Design Principles for {epichains}

An R package for simulating, handling, and analysing transmission chains in R

This vignette outlines the design decisions that have been taken during the development of the epichains R package, and provides some of the reasoning, and possible pros and cons of each decision.

The goal here is to make it easy to acquaint oneself with the code base in the absence of the current maintainer. This will ease future contributions and maintenance of the package.

Scope

{epichains} aims to facilitate:

• Simulation of transmission chains using branching processes methods,
• Handling of transmission chains using objected-orientated design, and
• Estimation of the likelihood of observing transmission chain summaries (sizes or lengths). This can be achieved in two ways:
  • Analytical/closed-form likelihoods that take the form <distribution>_<chain_statistic_type>_ll>, for example, gborel_size_ll() and pois_length_ll().
  • Numerical likelihood simulation using offspring_ll().

Additionally, the package provides mixture probability distributions for generating offspring distributions, for example, rborel().

Design decisions

Simulation functions

Simulation of branching processes are achieved through simulate_chains() and simulate_chain_stats(). For details of the underlying methods, see the theory vignette.

The simulations are stochastic, meaning that one set of inputs can produce varied results. The models here can also be use to explore scenario analyses by varying the inputs. Often, in cases where there is need for more than one run of the model and/or with more than one set of parameter values, the inputs and outputs are stored in separate data structures. However, this approach can be limiting when performing scenario analyses, as the user has to manually manipulate the two objects with reshaping and joining operations. This has the potential to lead to errors and loss of information. Hence, simulate_chains() and simulate_chain_stats() return objects of the dedicated classes <epichains> and <epichains_summary> respectively that store the input parameters and the output of the simulation in a single object.

The <epichains> class extends the <data.frame>, using columns to store information about the simulated transmission chains and the parameter values as attributes. <data.frame> was chosen because its tabular structure allows us to store information in rows and columns, and is a widely used data structure in R. Similarly, the <epichains_summary> class is a superclass (an extension) of R’s <numeric> class and stores the parameter values as attributes.

The <epichains> object contains information about the whole outbreak, but key summaries are not easily deduced from a quick glance of the object. Hence, the class has a dedicated format()/print() method to print the simulated transmission chains in a manner similar to a <dataframe>, but accompanied by extra summary information including the number of chains simulated, number of generations reached, and the number of infectors created. These summaries are useful for quickly assessing the output of the simulation.

Importantly, the <epichains> class has a summary() method that returns an <epichains_summary> object. This is a design decision that was taken to allow for easy coercion between an <epichains> object obtained from simulate_chains() and summaries of the <epichains> object otherwise attainable by a separate run of simulate_chain_stats() with the same parameter values passed to simulate_chains().

Lastly, <epichains> objects have an aggregate() method that aggregates the simulated outbreak into cases by “generation” or “time”. This is syntactic sugar for the dplyr::group_by() and dplyr::summarise() style of aggregation with the added benefit of not taking on dplyr as a dependency to achieve the goal.

In summary, an <epichains> object has the following structure:

• Columns:
  • chain (<integer>)
  • infector (<integer>)
  • infectee (<integer>)
  • generation (<integer>), and optionally,
  • time (<numeric>), if generation_time is specified
• Attributes (See definitions in simulate_chains):
  • n_chains,
  • statistic,
  • stat_threshold,
  • offspring_dist, and
  • track_pop (if pop is finite, i.e., if specified).

likelihood estimation

Likelihoods are estimated using the likelihood() function. The function is designed to be flexible in two inputs:

• data can be supplied as a vector of chain summaries, a <epichains> object, or a <epichains_summary> object, and
• the offspring distribution can be supplied as a function, allowing the user to use a custom offspring distributions.

likelihood() uses either analytical or numerical methods to estimate the likelihood of observing the input chain summaries. The analytical methods are closed-form likelihoods that take the form .<offspring_dist>_<statistic>_ll(), for example, .gborel_size_ll() and .pois_length_ll() and are shipped in this package. If the user supplies an offspring distribution and a statistic for which a solution exists, internally, it is used. If not, simulations are used to estimate the likelihood. The numerical likelihood simulation is achieved using .offspring_ll(), an internal wrapper around simulate_chain_stats().

The output type of likelihood() depends on the combination of the arguments individual, obs_prob, and nsim_obs as summarised in the table below:

individual	obs_prob	Output type	Output length	Element length
FALSE	1	<numeric>	1	NA
FALSE	obs_prob >= 0 and obs_prob <= 1	<numeric>	nsim_obs	NA
TRUE	1	<list>	1	input data
TRUE	obs_prob >= 0 and obs_prob <= 1	<list>	nsim_obs	input data

Naming and documentation style

The package uses the following naming conventions:

• Functions and arguments are named using snake_case, example, simulate_chains().

• Internal functions are prefixed with a period, for example, .offspring_ll(). This is only a visual cue and does not have any technical implications.

• In the documentation:

• Classes and objects are enclosed in angle brackets, for example, <epichains>.

• Packages are enclosed in curly braces, for example, epichains.

• All function arguments are defined in sentence case and punctuated (especially with full stops).

• Function titles are in imperative form.

• Functions Are referred to with function_name()

Dependencies

• Input validation:
  • checkmate: exports many test_*(), check_*() and assert_*() functions and is available on CRAN.

Development journey

{epichains} is a successor to the bpmodels package, which was retired after the release of {epichains} v0.1.0.

{epichains} was born out of a need to refactor {bpmodels}, which led to a name change and subsequent changes in design that would have required significant disruptive changes to {bpmodels}. {epichains} is a major refactoring of {bpmodels} to provide a simulation function that accounts for susceptible depletion and population immunity without restrictions on the offspring distributions, better function and long form documentation, and an object-oriented approach to simulating and handling transmission chains in R.

Future plans include simulation of contacts of infectors, the incorporation of network effects, an object-oriented approach to estimating chain size and length likelihoods, and interoperability with the {epiparameter} package for ease of setting up various epidemiological delays.