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Asked: 2026-05-25T11:29:26+00:00

I was running discriminant analysis using R. The code is the following: fit <-

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I was running discriminant analysis using R. The code is the following:

fit <- lda(group~ A+C1_1+C2+D1a_1+D2_1+D3_1+D3_2+D3_3+E1a_1+E1b_1+E1b_2+E2_1+E3_1+E3_2+E3_3+F2+G_1+G_2+G_3+G_4+H1_1+H2a_1+H2b_1+H3_1+H4_1_1+H1_2+H2a_2+H2b_2+ H3_2+H4_1_2+J1_1+J2_1+J3_1+K1a+K2_1+K2_2+K2_3+K2_4,data=data1)

But unfortunately I was getting the following error:

Error in x - group.means[g, ] : non-conformable arrays

This is the str(data1) output:

'data.frame':   210 obs. of  133 variables:

 $ A               : int  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 ...

 $ C1_1            : int  22 29 12 12 25 15 30 20 30 15 ...
 $ C2              : int  2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 ...
 $ D1a_1           : int  40 50 160 15 150 105 150 45 100 80 ...
 $ D2_1            : int  100 100 100 100 100 100 100 90 95 100 ...
 $ D3_1            : int  5 15 40 10 30 25 30 40 25 60 ...
 $ D3_2            : int  10 30 30 15 30 25 60 40 20 10 ...
 $ D3_3            : int  10 30 30 10 10 15 10 20 20 30 ...
 $ E1a_1           : int  80 25 140 30 150 120 80 30 100 100 ...
 $ E1b_1           : int  100 50 50 25 80 70 80 75 10 75 ...
 $ E1b_2           : int  0 50 50 75 20 30 20 25 90 25 ...
 $ E2_1            : int  20 60 75 70 60 80 75 100 60 80 ...
 $ E3_1            : int  5 20 20 5 30 20 25 25 10 30 ...
 $ E3_2            : int  10 20 40 15 30 20 50 50 10 30 ...
 $ E3_3            : int  10 20 15 10 10 20 25 25 10 40 ...
 $ G_1             : int  5 50 20 25 80 10 30 25 35 5 ...
 $ G_2             : int  0 10 50 50 10 10 30 30 30 10 ...
 $ G_3             : int  90 30 20 25 10 50 5 30 15 80 ...
 $ G_4             : int  5 10 10 0 0 30 35 15 20 5 ...
 $ H1_1            : int  1 3 3 2 3 2 3 3 2 3 ...
 $ H2a_1           : int  NA NA NA 1 NA 2 NA NA 1 NA ...

 $ H2b_1           : int  NA 2 1 NA 2 NA 1 1 NA 1 ...

 $ H3_1            : int  2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 2 2 ...

 $ H4_1_1          : int  6 5 7 6 3 6 5 6 5 5 ...

 $ J1_1            : int  4 6 4 4 4 4 6 7 3 3 ...
 $ J2_1            : int  2 6 5 3 4 4 1 2 3 3 ...
 $ J3_1            : int  4 5 3 3 4 4 6 7 3 4 ...

 $ K1a             : int  2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 ...

 $ K2_1            : int  NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 0 0 ...
 $ K2_2            : int  NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 1 0 ...
 $ K2_3            : int  NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 0 1 ...
 $ K2_4            : int  NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 0 0 ...

  [list output truncated

]]

Second, can anybody please tell me how to get the significance level of the variables used in the discriminant analysis.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Works fine with a randomly generated data set with no NA values:

    set.seed(101)
z <- matrix(runif(210*133),nrow=210)
zz <- data.frame(A=sample(1:2,size=210,replace=TRUE),z)
m <- MASS::lda(A~.,data=zz)

    I can reproduce the error if I add enough NAs:

    z2 <- z
z2[sample(length(z),size=2000)] <- NA
zz2 <- data.frame(A=sample(1:2,size=210,replace=TRUE),z2)
m <- MASS::lda(A~.,data=zz2)

    results in

    Error in x - group.means[g, ] : non-conformable arrays

    (if I knock out fewer I get warnings about collinearity instead)

    For a start, try removing all variables with any NA values (or those with more than a few) and see if you can get it to work.

    For the p value part of the question: googling “+r MASS lda discriminant analysis” leads to http://www.statmethods.net/advstats/discriminant.html and suggests (and provides a link to) MANOVA for these p values.

    Based on a little bit of googling, it looks like people usually use MANOVA with Wilks’ lambda for tests in the context of LDA: for example, http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~efc/classes/biol710/discrim/discrim.pdf says

    Discriminant function analysis is broken into a 2-step process: (1) testing
    significance of a set of discriminant functions, and; (2) classification. The first
    step is computationally identical to MANOVA.

    They go on to show an example of using Wilks’ lambda, although ?manova says that the Pillai-Bartlett test (which is the default in manova) may be better … in any case, it’s pretty easy to do the test.

    > summary(manova(z~zz$A),test="Wilks")
           Df   Wilks approx F num Df den Df Pr(>F)
zz$A        1 0.38164  0.92587    133     76 0.6545
Residuals 208

    This of course is not exactly what you asked for — you asked (I think) for the significance level associated with individual variables rather than with the overall test. I can imagine you could do something via appropriately multiplicity-corrected logistic regression, but this is turning into a statistical rather than an R question. If you don’t get any further answers here you might consider asking an appropriately reformulated question on http://stats.stackexchange.com , referencing this question …

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