compare_info_content: Information Content Comparison Table

Description

Used to quantify the amount of information loss, if any, which has occurred in a merging procedure between two discrete variables.

Usage

compare_info_content(input1, input2, composite)

Value

Table containing information content for input1 and

input2 and their mutual information content with composite.

Arguments

input1: Character vector. First variable to compare
input2: Character vector. Second variable to compare
composite: Character vector. Composite variable, resultant of merging input1 and input2.

Details

The function requires the two discrete variables which have been merged (input1 and input2) and the composite variable (output). For each input, information content is calculated using information_content_discrete along with each input's mutual information content with the composite variable using mi_content_discrete. The function returns a table describing these measures.

If the mutual information content between an input variable and the composite variable is equal to the information content of the input variable, it is confirmed that all information in the input variable has been incorporated into the composite variable. However, if one or both input variables' information content is not equal to their mutual information with the composite variables, information loss has occurred.

Examples

Run this code

data(example_data)
require(dplyr)
require(magrittr)
example_data %>%
   mutate(diabetes_merged = coalesce(diabetes_type, diabetes)) %>%
   select(starts_with("diabetes")) ->
   merged_data
   
compare_info_content(merged_data$diabetes,
                     merged_data$diabetes_type,
                     merged_data$diabetes_merged)