R devel - Mar 2010 - y ~ X -1 , X a matrix

While browsing some code I discovered a call to lm that used a formula y
~ X - 1, where X was a matrix.

Looking through the documentation of formula, lm, model.matrix and maybe
some others I couldn't find this useage (R 2.10.1).  Is it anything I
can count on in future versions?  Is there documentation I've
overlooked?

For the curious: model.frame on the above equation returns a data.frame
with 2 columns.  The second "column" is the whole X matrix.
model.matrix on that object returns the expected matrix, with the
transition from the odd model.frame to the regular matrix happening in
an .Internal call.

Thanks.
Ross

P.S. I would appreciate cc's, since mail problems are preventing me from
seeing list mail.

On 17-Mar-10 23:32:41, Ross Boylan wrote:
> While browsing some code I discovered a call to lm that used
> a formula y ~ X - 1, where X was a matrix.
> 
> Looking through the documentation of formula, lm, model.matrix
> and maybe some others I couldn't find this useage (R 2.10.1).
> Is it anything I can count on in future versions?  Is there
> documentation I've overlooked?
> 
> For the curious: model.frame on the above equation returns a
> data.frame with 2 columns.  The second "column" is the whole X
> matrix. model.matrix on that object returns the expected matrix,
> with the transition from the odd model.frame to the regular
> matrix happening in an .Internal call.
> 
> Thanks.
> Ross
> 
> P.S. I would appreciate cc's, since mail problems are preventing
> me from seeing list mail.
Hmmm ... I'm not sure what is the problem with what you describe.
Code:

  set.seed(54321)
  X  <- matrix(rnorm(50),ncol=2)
  Y  <- 1*X[,1] + 2*X[,2] + 0.25*rnorm(25)
  LM <- lm(Y ~ X-1)

  summary(LM)
  # Call:
  # lm(formula = Y ~ X - 1)
  # Residuals:
  #      Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 
  # -0.39942 -0.13143 -0.02249  0.11662  0.61661 
  # Coefficients:
  #    Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
  # X1  0.97707    0.04159   23.49   <2e-16 ***
  # X2  2.09152    0.06714   31.15   <2e-16 ***
  # ---
  # Signif. codes:  0 ?***? 0.001 ?**? 0.01 ?*? 0.05 ?.? 0.1 ? ? 1 
  # Residual standard error: 0.2658 on 23 degrees of freedom
  # Multiple R-squared: 0.9863,     Adjusted R-squared: 0.9851 
  # F-statistic: 826.6 on 2 and 23 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16 

  model.frame(LM)
  #              Y          X.1          X.2
  # 1   0.04936244 -0.178900750  0.051420078
  # 2  -0.54224173 -0.928044132 -0.027963292
  # [...]
  # 24  1.54196979  0.312332806  0.602009497
  # 25 -0.16928420 -1.285559427  0.394790358

  str(model.frame(LM))
  #  $ Y: num  0.0494 -0.5422 -0.7295 -3.4422 -3.1296 ...
  #  $ X: num [1:25, 1:2] -0.179 -0.928 -0.784 -1.651 -0.408 ...
  # [...]

  model.frame(Y ~ X-1)
  #              Y          X.1          X.2
  # 1   0.04936244 -0.178900750  0.051420078
  # 2  -0.54224173 -0.928044132 -0.027963292
  # [...]
  # 24  1.54196979  0.312332806  0.602009497
  # 25 -0.16928420 -1.285559427  0.394790358
  ## (Identical to above)

  str(model.frame(Y ~ X-1))
  # $ Y: num  0.0494 -0.5422 -0.7295 -3.4422 -3.1296 ...
  # $ X: num [1:25, 1:2] -0.179 -0.928 -0.784 -1.651 -0.408 ...
  # [...]
  ## (Identical to above)

Maybe the clue (admittedly somewhat obtuse( can be found in ?lm:

  lm(formula, data, subset, weights, na.action,
     method = "qr", model = TRUE, x = FALSE, y = FALSE, qr = TRUE,
     singular.ok = TRUE, contrasts = NULL, offset, ...)
  [...]

  data: an optional data frame, list or environment (or object
    coercible by 'as.data.frame' to a data frame) containing the
    variables in the model.  If not found in 'data', the variables
    are taken from 'environment(formula)', typically the
    environment from which ?lm? is called.

So, in the example the variables are taken from X, "coercible
by 'as.data.frame' ... taken from 'environment(formula)'".

Hence (I guess) X is found in the environment and is coerced
into a dataframe with 2 columns, and X.1, X.2 are taken from there.

R Gurus: Please comment! (I'm only guessing by plausibility).
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 18-Mar-10                                       Time: 00:57:20
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On 17 March 2010 at 16:32, Ross Boylan wrote:
| While browsing some code I discovered a call to lm that used a formula y
| ~ X - 1, where X was a matrix.
| 
| Looking through the documentation of formula, lm, model.matrix and maybe
| some others I couldn't find this useage (R 2.10.1).  Is it anything I
| can count on in future versions?  Is there documentation I've
| overlooked?
>From help(formula):
  Details:

       In addition to ?+? and ?:?, a number of other operators are useful
       in model formulae.  [...] The
       ?-? operator removes the specified terms, so that ?(a+b+c)^2 -
       a:b? is identical to ?a + b + c + b:c + a:c?.  It can also used to
       remove the intercept term: ?y ~ x - 1? is a line through the
       origin.  A model with no intercept can be also specified as ?y ~ x
       + 0? or ?y ~ 0 + x?.

What exactly are you questioning? That X is a matrix? That doesn't take
away from the fact that the rest is a formula.

Dirk

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