# Extending ergmito

#### George G. Vega Yon

#### 2025-12-19

The `ergmito`’s workhorse are two other functions: (1) `ergm`’s `ergm.allstats` which is used to compute the support of model’s sufficient statistics, and (2) `ergmito_formulae` which is a wrapper of that same function, and that returns a list including the following two functions: `loglike` and `grad`, the functions to calculate the joint log-likelihood of the model and its gradient.

    library(ergmito)
    data(fivenets)
    model_object <- ergmito_formulae(fivenets ~ edges + ttriad)

    # Printing the model object
    model_object
    #> ergmito log-likelihood function
    #> Number of networks:  5
    #> Model:  fivenets ~ edges + ttriad
    #> Available elements by using the $ operator:
    #> loglik: function (params, ..., as_prob = FALSE, total = TRUE) grad  : function (params, ...)

    # Printing the log-likelihood function
    model_object$loglik
    #> function (params, ..., as_prob = FALSE, total = TRUE)
    #> {
    #>     if (total) {
    #>         ans <- sum(exact_loglik(ergmito_ptr, params = params,
    #>             ..., as_prob = as_prob))
    #>         if (!as_prob && !is.finite(ans))
    #>             return(-.Machine$double.xmax * 1e-100)
    #>         else return(ans)
    #>     }
    #>     else {
    #>         exact_loglik(ergmito_ptr, params = params, ..., as_prob = as_prob)
    #>     }
    #> }
    #> <bytecode: 0x55d45a7485f0>
    #> <environment: 0x55d462695858>

Besides of the log-likelihood function and the gradient function, `ergmito_formulae` also returns We can take a look at each component from our previous object:

    # The vectors of weights
    str(model_object$stats_weights)
    #> List of 5
    #>  $ : num [1:40] 66 312 252 216 24 168 24 1 48 303 ...
    #>  $ : num [1:40] 66 312 252 216 24 168 24 1 48 303 ...
    #>  $ : num [1:40] 66 312 252 216 24 168 24 1 48 303 ...
    #>  $ : num [1:40] 66 312 252 216 24 168 24 1 48 303 ...
    #>  $ : num [1:40] 66 312 252 216 24 168 24 1 48 303 ...

    # The matrices of the sufficient statistics
    str(model_object$stats_statmat)
    #> List of 5
    #>  $ : num [1:40, 1:2] 2 6 5 7 10 4 7 0 8 4 ...
    #>   ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
    #>   .. ..$ : NULL
    #>   .. ..$ : chr [1:2] "edges" "ttriple"
    #>  $ : num [1:40, 1:2] 2 6 5 7 10 4 7 0 8 4 ...
    #>   ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
    #>   .. ..$ : NULL
    #>   .. ..$ : chr [1:2] "edges" "ttriple"
    #>  $ : num [1:40, 1:2] 2 6 5 7 10 4 7 0 8 4 ...
    #>   ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
    #>   .. ..$ : NULL
    #>   .. ..$ : chr [1:2] "edges" "ttriple"
    #>  $ : num [1:40, 1:2] 2 6 5 7 10 4 7 0 8 4 ...
    #>   ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
    #>   .. ..$ : NULL
    #>   .. ..$ : chr [1:2] "edges" "ttriple"
    #>  $ : num [1:40, 1:2] 2 6 5 7 10 4 7 0 8 4 ...
    #>   ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
    #>   .. ..$ : NULL
    #>   .. ..$ : chr [1:2] "edges" "ttriple"

    # The target statistic
    model_object$target_stats
    #>      edges ttriple
    #> [1,]     2       0
    #> [2,]     7       4
    #> [3,]     4       0
    #> [4,]     5       2
    #> [5,]     2       0

All this is closely related to the output object from the function `ergm.allstats`. The next section shows how all this works together to estimate the model parameters using Metropolis-Hastings MCMC.

# Example: Bayesian inference with fivenets

Suppose that we have a prior regarding the distribution of the `fivenets` model: The `edges` parameter is normally distributed with mean -1 and variance 2, while the `nodematch("female")` term has the same distribution but with mean 1. We can implement this model using a Metropolis-Hastings ratio. First, we need to define the log of the posterior distribution:

    # Analyzing the model
    model_object <- ergmito_formulae(fivenets ~ edges + nodematch("female"))

    # Defining the logposterior
    logposterior <- function(p) {
      model_object$loglik(params = p) +
      sum(dnorm(p, mean = c(-1,1), sd = sqrt(2), log = TRUE))
    }

For this example, we are using the fmcmc R package. Here is how we put everything together:

    # Loading the required R packages
    library(fmcmc)
    library(coda)

    # Is it working?
    logposterior(c(-1, 1))
    #> [1] -38.24283

    # Now, calling the MCMC function from the fmcmc R package
    ans <- MCMC(
      fun     = logposterior,
      initial = c(0, 0),
      # 5,000 steps sampling one of every ten iterations
      nsteps  = 5000,
      thin    = 10,
      # We are using a normal transition kernel with .5 scale and updates are done
      # one variable at a time in a random order
      kernel = kernel_normal(scale = .5, scheme = "random")
      )

We can now visualize our results. Since the resulting object is of class `mcmc.list`, which is implemented in the `coda` R package for MCMC diagnostics, we can use all the methods included in the package:

    plot(ans)

    summary(ans)
    #>
    #> Iterations = 10:5000
    #> Thinning interval = 10
    #> Number of chains = 1
    #> Sample size per chain = 500
    #>
    #> 1. Empirical mean and standard deviation for each variable,
    #>    plus standard error of the mean:
    #>
    #>        Mean     SD Naive SE Time-series SE
    #> par1 -1.593 0.4786  0.02140        0.04180
    #> par2  1.409 0.5507  0.02463        0.05432
    #>
    #> 2. Quantiles for each variable:
    #>
    #>        2.5%    25%    50%    75%  97.5%
    #> par1 -2.569 -1.903 -1.607 -1.236 -0.710
    #> par2  0.383  1.033  1.380  1.811  2.562

Finally, we can compare this result with what we obtain from the `ergmito` function

    summary(ergmito(fivenets ~ edges + nodematch("female")))
    #> Warning: The observed statistics (target.statistics) are near or at the
    #> boundary of its support, i.e. the Maximum Likelihood Estimates maynot exist or
    #> be hard to be estimated. In particular, the statistic(s) "edges",
    #> "nodematch.female".
    #>
    #> ERGMito estimates (MLE)
    #> This model includes 5 networks.
    #>
    #> formula:
    #>   fivenets ~ edges + nodematch("female")
    #>
    #>                  Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|)
    #> edges            -1.70475    0.54356 -3.1363 0.001711 **
    #> nodematch.female  1.58697    0.64305  2.4679 0.013592 *
    #> ---
    #> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
    #> AIC: 73.34109    BIC: 77.52978    (Smaller is better.)