# An example: LASSO regression using glmnet for binary outcome

I am starting to dabble with the use of glmnet with LASSO Regression where my outcome of interest is dichotomous. I have created a small mock data frame below:

age     <- c(4, 8, 7, 12, 6, 9, 10, 14, 7)
gender  <- c(1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0)
bmi_p   <- c(0.86, 0.45, 0.99, 0.84, 0.85, 0.67, 0.91, 0.29, 0.88)
m_edu   <- c(0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1)
p_edu   <- c(0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0)
f_color <- c("blue", "blue", "yellow", "red", "red", "yellow", "yellow",
"red", "yellow")
asthma  <- c(1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1)
# df is a data frame for further use!
df <- data.frame(age, gender, bmi_p, m_edu, p_edu, f_color, asthma)


The columns (variables) in the above dataset are as follows:

• age (age of child in years) - continuous
• gender - binary (1 = male; 0 = female)
• bmi_p (BMI percentile) - continuous
• m_edu (mother highest education level) - ordinal (0 = less than high school; 1 = high school diploma; 2 = bachelors degree; 3 = post-baccalaureate degree)
• p_edu (father highest education level) - ordinal (same as m_edu)
• f_color (favorite primary color) - nominal ("blue", "red", or "yellow")
• asthma (child asthma status) - binary (1 = asthma; 0 = no asthma)

The goal of this example is to make use of LASSO to create a model predicting child asthma status from the list of 6 potential predictor variables (age, gender, bmi_p, m_edu, p_edu, and f_color). Obviously the sample size is an issue here, but I am hoping to gain more insight into how to handle the different types of variables (i.e., continuous, ordinal, nominal, and binary) within the glmnet framework when the outcome is binary (1 = asthma; 0 = no asthma).

As such, would anyone being willing to provide a sample R script along with explanations for this mock example using LASSO with the above data to predict asthma status? Although very basic, I know I, and likely many others on CV, would greatly appreciate this!

• You might get more luck if you posted the data as a dput of an actual R object; don't make readers put frosting on top as well as bake you a cake!. If you generate the appropriate data frame in R, say foo, then edit into the question the output of dput(foo). – Reinstate Monica - G. Simpson Oct 8 '13 at 17:17
• Thanks @GavinSimpson! I updated the post with a data frame so hopefully I get to eat some cake without frosting! :) – Matt Reichenbach Oct 8 '13 at 17:47
• By using BMI percentile you are in a sense defying the laws of physics. Obesity affects individuals according to physical measurements (lengths, volumes, weight) not according to how many individuals are similar to the current subject, which is what percentiling is doing. – Frank Harrell Oct 8 '13 at 19:43
• I agree, BMI percentile is not a metric that I prefer to use; however, CDC guidelines recommends using BMI percentile over BMI (also a highly questionable metric!) for children and adolescents less than 20 years old as it takes into account age and gender in addition to height and weight. All of these variables and data values were thought up entirely for this example. This example does not reflect any of of my current work as I work with big data. I just wanted to see an example of glmnet in action with a binary outcome. – Matt Reichenbach Oct 8 '13 at 19:58
• Plug here for a package by Patrick Breheny called ncvreg which fits linear and logistic regression models penalized by MCP, SCAD, or LASSO. (cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ncvreg/index.html) – bdeonovic Oct 8 '13 at 21:12

library(glmnet)

age     <- c(4, 8, 7, 12, 6, 9, 10, 14, 7)
gender  <- as.factor(c(1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0))
bmi_p   <- c(0.86, 0.45, 0.99, 0.84, 0.85, 0.67, 0.91, 0.29, 0.88)
m_edu   <- as.factor(c(0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1))
p_edu   <- as.factor(c(0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0))
f_color <- as.factor(c("blue", "blue", "yellow", "red", "red", "yellow",
"yellow", "red", "yellow"))
asthma <- c(1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1)

xfactors <- model.matrix(asthma ~ gender + m_edu + p_edu + f_color)[, -1]
x        <- as.matrix(data.frame(age, bmi_p, xfactors))

# Note alpha=1 for lasso only and can blend with ridge penalty down to
# alpha=0 ridge only.
glmmod <- glmnet(x, y=as.factor(asthma), alpha=1, family="binomial")

# Plot variable coefficients vs. shrinkage parameter lambda.
plot(glmmod, xvar="lambda")


Categorical variables are usually first transformed into factors, then a dummy variable matrix of predictors is created and along with the continuous predictors, is passed to the model. Keep in mind, glmnet uses both ridge and lasso penalties, but can be set to either alone.

Some results:

# Model shown for lambda up to first 3 selected variables.
# Lambda can have manual tuning grid for wider range.

glmmod
# Call:  glmnet(x = x, y = as.factor(asthma), family = "binomial", alpha = 1)
#
#        Df    %Dev   Lambda
#   [1,]  0 0.00000 0.273300
#   [2,]  1 0.01955 0.260900
#   [3,]  1 0.03737 0.249000
#   [4,]  1 0.05362 0.237700
#   [5,]  1 0.06847 0.226900
#   [6,]  1 0.08204 0.216600
#   [7,]  1 0.09445 0.206700
#   [8,]  1 0.10580 0.197300
#   [9,]  1 0.11620 0.188400
#  [10,]  3 0.13120 0.179800
#  [11,]  3 0.15390 0.171600
# ...


Coefficients can be extracted from the glmmod. Here shown with 3 variables selected.

coef(glmmod)[, 10]
#   (Intercept)           age         bmi_p       gender1        m_edu1
#    0.59445647    0.00000000    0.00000000   -0.01893607    0.00000000
#        m_edu2        m_edu3        p_edu2        p_edu3    f_colorred
#    0.00000000    0.00000000   -0.01882883    0.00000000    0.00000000
# f_coloryellow
#   -0.77207831


Lastly, cross validation can also be used to select lambda.

cv.glmmod <- cv.glmnet(x, y=asthma, alpha=1)
plot(cv.glmmod)


(best.lambda <- cv.glmmod\$lambda.min)
# [1] 0.2732972

• this is exactly what I was looking for +1, the only questions I have are 1) what can you do with the cross validation lambda of 0.2732972? and 2) From the glmmod, are the selected variables favorite color (yellow), gender, and father's education (bachelor's degree)? Thanks so much! – Matt Reichenbach Oct 9 '13 at 14:21
• 1) Cross validation is used to choose lambda and coefficients (at min error). In this mockup, there is no local min (there was a warning also related to too few obs); I would interpret that all coefficients were shrunk to zero with the shrinkage penalties (best model has only intercept) and re-run with more (real) observations and maybe increase lambda range. 2) Yes, in the example where I chose coef(glmmod)[,10]... you choose lambda for the model via CV or interpretation of results. Could you mark as solved if you felt I solved your question? thanks. – pat Oct 9 '13 at 22:09
• Can I ask how this handles the f_color variable? Is factor level 1 to 4 considered a larger step that 1 to 2, or are these all equally weighted, non-directional, and categorical? (I want to apply it to an analysis with all unordered predictors.) – beroe May 12 '14 at 20:41
• The line xfactors <- model.matrix(asthma ~ gender + m_edu + p_edu + f_color)[,-1] codes the categorical variable f_color (as declared by as.factor in the previous lines). It should use the default R dummy variable coding, unless the contrasts.arg argument is supplied. This means all the levels of f_color are equally weighted and non directional, except for the first one which is used as the reference class and absorbed into the intercept. – Alex Oct 27 '15 at 5:16
• @Alex wouldn't model.matrix(asthma ~ gender + m_edu + p_edu + f_color + age + bmi_p)[, -1] give the same result as the two lines above? Why use an extra step to concatenate the continuous variables with data.frame ? – jiggunjer Jun 13 '19 at 9:31

I will use the package enet since that is my preffered method. It is a little more flexible.

install.packages('elasticnet')
library(elasticnet)

age <- c(4,8,7,12,6,9,10,14,7)
gender <- c(1,0,1,1,1,0,1,0,0)
bmi_p <- c(0.86,0.45,0.99,0.84,0.85,0.67,0.91,0.29,0.88)
m_edu <- c(0,1,1,2,2,3,2,0,1)
p_edu <- c(0,2,2,2,2,3,2,0,0)
#f_color <- c("blue", "blue", "yellow", "red", "red", "yellow", "yellow", "red", "yellow")
f_color <- c(0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1)
asthma <- c(1,1,0,1,0,0,0,1,1)
pred <- cbind(age, gender, bmi_p, m_edu, p_edu, f_color)

enet(x=pred, y=asthma, lambda=0)

• thanks for sharing elasticnet; however, I do not know what to make of the output from the above R script. Can you please clarify? Thanks in advance! – Matt Reichenbach Oct 9 '13 at 14:29

Just to expand on the excellent example provided by pat. The original problem posed ordinal variables (m_edu, p_edu), with an inherent order between levels (0 < 1 < 2 < 3). In pat's original answer I think these were treated as nominal categorical variables with no order between them. I may be wrong, but I believe these variables should be coded such that the model respects their inherent order. If these are coded as ordered factors (rather than as unordered factors as in pat's answer) then glmnet gives slightly different results... I think the code below correctly includes the ordinal variables as ordered factors, and it gives slightly different results:

library(glmnet)

age     <- c(4, 8, 7, 12, 6, 9, 10, 14, 7)
gender  <- as.factor(c(1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0))
bmi_p   <- c(0.86, 0.45, 0.99, 0.84, 0.85, 0.67, 0.91, 0.29, 0.88)
m_edu   <- factor(c(0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1),
ordered = TRUE)
p_edu   <- factor(c(0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0),
levels = c(0, 1, 2, 3),
ordered = TRUE)
f_color <- as.factor(c("blue", "blue", "yellow", "red", "red",
"yellow", "yellow", "red", "yellow"))
asthma <- c(1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1)

xfactors <- model.matrix(asthma ~ gender + m_edu + p_edu + f_color)[, -1]
x        <- as.matrix(data.frame(age, bmi_p, xfactors))

# Note alpha=1 for lasso only and can blend with ridge penalty down to
# alpha=0 ridge only.
glmmod <- glmnet(x, y=as.factor(asthma), alpha=1, family="binomial")

# Plot variable coefficients vs. shrinkage parameter lambda.
plot(glmmod, xvar="lambda")


• sometimes_sci, good catch - this would be the more appropriate way to model the education level variables. Thank you for your contribution. – Matt Reichenbach Apr 28 '18 at 15:53
• how would one add a plot legend for the variables? E.g. what is the red line in this example? – jiggunjer Jun 13 '19 at 6:50