) : Zero distance(s)
By other way, dist.binary doesn't allow for missing values as it only accepts FALSE(0)/TRUE(any positive integer) binary values. If you try to add any NA (missing value) it yields an error:
> snp <- matrix(c(NA,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] NA 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
Error in if (any(df < 0)) stop("non negative value expected in df") :
missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
Please note that in you example code you are doing the same thing in the 10 iterations of the for loop. I think that code is adapted from the example given in the dist.binary vignette where the loop is intended to show the outcome for all the 10 methods. So, you should use method=i instead of method=2:
d <- dist.binary(snp, method = 2)
I hope this answers your question.
7 Recommendations
All Answers (2)
I am not sure why you are running a "for" loop since it looks like you are simply performing the same calculation ten times. I am guessing the error meant that something went wrong at the dist.binary stage and produced a dist object d that is empty. Have you looked at the contents of the R object "snp" to make sure your data was imported correctly? Have you looked at the contents of the object "d" to make sure that dist.binary did what was expected?
The warning message means that there is at least a Zero distance in your d distance matrix. This should be caused by at least two identical rows in your snp matrix (so the distance between them is equal to 0). In fact, the warning is given by the is.euclid() function and just is there to inform you that have two identical rows (and maybe you want to simplify them).
This is an example:
# ALL ROWS DIFFERENT - No warning
> snp <- matrix(c(1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] 1 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
1 2
2 0.7071068
3 0.5000000 0.5000000
> is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method=2))
[1] TRUE
#ROWS 1 AND · IDENTICAL - Warning
> snp <- matrix(c(0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] 0 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
1 2
2 0.5
3 0.0 0.5
> is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method=2))
[1] TRUE
Warning message:
In is.euclid(dist.binary(snp, method = 2)) : Zero distance(s)
By other way, dist.binary doesn't allow for missing values as it only accepts FALSE(0)/TRUE(any positive integer) binary values. If you try to add any NA (missing value) it yields an error:
> snp <- matrix(c(NA,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1), nrow=3)
> snp
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,] NA 0 1 1
[2,] 0 0 1 0
[3,] 0 0 1 1
> dist.binary(snp, method=2)
Error in if (any(df < 0)) stop("non negative value expected in df") :
missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
Please note that in you example code you are doing the same thing in the 10 iterations of the for loop. I think that code is adapted from the example given in the dist.binary vignette where the loop is intended to show the outcome for all the 10 methods. So, you should use method=i instead of method=2:
d <- dist.binary(snp, method = 2)
I hope this answers your question.
7 Recommendations
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