trafo is a slot of class ParamFamParameter, which
in turn is a slot of class ParamFamily. It also sort of
arises in class Estimate, i.e., all slots can be identified
by the information contained in an instance thereof. trafo realizes partial influence curves; i.e.; we are only
interested in some possibly lower dimensional smooth (not necessarily
linear or even coordinate-wise) aspect/transformation $tau$
of the parameter $theta$.
To be coherent with the corresponding nuisance
implementation, we make the following convention:
The full parameter $theta$ is split up coordinate-wise
in a main parameter $theta'$ and a nuisance parameter
$theta''$ (which is unknown, too, hence has to be
estimated, but only is of secondary interest) and a fixed,
known part $theta'''$.
Without loss of generality, we restrict ourselves to the case that
transformation $tau$ only acts on the main parameter
$theta'$ --- if we want to transform the whole
parameter, we only have to assume that both nuisance parameter
$theta''$ and fixed, known part of the parameter
$theta'''$ have length 0.
To the implementation:
Slot trafo can either contain a (constant) matrix
$D_theta$ or a function
$$\tau\colon \Theta' \to \tilde \Theta,\qquad \theta \mapsto \tau(\theta)$$
mapping main parameter
$theta'$ to some range $TTheta$.
If slot value trafo is a function, besides $tau(theta)$,
it will also return the corresponding derivative matrix
$(d/d theta) (tau(theta))$.
More specifically, the return value of this function theta is a
list with entries fval, the function value $tau(theta)$,
and mat, the derivative matrix.
In case trafo is a matrix $D$, we interpret it as such a derivative
matrix $(d/d theta) (tau(theta))$,
and, correspondingly, $tau(theta)$ as the linear mapping
$tau(theta)=D * theta$.
According to the signature, method trafo will return different
return value types. For signature
Estimate,missing:- it will return a list with entries
fct, the function $tau$, and mat, the matrix
$(d/d theta) (tau(theta))$.
function $tau$ will then return the list list(fval, mat)
mentioned above.
Estimate,ParamFamParameter:as signature
Estimate,missing.
ParamFamParameter,missing:it will just return the
corresponding matrix.
ParamFamily,missing:is just wrapper to signature
ParamFamParameter,missing.
ParamFamily,ParamFamParameter:as signature
Estimate,missing.